What to See in Sudbury - Top Sights and Attractions

Museum in Sudbury, Ontario. Science North is an interactive science museum in Greater Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.

The science centre, which is Northern Ontario's most popular tourist attraction, consists of two snowflake-shaped buildings on the southwestern shore of Ramsey Lake, just south of the downtown core, and a former ice hockey arena which includes the complex's entrance and an IMAX theatre. The snowflake buildings are connected by a rock tunnel, which passes through a billion-year-old geologic fault. This fault line was not known to be under the complex when the site was originally selected, and was discovered only during the construction of the building in the early 1980s. Where the walkway reaches the larger snowflake, the Vale Cavern auditorium is frequently used for temporary exhibits, press conferences, and other gala events by Science North and the wider community.

Inside the main building, a 20-metre fin whale skeleton, recovered from Anticosti Island, hangs from the ceiling.

The complex also features a boat tour, the William Ramsey, which offers touring cruises of the scenic Ramsey Lake. The Jim Gordon Boardwalk also extends from the facility to the city's Bell Park along the western shore of the lake.

The facility was designed by architect Raymond Moriyama, one of the founding partners of Moriyama & Teshima Architects, based in Toronto.

An agency of the provincial government of Ontario, Science North is overseen by the provincial Ministry of Culture.^[1]

Park in Sudbury, Ontario. Bell Park is a large municipal park in Greater Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, located on the western shore of Ramsey Lake.

The park is named for William J. Bell, an early lumber baron in the city whose former Belrock mansion is also the site of the Art Gallery of Sudbury. The park site is part of his estate land, donated to the city by him upon his death. Two former mayors of the city are also honoured in the park grounds: the park's amphitheatre is named for Grace Hartman, and a boardwalk connecting the park to the nearby Science North site along the Ramsey Lake shoreline is named in honour of Jim Gordon.

The park has an amphitheatre, two gazebos, several flowerbeds, a monumental sculpture commemorating the city's mining heritage, a main beach (with lifeguard supervision in the summertime) and canteen, a children's playground area, washrooms at two locations in the park, and ample parking for visitors.

The park has been the site of many cultural events in the city, including the Northern Lights Festival Boréal, the Sudbury Summerfest, the city's annual dragonboat races and a summer concert series. The Bell Park Gazebo Concert Series showcases the talent of local performers in a summer concert series held at the gazebo, and is free of charge.

In 2015, the beach at Bell Park was awarded Blue Flag beach certification by the international Foundation for Environmental Education.^[4]

Arena in Sudbury, Ontario. The Sudbury Community Arena is a multi-purpose arena in the downtown core of Greater Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. It was built in 1951, on the site of the former Central Public School, at a cost of $700,000. The approval and construction of the arena was overseen by Sudbury Mayor Bill Beaton. It is home to the Sudbury Wolves of the Ontario Hockey League.

It has an ice surface of 200' x 85', with a capacity of 4,640 seated, 5,100 standing and is wheelchair accessible.

During the summer of 2007, the arena underwent extensive renovations, which added 12 private boxes and a new club seating section, with padded seats and refreshments services along with new washrooms, concession stand and lounge. Seating was sacrificed to make way for the improvements. Standing room capacity was shrunk from 1,000 to 500, while seating capacity was dropped by 150. The new arena capacity, with standing room patrons, became 5,100, down from 5,750.

On November 5, 2015, a life size statue of Stompin' Tom Connors was unveiled on the grounds of the arena. The reason behind the statue was due to one of Connors' most famous songs, Sudbury Saturday Night.^[5]

The Inco Superstack in Sudbury, Ontario, with a height of 381 metres, is the tallest chimney in Canada and the Western hemisphere, and the second tallest freestanding chimney in the world after the GRES-2 Power Station in Kazakhstan. It is also the second tallest freestanding structure of any type in Canada, behind the CN Tower but ahead of First Canadian Place. It is the 51st tallest freestanding structure in the world. The Superstack is located on top of the largest nickel smelting operation in the world at Vale's Copper Cliff processing facility in the city of Greater Sudbury.

In 2018, Vale announced that the stack would be decommissioned and dismantled beginning in 2020. Two new, smaller stacks were constructed under the company's Clean Atmospheric Emissions Reduction Project. In July 2020, Vale announced that the Superstack had been officially taken out of service, but would remain operational in standby mode for two more months as a backup in the event of a malfunction in the new system, following which the dismantling of the Superstack would begin. As of August 2021, however, Vale has not yet announced the awarding of a demolition contract on the Superstack, and it remains unknown when demolition will actually begin.

In addition to further reducing sulphur dioxide emissions by 85 per cent, the decommissioning of the stack is expected to cut the complex's natural gas consumption in half.^[6]

City government office in Sudbury, Ontario. Tom Davies Square is the city hall of Greater Sudbury, Ontario.

Built in the late 1970s and originally known as Civic Square or 'Place-Civique' in French, the building was part of an urban renewal movement toward transforming the city's visual image by investing in modern architecture. The square consists of a triangular main building with its right angle facing the corner of Brady and Paris Streets and a glass-walled hypoteneuse facing onto an outdoor plaza in the centre of the complex. This building contains the city hall proper, its administrative offices and the city council chambers. A diamond-shaped second building located to the west once contained the Sudbury Public School Board and the Sudbury Public Library's Archives branch. It now houses the headquarters of the Greater Sudbury Police Service. Another similar shaped but taller building housing provincial government offices was added to the northeast corner of the site several years later. Completing the square is a fourth building in similar materials, built in a rectangular shape with modern colonnade breezeway, housing Bell Canada offices.

The complex was designed by the local architecture firm Townend, Stefura, Baleshta and Nicholls, with the lead architects being Arthur Townend and John Stefura.

Prior to the completion of the current facility, the former city hall was so overcrowded that the civic administration was operating out of several different downtown office buildings, and council meetings had to be held in the auditorium of the Sudbury Public Library's Mackenzie branch.

The facility was renamed in 1997 in honour of Tom Davies, the retiring chairman of the Regional Municipality of Sudbury.

In 2017, Greater Sudbury City Council began accepting bids for a construction project to redesign the complex's central plaza, although all bids received came in significantly higher than the city had budgeted for the project. The city allocated the additional funding necessary, and the project was completed in 2019.^[7]

Lake in Ontario, Canada. Ramsey Lake is a lake in Sudbury, Ontario, located near the city's downtown core. Until 2001, Ramsey Lake was listed by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's largest lake located entirely within the boundaries of a single city, but when the Regional Municipality of Sudbury was amalgamated into the current city of Greater Sudbury, Ramsey Lake lost this status to the larger Lake Wanapitei, approximately 20 kilometres to the northeast.

"Ramsey" is the correct spelling of the lake's name, although some sources refer to it as "Ramsay"; different sources give the lake's name in both the "Lake Ramsey" and "Ramsey Lake" forms. Prior to the establishment of the modern city of Sudbury, the lake was known to the local Ojibwe population as Bitimagamasing, or "water that lies on the side of the hill".

Science North is located on the southwest corner of the lake, and offers the William Ramsey boat tour, formerly the Cortina, of the lake several times daily during the summer. The city's Bell Park is also located nearby, and the Jim Gordon Boardwalk connects the two sites along the lakeshore. Laurentian University is also located near the lake's southern shore. Residential neighbourhoods immediately south of the lake are among the wealthiest in the city. On the eastern end of the lake, Moonlight Beach is a popular recreational facility, and the Lake Laurentian Conservation Area is a large wilderness park which offers both recreational and environmental education programs.^[9]