Canadian Mining History – Page 14

BNN’s Andrew Bell Interviews Franco-Nevada’s Pierre Lassonde (Business Network News – September 30, 2016)

October 1, 2016September 30, 2016

http://www.bnn.ca/

Franco-Nevada chairman calls Inco takeover ‘an unmitigated disaster,’ 10 years on

This week, we’ve been marking the 10-year anniversary of Inco agreeing to a takeover by Brazil’s Vale. Along with the sale of Falconbridge to Xstrata of Switzerland shortly before, the deal saw the biggest mines in Ontario’s rich Sudbury basin pass into foreign hands.

One of the elder statesmen of Canadian mining told BNN that allowing the sale of the two nickel producers to non-Canadian buyers a decade ago was “a huge political mistake, to let two giant Canadian companies go.”

Pierre Lassonde, chairman of royalty and streaming player Franco-Nevada (FNV.TO 1.56%), said “Australia would have never done that. They would never have let BHP (BHP.N), for example, go. With that, the head office left and the jobs and the research…. I think it has been an unmitigated disaster.”

BNN’s Andrew Bell interviews Scott Hand on Inco, 10 years later (Business Network News – September 29, 2016)

October 7, 2016September 29, 2016

http://www.bnn.ca/commodities

Scott Hand, chairman of RNC Minerals, was CEO of nickel giant Inco when the Canadian miner was taken over by Vale in 2006. Inco’s failure to merge with rival Falconbridge had already shattered dreams of creating a Canadian mining colossus. The former Inco chief recalls the lack of government support for that made-in-Canada solution, and contrasts the case to the blocking of a PotashCorp takeover in 2010.

We were joined on our Commodities show today by former Inco CEO Scott Hand, who looked back 10 years to 2006 when the nickel miner agreed to a takeover by Brazil’s Vale. That came just weeks after Falconbridge, Inco’s fellow Canadian nickel giant, was taken over by Xstrata.

Yes, Hand told us, many Canadians were worried to see control of the lavishly endowed Sudbury, Ontario mineral basin go into foreign hands.

Losing Inco and Falconbridge: Ontario could have acted – BNN Andrew Bell Interviews Mining Analyst Ray Goldie (BNN News – September 23, 2016)

September 30, 2016September 27, 2016

http://www.bnn.ca/commodities/ Ten years ago, Canadian mining giants Inco and Falconbridge went into foreign hands. Independent mining analyst Ray Goldie, author of the book Inco Comes to Labrador, says Ontario could have done more to keep the head offices in this country.

[British Columbia gold rush] 1858: How a violent year created a province – by Justine Hunter (Globe and Mail – November 18, 2008)

September 26, 2016

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/

On a Sunday late in April of 1858, the governor of Vancouver Island stepped out of church in Fort Victoria and learned that the gold rush was on. The U.S. steamer Commodore had just arrived in the harbour from San Francisco, delivering 450 passengers bound for the Fraser Canyon.

The miners were driven by a “mania for gold” and soon would find themselves at war with local native populations, and confronting the will of a scheming politician with great ambitions for the wild and lawless territory that is now the mainland of British Columbia.

“It will require I fear the nicest tact to avoid a disastrous Indian war,” the governor, James Douglas, warned his political masters in London in a June 15 dispatch. By the time the letter arrived, U.S.-based militias were already charging through the Fraser Canyon, intent on killing every Indian they could find.

The hollowing out of Canadian mining: Vale’s takeover of Inco, 10 years on – by Andrew Bell (Business Network News – September 23, 2016)

September 23, 2016September 23, 2016

http://www.bnn.ca/

Ten years ago this Saturday, a global mining gem slipped out of Canadian fingers. In 2006, Canadian nickel miner Inco agreed to be bought by Brazil’s Vale in a $19-billion takeover. The announcement of the acquisition came just weeks after fellow nickel giant Falconbridge was acquired by Xstrata of Switzerland (now part of Glencore) in an $18-billion deal. The previous year, Falconbridge had combined with another Canadian mineral giant, Noranda.

The Inco sale “further undermines Canada’s status as a force in the mining industry,” the New York Times proclaimed at the time of the acquisition.

The two takeovers rankled because both Inco and Falconbridge sat atop a mineral lode in in Sudbury, Ont., which is among one of the greatest deposits on Earth. Vale itself calls the northern Ontario city “the mining capital of the world,” adding that its operations there “are among our largest on the planet, employing approximately 4,000 people.”

New video to celebrate ‘Sudbury Saturday Night’ (Sudbury Star – September 20, 2016)

September 22, 2016

http://www.thesudburystar.com/

Stompin’ Tom Connors and Sudbury have always had a special affiliation thanks to the Canadian Music icon’s famous song “Sudbury Saturday Night”. On Saturday, Sudburians will have the chance to thank Stompin’ Tom Connors for his music and help create a professionally produced music video for the legendary song, “Sudbury Saturday Night.”

The music video will be shot on Grey Street, outside of The Townehouse Tavern (on the lower roof level), the location where Stompin’ Tom wrote and first performed his legendary song about our hometown.

