Jonny: Here we are in Flin Flon, Manitoba!
Flin Flon, surrounded by beautiful Boreal Forest
here in northern Maniskatchewan.
Flin Flon is truly a border town of Manitoba
and Saskatchewan,
especially if you include the communities of
Creighton and Denare Beach,
which we will be, as we will be talking about
what I will call the Tri-City area
of Greater Flin Flon.
We were actually set to shoot this episode when,
as I’m sure you remember,
things around here got pretty hot.
On May 28th, 2025,
a mandatory evacuation was called.
A successful evacuation, I’m glad to say.
I was a bit confused because one of my producers
told me we were canceling the trip,
and I said, "Why?"
and she said, "That place is on fire,"
but she’s Gen Z.
I thought that was like a good thing, like-
Right, like it’s on- like totally slay, it’s on fire.
Jonny: When you grow up in a small town in Newfoundland,
you see that people have a sense of humour
about hard times.
Check, check.
I turned that into a career and hit the road.
Announcer: Mr. Jonny Harris!
Jonny: Now I’m on a mission to find the funny
in the places you’d least expect,
Canada’s struggling small towns.
Towns that are against the ropes,
but hanging in there,
still laughing in the face of adversity.
This is Flin Flon, Manitoba.
Jonny: Long before you made headlines
with forest fires this summer,
Flin Flon was known mostly for producing rock-hard
hockey players and hard rock mining.
And let’s face it, probably a lot of Canadians
know the name Flin Flon for the name itself.
It’s...
I don’t want to make "Flon" of it, but it’s...
...unusual.
What is somebody from Flin Flon called?
Ken: Flin Flonian, I guess. Jonny: A Flin Flonian.
To tell me about mining minerals and
how the town’s novel name came about,
I had a chat with retired miner,
Ken Pawlachuk.
Jonny: Ken told me in 1915 a prospector by the name of
Tom Creighton came up north looking for gold,
and fortunately he was introduced to a Métis trapper.
Ken: A guy named David Collins,
who was a rock collector, also.
He used to collect shiny rocks.
It took two people, one guy to find the rocks and
one guy to distinguish what it was.
Tom Creighton put claims in on it.
Jonny: But when he was asked
what he wanted to call his claim,
he named it...
after a fictitious character in a sci-fi novel
he randomly found in the bush.
Ken: Tom Creighton found a book called
The Sunless City.
And in The Sunless City, there was a story about
this character, an eccentric scientist kind of.
Jonny: And that character’s name?
Ken: Josiah Flintabbatey Flonatin.
Ken: It’s a mouthful. Jonny: Say it again.
Ken: Josiah Flintabbatey Flonatin.
Jonny: Or to his friends, Flin Flon.
Woo!
Jonny: There’s a great statue down by the museum,
but I was told,
if you looked at it from a certain angle...
Flinty’s thumb looks like not his thumb.
I didn’t see it at first, and I’m like,
somebody’s pulling my leg.
This is nonsense,
and then I look at it and...
I was wrong.
In fact, I was humbled.
Jonny: Ken told me that back in the 1930s,
it was the Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting Company
that decided to go all-in on Flin Flon.
I mean, it was a massive, massive operation.
Ken said people came here from all over the world.
Ken: They were pioneers.
There were people that were kicked out of Russia.
There were the people that came from Europe.
Scandinavians and Ukrainians and Polish people,
a true melting pot of white people.
The company knew that it was gonna struggle
to keep workers here in a remote area
if things were all work no play.
Ken: They would look for...
sports people, they would look for arts people,
because if you didn’t have entertainment,
people wouldn’t stay here.
Jonny: Artists and athletes.
Hockey players were particularly sought after,
and were paid to play
for the Flin Flon Bombers.
Ken: There’s about 17 or 18 guys that
went into the NHL.
Sid Abel, Eric Nesterenko,
of course, Bobby Clarke.
He got drafted to Philadelphia,
and that’s history.
Like, two years, two Stanley Cups.
Jonny: Now, they were also looking for artists,
although Ken said he considers
hockey players to be artists.
Ken: They’re artists in their own...
Jonny: I mean, if you define art as, you know,
a creative, beautiful performance...
Ken: That’s what it is.
