City FAQ

The story of how Flin Flon got its name combines fact and fiction. It can be traced back to the year 1914 when prospector Tom Creighton and his escort, local trapper David Collins, were exploring the northern frontiers of Manitoba in search of ore. Creighton and his associates Dan and Jack Mosher, Isadore and Leon Dion and Dan Milligan were exploring in the vicinity of Amisk (Beaver) Lake, Saskatchewan when they were shown mineral-rich sulphides by Mr. Collins, who had found the rocks in his hunting territory surrounding the north arm of Athapapuskow Lake.

Immediately recognizing the potential value of the resource, the prospectors asked Collins to show them the area where he found the strange looking rocks. Upon being led to the small lake where Collins had found the rocks, near the location of present day Flin Flon, the prospectors undertook further exploration work and staked a claim to the property.

How the peculiar name "Flin Flon" came to be is where fiction begins to outweigh fact. It is said that the prospectors, who had little else to do on the long nights in the wilderness, were in possession of a tattered copy of a dime-store science fiction novel written by J.E. Preston Muddock called The Sunless City. The novel told the story of the adventurer Josiah Flintabbatey Flonatin, who ventured in his submarine to the bottom of the bottomless Lake Avernus and into the centre of the earth in search of the unknown. Exactly how the bottom of a bottomless lake was reached is beyond explanation. Reminded how the lake near the mineral discovery appeared bottomless, the prospectors felt that it was reminiscent of Lake Avernus. Thereafter the lake near the claim became commonly known as Flin Flon Lake.

A more factual account relates to the year 1929 when the CNR was requesting a list of place names for sites along the rail line leading north out of The Pas. The diary of Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting Co. Limited's radio operator notes the following, "They say they will call it Flin Flon if they don't hear from us." Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting never responded to the CNR request and, as a result, the City of Flin Flon remains the only city in the world known to be named after a science-fiction character.

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