Michael Winship (left) has his moment with Shania Twain, Timmins’ favourite daughter. Courtesy of Michael Winship
“It was a wintery day, I don’t know if it was January or February but the snow was lightly falling and I get a call from the gate house up in the office and they said, ‘There’s a request by Shania Twain and her film crew from CBS, they want to film a number of her singing on the mine site.’ I said, ‘Well you better put them on the phone and I’m going to do some negotiating here.’ Then I spoke to the producer and I said, ‘Why do you want to film on the mine site?’ He said, ‘We want to have a snowy mountain backdrop for her in this picture.’ Timmins generally is flat as a board but we had a big waste dump of rock and it was covered in snow, so it was like an artificial snow mountain. So I said, ‘Well okay we’re willing to let you do this shoot, on the condition that you’ll let me come down there and meet Shania and have my picture taken with her.’ So I go down in my mining gear and she’s doing her filming and then she came over and introduced herself and she was really friendly and chatty. She grew up in Timmins so that’s why they were filming the special there. So we had our picture taken and she put her arm around me. That was a good moment.”
– Michael Winship, CIM President 2016-2017