Jonny: Although, I suppose it depends on
how you define artist. I mean,
if you dropped the gloves with Bobby Clarke,
he could turn you into a Picasso.
Ken: Once the mine we drove by there...
ran out of ore, basically, they had to close and then
they transferred everybody to Snow Lake.
Jonny: In 2022, the last mine,
the Triple Seven, closed down.
Ken: People have moved away and...
and it changed the community, it did.
Jonny: However, exploration continues all over the area.
Ken: We didn’t take all the copper and zinc
out of the ground in this area.
We took a lot of it out, but there’s a lot more.
I don’t think we’re done.
Jonny: Ken holds out hope that mining
will come back to Flin Flon,
which everybody would love to see,
except perhaps for the Flin Flon Bombers.
I don’t know any hockey player who wants to
be sent back down as a miner.
The summer of 2025
is a time nobody here in town will ever forget.
When a series of four major fires
joined forces to create one massive inferno
that moved toward Flin Flon,
when the entire community of Denare Beach
was forced to evacuate.
-I’m Jonny. -I’m Kari.
Jonny: I met a woman who had an interesting strategy for
stress during the wildfire evacuation, Kari Lentowicz!
Kari: We’re at the...
remains of my home,
most of it’s been taken away.
The fire came in like a blowtorch,
with its own lightning, formed its own weather.
Jonny: Her house was one of the 230 homes
and 400 structures that were lost to
the fire in Denare Beach alone.
Kari: I was fortunate to have something to lose.
There’s a lot of people who didn’t.
Nobody was hurt.
Jonny: Yeah, that people evacuated successfully.
Everybody I ever talked to that’s been through
a mandatory evacuation,
they’re always amazed, in hindsight,
at what they chose to bring, or even more so
what they did not bring.
Kari: Because I’ve got a big background in disaster
and emergency management,
I took some things that...
were high value, but...
all the things that cost nothing meant more.
Jonny: Really? Kari: Yes.
A wool blanket that I made with my friend’s mom,
who’s since passed, card from my kokum.
-Your kokum? -Kokum.
It means grandmother in Cree.
Jonny: Okay.
I can’t imagine what it’s like if you’re leaving
your home, you can only take so much stuff,
and you think, I might never be here again.
I mean, I start panic packing
every time I go on the road.
When I came here, the taxi for the airport’s
in the driveway, I’m rifling through random drawers.
Meanwhile, I haven’t packed any socks or underwear.
I’m grabbing random- I’m going like, oh my God,
you know, it’s northern Manitoba,
maybe I’ll need wood glue.
Throw that in my bag and...
You’re not thinking straight!
Wood glue, which, by the way,
is not a cream or gel, airport security.
Jonny: And I went, you know, I walked around that area,
and it is eerie, all these empty lots
where homes once stood,
but I have to say, obviously the first part
of the rebuild is cleaning up,
and I was amazed by how much of that
has been done already.
It’s only been three months and the place is
completely cleared out.
I went up to where they brought all that,
the mangled wreckage,
they’ve got a huge mountain of it.
Kari: They’ve got what looks like
an amazing mount of stuff-
trees, and concrete, and metal.
Then you think there’s over 200 homes in those piles.
Jonny: It’s all burnt black and rust brown
and you kind of can’t make anything,
almost like one of those like 3D eye puzzle books.
You can’t really make, and then you focus,
you’re like, oh my God, that’s a truck chassis.
The fact that they’ve hauled it all out,
it speaks to the incredible effort to get people’s
property cleared and ready to rebuild.
Will you rebuild here?
Kari: Absolutely, 100%. The beauty’s still here.
The reason I’m here is still there.
Nature gives me what I need to do my stress relief,
like my birch bark biting,
which I took with me and do on the road to
keep me from being distracted.
Jonny: And Kari said that as she was driving out during
the evacuation, one thing she did to battle stress,
she was chewing on birch bark.
Kari: Basically, you peel bark and
you bite designs into it.
Jonny: She’s Cree, and birch bark biting
is a traditional art form.
Kari: This is one here.
Jonny: You did not do that with your teeth.
Kari: Yeah, so if you hold it up to the light,
you can see the pattern in it.
Jonny: Oh, my God!
She showed me how it’s done.
So we’ve got this birch bark.
Yeah, how do you get a piece of birch bark
like this without damaging it?