“Sudbury Celebrates Stompin’ Tom” is a joint effort between The Townehouse Tavern, Downtown Sudbury and local businessman Colin Firth. Collectively, the group’s members believe it is time that Sudbury got together to celebrate Stompin’ Tom Connors to say thanks to the legendary Canadian icon by singing his famous song “Sudbury Saturday Night.”

Excerpt from Sun Dogs and Yellowcake: Gunnar Mines – A Canadian Story – by Patricia Sandberg

September 20, 2016

To order a copy of Sun Dogs and Yellowcake: Gunnar Mines – A Canadian Story, click here: http://patriciasandberg.com/purchase-book/

Patricia Sandberg was formerly a partner at DuMoulin Black, a Vancouver law firm acting for mining companies listed on Canadian and international stock exchanges. Her clients had mining operations in Canada, the United States, China, and Latin America. Three generations of her family, including Patricia as a child, lived at Gunnar and her grandfather spent thirty years working at mines run by Gilbert LaBine, Canada’s “Father of Uranium.”

Shooting the Elephant

Re-enter Gilbert LaBine, some twenty years after his radium score and now sixty-two years old. LaBine, in his nominal positions as president and director of Eldorado, was well informed about Eldorado’s moves in the Beaverlodge area. He was also not averse to conducting a little business of his own.

His first foray was with a highly competent, experienced pilot named John “Johnny” Nesbitt, who had spent his life flying in Canada’s north country, including for Eldorado and its Great Bear Lake operations. When Eldorado switched its focus to Lake Athabasca, Nesbitt added the Beaverlodge operation to his flight path.

Inco’s Sudbury Nickel Mines Were Critical During World War Two – by Stan Sudol

September 18, 2016

Nickel Was the Most Strategic Metal

By anyone’s estimation, the highlight of Sudbury’s social calendar in 1939 was the visit of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth on June 5th, accompanied by Prime Minister Mackenzie King and a host of local dignitaries. This was the first time a reigning British monarch had ever visited Canada, let alone Sudbury, a testimony to the growing importance of the region’s vital nickel mines. The nickel operations in the Sudbury Basin were booming due to growing global tensions and increased spending on military budgets. Sudbury and the northeastern Ontario gold mining centres of Timmins and Kirkland Lake were among the few economic bright spots in a country devastated by the Great Depression.

In an April 15, 1938 article, Maclean’s Magazine journalist Leslie McFarlane described the three mining communities as, “Northern Ontario’s glittering triangle….No communities in all of Canada are busier, none more prosperous. The same golden light shines on each.”

During the royal visit, precedence was broken by allowing Queen Elizabeth the first female ever to go underground at the Frood Mine. Traditionally miners thought women would bring bad luck if they were permitted underground. There were probably many who thought the beginning of the Second World War on September 1, 1939 was the result of her subterranean visit.

[Gilbert Labine, Eldorado Mine] Treasure Under the Arctic’s Rim – by Leslie Roberts (MACLEAN’S Magazine – July 15, 1936)

September 15, 2016

http://www.macleans.ca/

Men said Great Bear Lake mineral wealth was too far north to be developed — Now men fly that wealth to market

THEY CALLED it a madman’s pipedream. possibility They said that anyone who believed in the possibility of producing minerals 1,500 miles north of the most northerly transcontinental steel, ought to consult an alienist.

That was when the boys started prospecting the rim of the Arctic. Even when Gilbert Labine, hard-headed visionary, and E. C. St. Paul, his partner, discovered pitchblende on the shores of Great Bear Lake, May 16, 1930, the Jeremiahs continued to wail.

What was the use? You couldn’t get your machinery in and you couldn’t get your ore out. Fly it out? Faugh, the man is mad. That was in 1930.

Visualize now the shores of Great Bear Lake in 1936. Where Labine discovered radium-bearing rock in 1930, a modern mining plant is in constant operation. Shafts have been thrust down to depth. A concentrating plant capable of handling 100 tons of rock a day has been installed and is running full blast. A hundred men are permanently employed.

[PORT RADIUM’S ELDORADO] THE MINE THAT SHOOK THE WORLD – by Ronald A. Keith (MACLEAN’S Magazine – November 15, 1945)

September 14, 2016

http://www.macleans.ca/

A vivid first-hand report on Eldorado, the supersecret mine in the Arctic, which produces the raw material for atomic bombs

IT WAS cold and wet and eternally midnight. Our helmet lamps were bleared with rock dust as they flickered along the cavern walls, tracing bright patterns of ore stain against the black velvet of the perpetual darkness. The icy breath of ventilating air reminded us that this was no ordinary hard-rock mine but a cave under the floor of Great Bear Lake, within 26 miles of the Arctic Circle.

Our oilskins were beaded with moisture; everywhere was the drip of seepage, the silent flow of water underfoot, the trickle of subterranean streams and the clean cool smell of wet rock. Suddenly, our tunnel halted against a rugged face of pre-Cambrian rock. There, jet-black and glistening in the torchlight, was a broad vein of ore. “That” said Joe Belec, “is it!”

