T wo of the first five major national projects recently advanced by the Mark Carney government for fast tracking involve copper mines. The remaining three involve increased liquefied natural gas production in Kitimat, British Columbia; the construction of a suite of small modular nuclear reactors at the Darlington facility in Ontario; and the expansion of a container port in Montreal. The prioritizing of two copper mines probably took many people by surprise.
Undulating in a Utah Museum of Fine Arts gallery, thousands of glimmering casts seem to float throughout the space. For his large-scale installation "Stone on Boundary," Japanese artist Yasuaki Onishi has suspended 5,000 copper foils that he molded over river rocks in both Osaka and Salt Lake City. Begun in the artist's studio in Osaka-a city where Japanese copper has been refined for export for around two centuries-the installation then traveled to the museum, which sits less than an hour's drive from the world's largest operational open-pit copper mine.