Kari: Very carefully.
Jonny: You fold it in different ways to
result in different patterns.
It’s incredibly intricate, all just made out of
these tiny little bites.
Kari: You want to bite hard, but not too hard.
You look like you’re chewing it like a little mouse.
Jonny: I don’t have very good teeth.
That’s one thing I got from my British father
was bad teeth.
My teeth don’t line up.
When I eat something, my teeth don’t meet.
They don’t chop off the food.
I got an overbite, so I just sort of like
grab the food and then I twist it.
Like a crocodile grabs the food and rolls around.
Kari: Okay, finish that line all the way to the side,
and then you’re gonna do the same on the other side.
You can do this, I have faith.
Jonny: But also I’m worried that there’s wood chips
that’ll chip my teeth away.
And if the wood chips could chip,
how much wood would the wood chips chip?
Basically, I’m biting birch bark and I’m worried
the birch bark’s gonna bite back!
Kari: Let’s see what you came up with.
Jonny: Oh my God, yours is a perfect flower.
After like five minutes, Kari unfolds hers,
and this beautiful, intricate flower...
And I unfolded my birch bark,
and let’s just say my bark was worse than my bite.
Jonny: If you’re here in Flin Flon and you love
drive-in movies, you are a
winner, winner chicken dinner.
Wah!
The wildfires came, but they’re still surviving.
I talked with the owners of Big Island Drive-In,
Dan and Dawn Hlady.
Jonny: The Big Island Drive-In is the most
northerly drive-in theatre in North America.
Dawn: We are the only screen, 4 hours radius.
Jonny: Only movie place, indoor or outdoor?
- Yes, for 4 hours. - Yes, within 4 hours, yes.
Jonny: Wow, okay.
And running an outdoor theatre this far north
comes with certain challenges.
Dawn: In June, ah...
we’re playing movies at 11 o’clock at night.
Dan: Starting movies. Dawn: Starting movies.
Dan: Starting trailers at 11 o’clock at night.
Jonny: Really?
And, this far north, it doesn’t just
get dark late it gets light early.
Like I said to Dan, I said,
"If you start a doubleheader at 11 pm,
when does it end?
And he said, "To tell you the truth, dawn."
And I said, "Okay, Dawn tell me the truth,
if you start a double header at 11pm..."
Perhaps an even bigger draw than the
movies themselves is the food.
They got popcorn, gourmet pretzels,
and ice cream.
Dawn: And the classic pickled eggs.
A recipe and an item that we inherited
when we bought the place.
Jonny: This was something the previous owner
told them they had to do.
Flin Flonians demanded you have to offer pickled eggs.
Dawn: We go through hundreds of these
every couple of weeks.
Jonny: I don’t think I’ve ever seen
a pickled egg at a movie.
I was amazed by this, but Dawn had some there,
so I tried the pickled egg.
-Cheers. -Cheers.
I’m down with the pickled egg.
Dawn: Mm-hmm. Jonny: Like, once a year.
Dawn:
Jonny: I thought the birch bark had bite.
That pickled egg...
But if you want to take the edge off your pickled egg,
a popular choice among locals is to have a pickled egg
smothered in melted nacho cheese.
That is a thing here!
And I can prove it ´cause I brought one.
A pickled egg smothered in nacho-
This is perfect for the person who’s on a date
they don’t want to be on.
Imagine you’re on a date,
and the person you’re with is like,
"Hey, do you wanna get in the back seat?"
"Yeah, sure. Just let me finish
my nacho cheese smothered pickled egg."
"Still wanna get in the back?"
Jonny: I asked them about the fire this summer,
Dan told me they evacuated to Saskatoon,
and then, he saw pictures on social media of firefighters
at the end of a long, exhausting day.
Dan: They were cooking their own supper.
And, that’s when I talked to Dawn, and I said,
you know, like, I’m, I’m needed back.
Jonny: He got some supplies, he got back in the car,
and he headed back to town.
Eventually, Dawn came and joined him,
and they spent the next few weeks,
they worked 16 hours a day feeding 350 firefighters
the best food they could get their hands on.
What kind of stuff were you whipping up?
Dawn: Ah, everything from eggs benedict
in the morning, pastas at lunch.
Dan: Stews, roast beef. Dawn: Roast beef.
