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Northern Ontario History

Hec McQuarrie’s Wedding [Cobalt History] – by A.E. Alpine (Northern Miner – July 17, 1989)

My father-in-law, “Ole Hec” McQuarrie was a colourful, ebullient hardrock shaftman and nowhere was this more evident than at table No. 7 (Ole Hec’s table) at Albert’s Hotel, Timmins, Ontario.

George Hector McQuarrie was born in Dartmouth Nova Scotia, was orphaned at an early age and raised by a doting aunt. He was educated in private school where he excelled in mathematics. Things went smoothly until the summer he turned 18 and got a job in a gold mine in Moose River Nova Scotia. He liked mining and would not return to school. By 19 he was working in the shaft.

Cobalt was the hot spot in mining then so Hector said goodbye to Moose River and headed to silver. He started in a shaft being sunk by the well-known shaft contractor Foghorn MacDonald and it wasn’t long before he was leading a shift. When Foghorn was awarded the contract to sink the shafts and do the connecting work for the world famous compressed air plant at Ragged Chutes, he named Hec as leader of the “Nova Scotian” unit. Foghorn always kept the Cape Breton ex-coal miners on one shift and the Nova Scotian “herring chokers” on another shift to avoid dissension (and broken heads).

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Along the Blacktop of Riches: The Abitibi-Greenstone Belt – by Charlie Angus (1999)

Excerpt from Industrial Cathedrals of the North written by Charlie Angus and photographed by Louie Palu (1999)

To order a copy of Industrial Cathedrals of the North, please go to Between the Lines press.

Take a drive along the blacktop as Highway 66 turns into 117 and you’ll be taking a drive over one of the richest geological treasures in the world. The highway forms the lower part of a belt of riches known as the Abitibi-Greenstone belt. Over 140 million ounces of gold have been mined from the belt, a feat unparalleled anywhere except in the gold fields of South Africa. The belt is made up of two parallel fault lines running east-west from Ontario into Quebec. The northern edge of the belt – the Porcupine-Destor Fault – runs from the Porcupine along Highway 101 to Destor, Quebec, while the lower fault – the Larder-Cadillac Break – runs from Matachewan, Ontario along 66 towards Val d’Or, Quebec. The fault lines have been the source of some of Canada’s biggest gold mines. The ground between the faults is host to numerous base metal deposits.

The Larder-Cadillac Break is as much a social line as it is a geological formation. The fault runs straight through the heart of many historic gold camps: Matachewan, Kirkland Lake, Larder Lake, V-Town, Rouyn-Noranda, McWatters, Cadillac, Malarctic and Val d’Or. The Abitibi-Greenstone belt has created a natural east-west link across the two provinces. Communities along the fault lines share common links of history, work and identity. Indeed the whole opening up of Northwestern Quebec to mining is a direct result of the movement of prospectors and miners along the lines of the Abitibi-Greenstone belt.

Prospector Ed Horne played a pivotal role in this early development. Before the first World War he was prospecting in Gowganda, Kirkland Lake and the Porcupine. He then moved along the westerly axis from the Kirkland-Larder camps into the Lake Osisko region of Rouyn Township, Quebec.

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[Great Porcupine Fire] Timmins Pioneers share deadly 1911 fire tales – by Karen Bachmann (Timmins Daily Press – July 9, 2011)

The Daily Press is the newspaper of record for the city of Timmins. Karen Bachmann is the director/curator of the Timmins Museum and a local author.

Ceremony at Deadman’s Point on Monday will commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Great Porcupine Fire

I could recount the history of the Porcupine Fire for you today, but I have chosen not to do so. Why hear it from me, when you can hear what it was like from the people who actually survived that fateful day.

Thanks to the early work of the Porcupine Camp Historical Society, we have wonderful recordings of our early pioneers, and their memories of what life was like in the Porcupine.

So, today, I keep my ideas to myself, and I’ll let those in the know tell you about the Great Porcupine Fire of 1911. Elizabeth Pearl Heath was a survivor that day. She was a young married woman in July 1911.

