Faro rises again

It was to be Yukons newest town, carved out of a mostly pristine swath of boreal forest in the Pelly River valley almost overnight to house the workers at what would become, for a time, the worlds largest open-pit lead-zinc mine and, later, one of Canadas biggest toxic messes.

The original idea was that Faro, Yukon, about 200 kilometres northeast of Whitehorse, would be more than just a fly-in/fly-out workers camp or a company town. It would be an open municipality, able to accommodate up to 3,000 people.

Things moved quickly. Housing construction began in the spring of 1969, and by early June, some units were ready to be painted.

Then came the fire. A lightning strike on a nearby mountain on Friday the 13th of June, 1969, sparked a blaze that would consume the new townsite within a few hours.

Very little was left of the town, the late Murray Hampton, a longtime town councillor and mayor, later recalled in Madmen and Dreamers, a book of local history published in 1993.

Two houses were left standing after the fire, both of them over on Ogilvie Drive. One or two blocks of maisonettes across from the post office were left standing. Everything else was burned.

Total devastation, recalled a former town manager in the same book.

In the end, it was a minor setback. Construction soon resumed, and by September, the towns first residents were moving in.

Faro had risen from the ashes, and a sort of pattern was set for years to come. The town might get knocked down, but it would hang on.

Twenty-four years after the Faro mine the communitys original raison detre closed for good, the town is still hanging on, smaller than in its heyday but growing once again.

Dozens of long-abandoned homes have been bought up in recent years and theres now, improbably, a housing shortage. Next year, the town plans to sell some new building lots.

Office and industrial space is even more scarce, as is tourist accommodation. The only local hotel became housing for contractors earlier this year.

Driving around Faros quiet and snowy streets on an autumn day, however, does not leave the impression of a town on the upswing. Some streets are lined with dark and decaying houses, unshovelled driveways and unkempt lawns. Large apartment complexes sit empty and boarded up.

The town built for 3,000 mine workers and their families now houses fewer than 500 people, according to the most recent population count.

Its small enough that drivers wave as they pass each other, one of those quick flashes of the hand from atop the steering wheel.

They do that in Calgary, but in Calgary they only use one finger, whereas in Faro they use all of them, said Larry Baran, the towns chief administrative officer.

Baran was born in B.C., grew up in southern California, and has lived and worked in Alberta, Yukon and the N.W.T. He first worked in Faro in the early 2000s, and he and his wife decided to move back earlier this year. It was always one of their favourite places.

Its a beautiful community. Its a peaceful community, Baran said.

We were gone for about 16 or 17 years, came back and it was almost an instant thing to pick up friendships and relationships.

Its Barans job these days to grapple with the implications of a population thats rapidly growing once again. Thats meant infrastructure upgrades, renewed community planning and figuring out how to get those abandoned houses and apartment buildings back into service.

Many of those buildings have sat empty for decades, slowly falling apart.

The threadbare, forsaken look in some areas of town can make it easy to forget that Faro is still a relatively young place. Dawson City and Whitehorse were well-established communities many decades before Faro was even on the map. If Faro were a person, it could still be a decade away from retirement.

When the Cyprus Anvil mine opened near Faro in 1969, it quickly became Yukons biggest private-sector employer. At its peak, the mine accounted for more than a third of the territorys economy.

The townsite, meantime, grew to more than 2,000 people and became, for a time, Yukons second-largest community after Whitehorse. There was a curling rink, a department store, a fancy hotel, and a movie theatre.

Things began to change in the mid-80s. Cyprus Anvil closed the Faro mine in 1982 and the following decade-and-a-half would see the mine site change hands, close and reopen twice before the final owners went bankrupt and the mine shut down for good in 1998.

Thats when a lot of the town emptied out. Homes and apartment buildings were vacated almost overnight, giving some parts of town a bit of a haunted vibe that lingers to today. Decades of harsh northern winters have not been kind to unkept houses.

The population gradually dwindled to about 300 and, even a decade ago, there didnt seem to be a lot of reasons for Faro to continue existing, Baran wrote in a recent edition of Focused on Faro, the town newsletter.

By 2016, something had to be done about all the abandoned buildings. They had become not just an eyesore but a hazard. They had been owned by Faro Real Estate Ltd., but the company was defunct and owed millions in unpaid taxes.

The town decided to assume ownership of the 37 properties 170 dwelling units in total and put them up for sale in 2017, dirt cheap. Why not? It was either that or spend money to tear them down.

Some units went for a few thousand dollars. But there was a caveat the new owners had to start renovations within three years, and bring the properties back to a usable condition. In many cases, that would mean spending tens of thousands more to gut the entire unit, remove asbestos and essentially rebuild everything but the frame.

