https://www.canadianminingjournal.com/
Gilbert LaBine is one of the most celebrated heroes in Canada’s mining history. He began his career prospecting around Cobalt, the Porcupine and Kirkland Lake, but his success was limited. Everything changed, however, when LaBine found pitchblende near Great Bear Lake in 1930, a discovery that cemented his legend as a plucky explorer, willing to brave the harshest northern environments to strike paydirt.
LaBine created a company, Eldorado Mines, to develop extremely valuable radium mines at Cameron Bay (later re-named Port Radium). This first mining development in the Northwest Territories (NWT) created a huge amount of excitement within the government and the industry about the potential of mining north of the sixtieth parallel.
The Port Radium development even attracted attention from the Group of Seven’s painter, A.Y. Jackson, in 1938, whose images of the mines celebrated the melding of technology and nature in the northern wilderness. In 1950, Labine’s other company — Gunnar Gold Mines — discovered a huge uranium deposit in northern Saskatchewan, launching what remains Canada’s most important uranium producing region.
For the rest of this article: https://www.canadianminingjournal.com/featured-article/port-radium-and-the-atomic-highway/