We stood there in the Eldorado mine, 1,000 ft. below the surface of the largest subarctic lake in the world, and gazed thoughtfully at what might have been a seam of coal, but what we knew to be the black magic of pitchblende, the source of uranium, the earth-quaking substance of atomic power.

‘A very particular time and place in Canada’s history’: New book recalls Saskatchewan’s forgotten uranium mine – by Alex MacPherson (Saskatoon StarPhoenix – September 12, 2016)

September 13, 2016

http://thestarphoenix.com/

Almost nothing is left of the Gunnar uranium mine. What didn’t decay after the mine on the north shore of Lake Athabasca was abandoned more than five decades ago was later hauled away as part of a massive — and massively over-budget — cleanup operation. Patricia Sandberg, whose father and grandfather worked for Gunnar Mining Ltd., and who spent eight years of her childhood at the northern Saskatchewan mine, worries it will be forgotten altogether.

“It is a part of Canadian history that most people don’t know about, and I think it’s really important,” said Sandberg, whose new book, Sun Dogs and Yellowcake, chronicles the mine’s history and records the stories of the people who lived and worked there.

The Gunnar uranium mine, located about 800 kilometres north of Saskatoon, was discovered by prospectors working for Gilbert LaBine, the Ontario-born explorer who is widely considered the father of Canada’s uranium industry.

ELLIOT LAKE’S GLAMOROUS RISE AND BITTER FALL – by McKenzie Porter (MACLEAN’S Magazine – July 16, 1960)

September 2, 2016

http://www.macleans.ca/

This is a candid portrait of the hundred-million-dollar boom town that was built on uranium—the mineral with sex appeal— and of the mesmerized thousands who learned the hard way that it was just another mining camp after all

ELLIOT LAKE IS the most elaborate mining camp ever built, and until recently it was the luckiest. Although it is buried in the northern Ontario bush, half way between Sudbury and Sault Ste. Marie, it looks like a metropolitan suburb.

Moose, bears and wolves peep nervously down from majestic heights of rock and pine upon a hundred million dollars’ worth of fluorescent lights, crescent streets, split-level homes, three – story apartment blocks, cantilevered shopping plazas, breeze-way schools, wide-screen movie theatres, picture-window hotels, functional churches, a lakeshore community centre and the finest hospital north of Lake Huron.

Ed Gibbons, a former editor of the Elliot Lake Standard, once described the town as “a frontier monument to the architectural theories of Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright,” and he spoke more in wonder than in jest.

[Timmins Legendary Hollinger Mine] Burrowing for a Billion – by James A. Cowan (MACLEAN’S – June 15, 1927)

September 1, 2016

http://www.macleans.ca/

Hollinger is more than a billion’dollar gold mine: it is an astonishing augury of what our Canadian brains and courage can accomplish

HOLLINGER, in Northern Ontario, is North America’s greatest gold mine. No one can dispute this, even for the sake of argument, since there can be no argument about it.

In the contest for the title of ‘the greatest gold mine the world has ever seen’, the race has now narrowed down to an all-British affair between Canada and South Africa, and Hollinger, leading the Canadian entries, is the favorite. Working at top speed, it produced during 1926, gold worth $13,342,491—more than a million a month.

Benny Hollinger, novice among prospectors, eighteen years ago, stumbled on the outcroppings of one of the greatest known reserves of gold ore, but for the first twelve years of its history, Fortune presided over the activities of Hollinger with a twisted smile.

[Jules Timmins] The Shy Midas Behind Ungava – by McKenzie Porter (MACLEAN’S Magazine – February 1, 1952)

August 30, 2016

http://www.macleans.ca/

Jules Timmins was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and he has since gold-plated it from the fabulous mining ventures he has led. Now he’s the dynamo that’s powering the vast Ungava iron development. Yet even in the town they named for his family, cops and bellboys don’t know his face

TOWARD the end of November last a chunky jut-jawed cigar-toting millionaire called Jules Timmins talked about gold in Noranda, northwestern Quebec, on Sunday; about iron in Montreal on Monday; about steel in Cleveland, Ohio, on Tuesday; about copper in Toronto on Wednesday; about silver back in Montreal on Thursday; and about mining finance in New York on Friday.

[Labrador Iron Trough] The Legacy Of The Rail Lives On, But Could It Be Built Today? – by Donna Yoshimatsu (Canadian Mining Journal – June/July 2009)

August 29, 2016

http://www.canadianminingjournal.com/

History is witness that the people who built the foundation for Canada’s iron ore industry back in 1950 faced near insurmountable odds that would have stymied even the most ambitious industrialist today.

Among the likes of Timmins, Hollinger, Humphrey, movers and shakers of mining empires, sprung generations of entrepreneurs in search of a piece of history, drawn to the biggest railroad building project the continent had seen in half a century — the Quebec North Shore & Labrador Railway (QNS&L).