Muddock's Canadian city

DICK DONOVAN

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As an example of how almost every aspect of Muddock's life is touched by the fantastic, consider the Canadian city named after one of his lesser-known characters - Josiah Flintabbatey Flonatin. The city in question is Flin Flon (pop. 7243), a mining town on the Saskatchewan/Manitoba border, on the edge of the Precambrian Shield. Opinions vary on whether it is in Manitoba or Saskatchewan. If in both, it destroys Lloydminster, Alberta/Saskatchewan's claim to be the only border city in Canada.

But how did this come about? It is all due to Muddock's Jules Verne-esque science fiction novel The Sunless City: From the papers of the late Josiah Flintabbatey Flonatin, Esq (F V White & Co., London). The story concerns the gloriously-named Flintabbatey Flonatin who dived in a bottomless lake in a submarine, found a tunnel lined with gold, and followed it to a strange underground world. In the 1920s, a prospector named Tom Creighton found the a 1915 dime paperback reprint of the book in the wilderness, and soon after discovered a rich vein of almost pure copper. Remembering Muddock's book, Creighton named the mine and mercifully shortened it to Flin Flon.

The resulting town of Flin Flon was founded in the late 1920s by mining firms bent on exploiting the substantial copper and zinc deposits nearby. Flin Flon grew markedly during the 1930s as farmers, impoverished by the Depression, left the land and went to work as miners. The city has continued to be a mining centre, but the scenic beauty of the nearby lakes have given it a second life as a moderately popular tourist destination, with 75 camping sites, the obligatory museum, the Baker's Narrows Provincial Park, Flinty Boardwalk around Ross Lake (complete with 'info stops' explaining the various indigenous rocks), tours of the Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting Co. and a sizeable snowmobile business in the winter months. Flin Flon also has one of the few drive-in theatres left in North America and plays new feature films and classics while the weather permits.

Even more remarkably, Flinty's Submarine Park boasts a 20-foot sculpture of Josiah Flintabbatey Flonatin (right) known affectionately as 'Flinty'.. The statue was designed by the famed American cartoonist Al Capp, creator of L'il Abner, who became fascinated by the story of how Flin Flon got its name, and designed Flinty.