In the  Part 1 blog of “Honesty Pays Off” In the following linkhttps://genealogyensemble.com/2024/05/15/honesty-pays-off/we learned of the first leg of my father’s trip to Finland in 1934. He sailed aboard the Empress of Britain and spent some time in London before embarking on the second half of his journey to Petsamo Finland where he was instrumental in opening a nickel mine.

Once Mond Nickel had prepared all the necessary documents, my   Dad set out from London to Helsinki, Finland, It would take two days by car, ferry, and train to reach Helsinki (where he most likely arrived at the station in the capital city of Finland.

From Helsinki he headed to north through Lapland to the Petsamo area with numerous stops along the way. He took many photographs of the people he met and with engineers and workersthose who were involved in searching for the site to develop the mine, as noted in this photographic collection.

All the photographs in this blog were taken by Dad.

A page from Dad’s passport

Dad spent the entire summer of 1934 in northern Finland. In early September having accomplished the task set by Mond Nickel: that of opening a nickel mine in Petsamo. He then returned home to Canada.

The trip to England and Finland was the first of his many overseas trips. In some ways it may perhaps be the most important one of his forty year career as a mining engineer. (1930-1970)

Important Facts About Petsamo and the Nickel Industry in relation to Finland as noted in Wikipedia

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Nickel had been discovered in 1921. In the 1930s Inco had invested several million dollars developing valuable nickel deposits in the Petsamo district of northern Finland. In 1934 the Finnish government awarded the mining rights to the British Mond Nickel Co , then a subsidiary of International Nickel ( Inco) that founded Petsamo. Nickel became commercially available in 1935.

 “Petsamo nickel mine was the second biggest in the world.”

During WW2  (1941-1944 )the area of Petsamo was used for attacking Murmansk and then captured by the Red Army in 1944. In 1947 after the Paris Peace Treaty the area was incorporated into the Soviet Union and became known as Pechanga, As a result of this agreement Finland no longer had access to the Barents Sea, a body of water that did not freeze in wintertime. A huge loss for Finland.