82 Page 80 er in Capreol Ontario by 2015 an nounced it was suspending its quest to mine the chromite after the compa face of mining claims held by KWG Resources to build a northsouth road was denied by the Mining Com missioner of Ontario The proposal was opposed by KWG Resources on the grounds that it wanted to build a railroad on those lands as its preferred transportation option Clif fs eventu ally won a divisional court case in August 2014 overturning the Mining Upon appeal an Ontario court will hold a hearing on the issue this sum mer By the end of August 2014 how ever a full scale shareholders revolt at Clif fs engineered by Casablanca tors who wanted to rein expenditures Declining iron ore prices had drasti previous board which had pursued an expansionary policy was defeated ln October 2014 The new board hired over Gary Halverson a former execu By Frank Giorno Back in 1997 when the Ring of Fire in Northern Ontario was but a tiny ring let of smoke in the minds of explor ers such as Neil Novak of Spider Re sources and Richard Nemis of Noront Resources the territory was home to 9 First Nations members of the Ma tawa T r ibal Council communities separated by distance over the 5000 square kilometres of muskegs known Almost 20 years later the much hailed and recently much maligned Ring of Fire still has no operating mines de spite exploration expenditures in the range of hundreds of million dollars T oday thanks to a myriad of fac equivalent to the oil sands by Federal Cabinet Minister T ony Clement re mains a smouldering ember of dreams ln November 2013 Clif fs Natural Resources the early frontrunner to develop a chromite mine and a smelt tive with Barrick Gonclaves quickly began to pursue a policy of jettisoning costly projects including Black Thor in the Ring of Fire and iron ore mines in Quebec and Newfoundland It was around this time that increasing ly negative media stories started pop up like mushrooms in the fall Hopes ber 24 2014 headline The Globe ar Fire mineral belt was supposed to be a 60billion natural resources trea sure trove that would bring employ ment and economic prosperity to a the future of the deposit in question and hurting prospects that it will ever reach the lofty expectations of politi cians A month later the Globe and Mail ran a story with attributions to Goncalves himself that the Ring of Fire is be Contd on pg 82