“The fire did bear down on us speedily and with fury. I made sure that my billfold was in my patchpocket of my skirt, threw my knapsack and a light blanket over my shoulder and struck out for the lake.

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Master Plan To Destroy Northern Ontario – by Gregory Reynolds (Highgrader Magazine – Summer 2011)

This column was originally published in the Late Summer, 2011 issue of Highgrader Magazine which is committed to serve the interests of northerners by bringing the issues, concerns and culture of the north to the world through the writings and art of award-winning journalists as well as talented freelance artists, writers and photographers.

The recent annual meeting of Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities (FONOM) heard a great deal of comment, and concern, expressed about the Ontario government’s love affair with Greater Sudbury and Thunder Bay. Speakers claimed these two cities appear to be favoured when the Liberal government of Dalton McGuinty doles out assistance to the North.

That the two largest centres are special, even privileged, should not have been a surprise to those in attendance.

Members of Timmins city council should have been least surprised since famous prospector, and equally famous outspoken advocate for Northern Ontario, Don McKinnon presented each of them with two documents in 2004: The Master Plan to Destroy Northern Ontario; and Addendum to The Master Plan to Destroy Northern Ontario.

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HISTORY: Porcupine Camp ablaze [The Great Fire of 1911] – by Karen Bachmann (The Daily Press – June 30, 2011)

The Daily Press is the newspaper of record for the city of Timmins. Karen Bachmann is the director/curator of the Timmins Museum and a local author.

As local milestones go, next week will mark a very important one for the Porcupine Goldfields. July 11, 2011 will mark the 100th anniversary of the Great Porcupine Fire of 1911. Environment Canada described this event as one of the five greatest Canadian fire disasters. Its magnitude and severity shaped the early mining communities and truly tested the rugged pioneers.

Just barely two years into its existence, the small towns that had sprung up around the mining camps were annihilated by a huge forest fire. It is because of the determination of those early people (and let’s face it – the lure of untold riches from the gold in the area) that we are still here today.

It didn’t take long for the world to learn about the tragedy. A number of Canadian and American newspapers were quick to file stories. Some of these first-hand accounts give us a glimpse into that fateful day and graphically describe how events unfolded.

The Globe (Toronto) sets the tone with this article printed on July 12, 1911:

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Don McKinnon Dreams of a Deep Sea Port in Moosonee for Northern Prosperity – by Gregory Reynolds (Highgrader Magazine – Fall, 2005)

This article was originally published in the Fall, 2005 issue of Highgrader Magazine . Highgrader is committed to serve the interests of northerners by bringing the issues, concerns and culture of the north to the world through the writings and art of award-winning journalists as well as talented freelance artists, writers and photographers.

Don McKinnon, a man with a vision. 45 years ago the Ontario government ordered a study on the viability of a northern port. Naturally, it has been put on the shelf. Now Don McKinnon explains why a sea port some 28 kms form Moosonee would rejuvenate the North’s economic viability for decades to come.

Northern Ontario was opened up as the result of the dream of politicians who wanted to secure it for future generations. The major communities were born as a result of men with dreams refusing to accept defeat and pursuing their ambitions beyond the bounds of logic. Iroquois Falls today is the result of entrepreneur Frank Anson’s vision. He established a mill, which, at one time was the largest pulp and paper mill on the continent.

His imagination was sparked by the reports about timber possibilities written by two students he had grubstaked in 1909 to seek gold. Anson then went north to access the potential of the frontier. Who would believe the ramifications of this man’s dream would result in the development of a modern community?

In 1910, Anson investigated the site and lumber properties. Two years later, Anson sent several experts to the Iroquois Falls mill site. Anson’s dream of creating the Abitibi Pulp and Paper Company Limited became known as ‘Anson’s Folly’ but he refused to give up.

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Inco Limited History (1902- 2001) – by International Directory of Company Histories

For a large selection of corporate histories click: International Directory of Company Histories

Company History:

Inco Limited is one of the world’s top producers of nickel. It operates Canada’s largest mining and processing operation in Sudbury, Ontario, and runs other mines in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Indonesia. It has interests in refineries in Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, and sales and operations in over 40 countries worldwide. Overall Inco provides about 25 percent of the nickel used globally. The company also produces cobalt, copper, precious metals, and specialty nickel products.

