Circling the Midnight Sun by James Raffan

Author:James Raffan [Raffan, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781443405867
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2014-08-16T04:00:00+00:00

Back in Magadan, with the Get Smart theme again running in the back of my head, I turned the big brass key four times and found a new set of roommates at 54 Karl Marx. With them for company in the evenings, I spent a couple more days in Magadan, continuing my conversations with company personnel at the Kinross office.

Jenya Saevich introduced me to Alexander Kazantsev, site services supervisor for Kinross at its ocean port on the Northern Sea Route at Pevek. He took me back to the very early days of the mine and showed me photos of himself taking a six-wheeled amphibious all-terrain vehicle, much like Oleg’s Trekol on the Ob River near Khanty-Mansiysk, out over the tundra to find the remaining nomads and their reindeer still roaming on the lands between Kupol and the coast.

Their first encounter had been in April of 2004. Kazantsev showed me pictures of his team sharing meals with a herding family in the smoky confines of their yaranga made of bent saplings covered with dried reindeer skins. “We see these families occasionally now during the winter months when we are hauling freight to the mine,” he said, “but now that the connection is established, the herding families tend to drive their animals toward the mine in late July or early August each year. At that time, they can join us for a meal or two and also get supplies of tools or other things they might need.”

Jenya interjected to tell me about another way Kinross has made the benefits of the mine more tangible for the herders and the people they support in neighbouring communities. “We have established the Kupol Social Development Foundation, which is devoted to supporting worthwhile projects in maintaining traditional lifestyles as well as aboriginal health care, education, and entrepreneurship. This was started in October 2009, when the company put $1 million into a foundation fund to support a US$250,000 annual operating budget for grants to local people and local projects.”

Jenya led me down the hall to meet Ludmila Danilova, a Chuvan woman who was the executive director of the foundation. She explained how the staff go about deciding which projects and whose communities win support from Kupol’s charitable support arm. “There are eight members on the tender committee,” she told me, “whose job it is to decide on which projects to support. One of the early successes was a film called The Book of Tundra—”

“Oh,” I blurted out, “by Aleksei Vakhrushev.”

“Have you seen the film?” Ludmila asked.

I hadn’t, but I told her that I’d met Aleksei in Moscow and we’d spoken in the RAIPON office.

She continued, “To date we have supported more than two dozen projects, from getting bone carving going in one area, to helping to provide fur clothing and dental care for herders in the Bilibino district. We have helped to create a health centre in Anadyr to promote exercise and wellness and to reduce the incidence of diabetes and obesity. A grant went to a group who have created a mini-farm to provide fresh eggs to the community.

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