Eighty per cent of the units sold within six months. Some people began renovating immediately and there were soon some new faces in town.

The last census found Faro was one of Yukons fastest-growing communities, with a population increase of more than 26 per cent between 2016 and 2021.

Tina Freake first moved to Faro from Newfoundland as a teen in the 1990s with her parents and siblings. Her parents both went to work at the mine then.

Freake later moved away for several years, only to return to Faro a decade ago to raise her own family in the sort of small town she loves. She works at the local recreation centre as well as the conservation office, and a few years ago, she and her partner bought one of the old four-plex buildings from the town and started renovating.

She thinks Faro is appealing for young families because its small, safe, friendly and affordable.

Were not just an abandoned mining community anymore, Freake said.

If anything, I would say now were more of a family community, a family-oriented community where theres lots going on.

Mayor Jack Bowers thinks the population has gone up quite a bit more even since the last census. He believes it may have topped 500 people by now.

Weve got a lineup of people waiting to move in, he said.

These houses that were once considered a liability to the community [have] now become an asset.

Bowers, a former mining engineer, thinks some of Faros best days are still ahead, as any mayor should. There are still some big untapped mineral deposits nearby, he argues.

And then theres that massive remediation project.

According to the federal government, now responsible for the project, the Faro mine site spans about 25 square kilometres, with about 70 million tonnes of toxic tailings and 320 million tonnes of waste rock that threaten to leach metals and acid into the surrounding land and waters. The government calls it one of the most complex abandoned mine clean-up projects in Canada.

Its taken more than two decades to even come up with a proposed remediation plan, and that plan is still being screened by Yukons environmental assessment board. In the meantime, until the plan is approved, the mine site is in care and maintenance mode.

The remediation is expected to take about 15 years, followed by 20 to 25 years of testing and monitoring. Some areas of the mine site will always remain under active management and monitoring, the federal government says.

Earlier this year, U.S.-based Parsons Corporation was awarded a contract to implement the remediation plan and provide ongoing care and maintenance at the site. A news release from the company boasts that the contract could span over 20 years and exceed $2 billion.

Thats music to the ears of Bowers.

Our future is really secure, he said. The feds have committed to this work that means theres job security here.

White pickup trucks with the Parsons logo are easy to spot around town, especially at the old Faro Hotel, which was converted this year into housing for company employees.

One of Larry Barans jobs, meantime, is to go through all those housing sale contracts from a few years ago and find the owners who havent yet held up their end of the deal. The town has given buyers two one-year extensions to that original three-year deadline to begin renovations, and for some, the new deadline is fast approaching either later this year or next. Baran is reviewing about 50 property sales, he said.

So Im going through all of these files now and following up with the buyers, Baran said. Some are excited to hear from you, some less so.

Its actually written in the contract that if they fail to meet the terms, council can direct me to start the process to recover the property, bring it back into our name and then find a buyer that is enthusiastic.

The town, quite simply, needs those houses to be livable again.

Weve got the unit there, but its not habitable. So one of the challenges that we have is to encourage people to renovate their homes and put these units into service, Baran said.

We have demand for it, whereas just a few years ago there wasnt demand.

Despite Faros rebound, few people expect the towns population to return to what it was in its mining heyday. Some residents would be happy to see their town grow a bit more but not too much.

I think most of the people here would prefer a smaller town, said Katy Peeling, 74, who first moved to town with her late husband in 1974 to go work at the mine.

A thousand [people] would be fine. That would really support our store and service station and, you know, a few extra little places.

Peeling vividly remembers what Faro was like when she first arrived. She says she didnt yet understand the typical boom-and-bust nature of a mining town. She wasnt impressed. The town was just five years old at the time.

And it sort of acted like a five-year-old, she recalled.

I thought people were just crazy here. Id never seen people who spent their entire paycheck to buy a dirt bike just because somebody rolled into town with a trailer load of dirt bikes. And managed to sell them all out in about a day and half. Id never seen that sort of living.

Still, the town grew on her and she stayed. She says shes seen the local population go up and down several times over the decades, and has vivid memories of seeing suddenly empty streets when the mine closed for the first time in the 80s.

I got on a bicycle and bicycled around town and there was no traffic. There were no cars moving. It was a real shock, she recalled.

She counts maybe six different waves of people that have come and gone in her time as a Faroite. The influx of new people would be about the seventh, she figures.

Peeling never lost faith in Faro, even at its lowest points. If anything, those low points simply convinced her Faro will survive anything.

I dont think Faros going to go away, and the reason I dont is because its had every opportunity, she said.

It seems to just have a real grip on staying, one way or another.