Dawn: Prime rib at night time.
Dan: And they’re thanking us, and it’s like,
but I gotta thank you, right?
You’re in that heat of the moment,
you’re going out there.
Jonny: Dawn said, firefighters,
on their way out in the morning, they’d stop by
and say, like, "Oh, what’s for dinner?"
And just that, it just brought a little bit of
humanity back to this situation,
the fact that these guys are about to go out
and do a dangerous, exhausting,
hot, uncomfortable job.
The fact that even a small part of your brain
might be looking forward to dinner,
like dinner might be nice, had to mean the world.
Dan said evacuees- homeowners,
business owners- were calling him,
saying, "The key is under the mat."
Dan: I could show tons of messages, "Go into my house,
go into to my business, take whatever you need,
feed those guys."
Jonny: That’s awesome. Dan: "Feed those guys."
So it was huge community support.
Jonny: But it’s a great story,
and one that I’ve heard, not just from them,
from other people in town who really appreciated
the effort that they put in.
It’s a heartwarming story.
Beyond heart warm-
I find it almost heart-burning.
Actually, that’s the pickled egg, never mind.
Jonny: Next, I went and I got all pumped up for the
great Flin Flon Forget the Fire Inflatable Race.
I met the president of the local SPCA,
who managed to successfully cross fundraising
with fun racing, Nicole Kendrick!
Jonny: It’s all for a good cause.
Nicole: Yeah, I’m the president of our Flin Flon
and Creighton area SPCA.
We house dogs, cats, recently rabbits.
Jonny: Nicole told me things were looking bleak
last year for the SPCA.
They were facing the real prospect of
declaring bankruptcy.
Nicole: A friend and I actually came up with
the complete shenanigans that is this
over a couple glasses of wine.
Jonny: It is a brilliant idea, I gotta say,
because you’re setting people up for failure
in the funniest of ways.
Nicole: And they’re paying to do it.
Jonny: And they’re paying to do it.
But Nicole said last year it was about raising funds
for the SPCA.
This year it was more about getting people out,
getting the community together
and just having some fun.
Nicole: Some people have lost their homes,
their everything, and just to come here,
forget about it for just a couple minutes,
and watch some inflatable costumes
possibly fall on their face.
Jonny: I put on a costume, I participated.
Nicole and I raced each other.
Announcer: Do you think Jonny with Still Standing
is gonna win?
What about our president of the SPCA?
Jonny: She had a dog costume on,
and it was a cross between a husky and
a hot air balloon.
Announcer: Get set... Go!
Jonny: Agh!
Jonny: And she was winning,
but I was chasing that tail, and...
Ah!
I’m not proud of it,
I grabbed her tail to slow her down.
I know it’s not cool, but in that alien costume,
I was getting carried away.
It was a photo finish, it was a tie.
I lost money because I had bet on myself,
which I knew I shouldn’t have done,
because I should have known-
she’s with the SPCA,
the whole thing was fixed.
It was great to see some of the local firefighters there.
I had to take the opportunity to ask one of them,
how could there be fire everywhere,
but not completely wipe out the town?
And he said two words,
"Human intervention."
And that’s what it was.
Jonny: It’s tough to look at Denare right now,
where homes once stood, it’s stark...
but the people here are pretty tough too,
hard rock miners, the likes of Bobby Clarke.
Like a pattern in birch bark isn’t easy to see
till you lift it up to the sun,
the beauty and struggle isn’t too easy to see,
but in three months just look what’s been done.
And to the firefighters who fought all summer all
across this great land from Vancouver Island to
Conception Bay, Newfoundland.
With no finer effort than here,
so it’s from here we wish to show you our love
and our thanks from Flin Flon, Manitoba.
Thanks for coming out, everybody.
You’ve been great. Thank you!
We love you.
He brought all the nuance of the community...
sensitive because there’s the fire and the whole bit,
so it was perfect.
I was amazed by Jonny eating that egg.
Oh yeah!
Kari: It’s very emotional for a lot of people,
myself included.
I shed a few tears, but it was from laughing.
So that was a good thing.
Nicole: He’s a dirty cheater.
He might have thought I didn’t feel him grab
my tail, but he grabbed my tail.
Jonny: "We’re wishing you lots of luck on
baby number four, congratulations."