Early Years

Nickel was first isolated as an element in the middle of the 18th century, but not until the following century did it come into demand as a coin metal. Up to around 1890, coining remained the metal’s only use, and most of the world’s nickel was mined by Le Nickel, a Rothschild company, on the island of New Caledonia. At that time, however, it was determined that steel made from an iron-nickel alloy could be rolled into exceptionally hard plates, called armor plate, for warships, tanks, and other military vehicles, and the resulting surge in demand spurred a worldwide search for nickel deposits.

The world’s largest nickel deposit ever discovered was in Ontario’s Sudbury Basin; before long, one of the area’s big copper mining companies, Canadian Copper, began shipping quantities of nickel to a U.S. refinery in Bayonne, New Jersey, the Orford Copper Company.

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Stolen beer and other tales from Timmins pioneer times – by Karen Bachmann (The Daily Press – June 10, 2011)

The Daily Press is the newspaper of record for the city of Timmins. Karen Bachmann is the director/curator of the Timmins Museum and a local author.

HISTORY: Jack Andrews shares stories from working at well-known stopping place along the famous Porcupine Trail

Jack Andrews was an early pioneer in the Porcupine Camp whose story was collected by Magne Stortroen and the Porcupine Camp Historical Society.

Andrews was born in Renfrew County in 1885 and came to work firstly in Englehart in 1907. He ventured north to Cochrane in 1910 but, seeing “nothing to suit me,” he went back to Kelso and worked for J.B. Crawford and Alfred Reamsbottom. In our third and final installment of oral histories, Jack Andrews recounts what it was like to work at a “stopping place” along the famous Porcupine Trail.

“We were in a favourable spot because we were just half-way between Kelso and Porcupine. And we got a lot of trade on that account. The train used to stop at Kelso in the evening and the stages would load up and start to Porcupine.

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Cold War relic [in Northern Ontario] ‘Site 500’ gets costly cleanup – by Steve Ladurantaye (Globe and Mail – May 27, 2011)

 The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous impact and influence on Canada’s political and business elite as well as the rest of the country’s print, radio and television media.

Six decades after the radar operators gave up their search for Russian bombers streaking across the Northern Ontario sky, a massive cleanup effort will finally begin to erase a ghost town that was very briefly one of Canada’s most important military installations.

The town doesn’t even have a formal name – military documents simply refer to it as Site 500. It was the operations centre for the Ontario portion of the Mid Canada Line Radar installation, a network of 17 sites built as part of a national network in the 1950s to monitor the skies for foreign invaders.

Site 500 is now at the centre of the largest environmental remediation project ever undertaken in Ontario. Its scale is dwarfed only by the national cleanup of the Distant Early Warning radar line – a more northern string of radar installations that the federal government has already spent half a billion dollars cleaning.

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Life in Kirkland Lake during World War II – by Michael Barnes

The following is an excerpt from Michael Barnes’ new book: Gold in Kirkland Lake, published by General Store Publishing House, and available for $29.95. Contact the author at www.barnes4books.com.

After the war in Europe commenced, the bright spot in Ontario’s Kirkland Lake gold camp area was the Kerr Addison mine in Virginiatown, which by 1941 was able to ramp up milling to 1,200 tons per day.

Over at Larder Lake, the Omega mine payroll had not raised much over the past few years, with muckers and labourers earning $4.64 a day and track and lamp men $5.20, while the main official in charge underground, the mine captain, took top dollar at $8.70.

On the surface, Kirkland Lake was busy and in good economic health. The town’s population had now dropped to 21,500 and seen 1,600 men go to serve their country in the armed forces, and some miners had left to work in war-related industries.

In the patriotic fervour that gained strength after the declaration of war, there was a move by some southern-based citizens to change the name of Swastika to what they thought would be a more politically acceptable “Winston,” honouring the wartime British leader.

