For Ken Mercedi, the rusted drill rod, chain and plane engine scattered around the lawn of his Uranium City, Sask., home are more than just relics of the past.
“Everything is a memory,” he said, pointing to an old ore cart transformed into a planter by his niece, located across the street.
Born and raised in the northern settlement, Mercedi left when he was 18 before eventually returning for another eight years.
Now, he and his family return to the area each summer — a tradition continued for nearly two decades.
“You just have that connection that you can’t get away from,” he said.
That connection is reflected throughout his property, where remnants of the community’s heyday have found a new home.
Uranium City was established by the provincial government in 1952 as uranium mining brought workers and their families north. The area, once considered a thriving town, had a population of nearly 2,500 and was equipped with local amenities such as a hotel, a hardware store and a dairy shop, Mercedi said.
But this all came to an end in 1982, when the Beaverlodge Mine abruptly closed, leaving the community largely abandoned.
Decades later, fewer than 100 residents remain, but remnants of that era are still visible throughout the community. Abandoned buildings, including the former CANDU High School, stand as reminders of Uranium City’s former prosperity.
“I had good memories of that school,” said Tim Beckett, a former resident of Uranium City who moved from the area in 1980.
“I spent some very good years there, and I had a lot of friends there, and to see it in such bad shape, very dark, it had a very strange feeling to it,” Beckett said, recalling the first time he returned in 1996.
Beckett is among several former residents working to preserve their memories and stay connected through reunions over the years. One reunion in Alberta’s Cyprus Hills in 1998 is said to have drawn in more than 750 people.
“That was the highlight for us, that’s for sure,” said Len Kilbreath, a former Uranium City resident and organizer of that noteworthy reunion.
Mercedi says he used to go to the reunions “quite regularly” when he lived in La Ronge, Sask., with the events taking place across the province.
“I remember one we went to, it was close to 600 people, and there were people there from all over the world,” he said. “Scotland, there was a guy from California.”
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For Kilbreath, the reunions also offer a way to connect with residents who stayed in the town after he left, bonding over shared experiences of a remote community isolated from the rest of the province and the country.
“With the town closing down, so many of us felt like we never had a hometown. So we just brought it with us wherever we went,” Kilbreath said.
Four companies eyeing Uranium City’s potential
As global demand for nuclear energy and the fuel that powers it grows, exploration companies are turning to Saskatchewan’s uranium-rich Athabasca Basin to get a piece of the in-demand commodity.
More than 30 companies are actively exploring the Athabasca Basin, according to the Saskatchewan government, four of which are in the Uranium City area, located about 800 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon.
Exploration company Triton is among those drilling in the region, searching for new uranium deposits alongside areas that were mined decades ago.
“There’s lots of work going on,” Troy Marfleet, Triton’s chief operating officer, told Global News in an interview.
“The locals are saying this is the busiest summer in the last 20 years.”
Unlike some newer areas being explored, Uranium City already has a long history of uranium mining and extensive drilling data, Marfleet said.
“The nice thing about the Uranium City area is we already know that there’s lots of uranium here,” Marfleet said. “Now it’s just about finding how much and what the extent of it is.”
Triton is targeting lower-grade uranium deposits closer to the surface and is also reviewing historic samples that were drilled by previous companies but never mined, Marfleet said, adding that an open-pit mining method would also be used.
“So there’s no new technology that we have to develop or anything like that, which is good,” Marfleet said.
Scott Evans, Triton’s president and director, said existing airstrips, roads and power lines could give the area an advantage if a viable resource is proven.
“We really think that we have a huge advantage if we can prove up our resource to be able to get it out of there in a quicker manner,” Evans said.
Many of the investors buying into Triton’s project are what Evans called “Saskatchewan patriots,” seeking a share of one of the province’s most coveted resources as global demand increases.
Keeping investment local and within the province is another motivation for these investors, Evans said.
“It’s exciting just to be part of the uranium and the nuclear renaissance,” said Travis Penna, who is part of the company’s independent board of directors.
In June, Eagles Plains Resources announced it had approved exploration activities to begin in the Uranium City area. Fortune Bay and Appia are two other companies exploring the area, Marfleet said.
The long road ahead to mining
But renewed exploration does not guarantee that Uranium City will see another operating mine.
Its remote location presents significant logistical challenges. There is no direct all-weather road connecting the community to the south, meaning supplies and equipment are brought in by barge during the summer or over an ice road in the winter.
“So you really have to plan your program ahead of time in order to utilize the ice road as much as possible,” Marfleet said.
A permanent, year-round road could make exploration and future development easier, Marfleet said, but building one would be a significant undertaking.
And even if exploration proves successful, a new mine would not happen overnight.
The pace of drilling, the amount of uranium discovered and future uranium prices will all play a role in determining whether deposits can ultimately be developed, Marfleet said.
Explorers say it could be close to a decade before uranium extracted from a potential new operation is shipped.
Still, the possibility of renewed mining has generated cautious optimism among people who call Uranium City home — and among those who remember what it was like when the town was thriving.
Residents say they have been welcoming to exploration crews and are hopeful that new investment can bring jobs and infrastructure to the region.
“They’re good. I’ve had no problem with any of them,” Mercedi said.
“The long-term vision would be to bring that town back to life and provide jobs for people up north and turn something that’s kind of a liability to the government into a major asset,” Evans said.
For Mercedi, the exploration activity is another chapter in the story of a community he has never quite been able to leave behind.
Whether the renewed interest leads to another uranium boom remains to be seen.
But for a community shaped by uranium mining, the drilling underway around Uranium City is offering a glimpse of what its next chapter could look like.