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Governments should fund railroad to Ontario’s Ring of Fire mining camp – by Stan Sudol

Temiskaming & Northern Ontario Railway at the turn of the last century

This column was published in the March 17, 2011 issue of Northern Life.

Stan Sudol is a Toronto-based communications consultant who writes extensively on mining issues. stan.sudol@republicofmining.com

For an extensive list of articles on this mineral discovery, please go to: Ontario’s Ring of Fire Mineral Discovery

“In the next 25 years, demand for metals could meet or exceed what we have used
since the beginning of the industrial revolution. By way of illustration, China needs to
build three cities larger than Sydney or Toronto every year until 2030 to accommodate
rural to urban growth.” (John McGagh, Rio Tinto – Head of Innovation)

Commodity Super Cycle is Back

The commodity super cycle is back, and with a vengeance. China, India, Brazil, Indonesia and many other developing economies are continuing their rapid pace of industrialization and urbanization. In 2010, China overtook Japan to become the world’s second largest economy and surpassed the United States to become the biggest producer of cars.

During a recent speech in Calgary, Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of Canada remarked, “Commodity markets are in the midst of a supercycle. …Rapid urbanization underpins this growth. Since 1990, the number of people living in cities in China and India has risen by nearly 500 million, the equivalent of housing the entire population of Canada 15 times over. …Even though history teaches that all booms are finite, this one could go on for some time.”

At the annual economics conference in Davos, Switzerland, held last January – where the most respected world leaders in politics, economics and academia gather – the consensus was one of enormous global prosperity predicting that, “For only the third time since the Industrial Revolution, the world may be entering a long-term growth cycle that will lift all economies simultaneously…”

John McGagh, head of innovation, at Rio Tinto – the world’s third largest mining company – has said, “In the next 25 years, demand for metals could meet or exceed what we have used since the beginning of the industrial revolution. By way of illustration, China needs to build three cities larger than Sydney or Toronto every year until 2030 to accommodate rural to urban growth. This equates to the largest migration of population from rural to urban living in the history of mankind.”

The isolated Ring of Fire mining camp, located in the James Bay lowlands of Ontario’s far north, is one of the most exciting and possibly the richest new Canadian mineral discovery made in over a generation. It has been compared to both the Sudbury Basin and the Abitibi Greenstone belt, which includes Timmins, Kirkland Lake, Noranda and Val d’Or.

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For the North from the North [Leo Bernier – Emperor of the North] – Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal Editorial (June 29, 2010)

The Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal is the daily newspaper of Northwestern Ontario. This editorial was published on June 29, 2010.

LEO Bernier was a big man from a little town who emerged as the first home-grown northern politician to genuinely matter in Ontario government. A senior cabinet minister in the sturdy Tory government of Bill Davis, Bernier saw to it that Northern Ontario finally got noticed in provincial affairs. It is his lasting legacy and one that successive governments have maintained, if not always honoured in full.

First elected in 1966 to represent Kenora under John Robarts, he worked to equalize northern services and opportunities with southern standards, but never thought that he had to move south to accomplish it. Born in Sioux Lookout and raised largely in Ear Falls, he settled into Hudson, a town of 600 where the family business became its mainstay. It was there that he continued to live until his death Monday at 81.

Fittingly, Bernier entered politics after a succession of frustrating trips to Queen’s Park lobbying on behalf of his home town. “I always came back from Toronto downhearted,” he told The Chronicle-Journal for a look back at his career in 1999. “I saw the lack of concern and the lack of sympathy for the North.”

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[Viola MacMillian] The Prospector in the Pink Penthouse – by Christina MaCall

This article was originally published in Maclean’s magazine on July 20, 1957.

Viola MacMillan believes “anybody can do anything” and has mink, a mansion, a Miami apartment and mines worth $10,000,000 to prove it

Mining papers credit her with building the Prospectors and Developers
Association from a loosely knit agglomeration of fieldmen and promoters
into a powerful organization representing one of the most important
segments of the mining industry.

The Prospector in the Pink Penthouse

Canada’s sprawling two-billion-dollar mining industry owes its boom to a motley army of men: sleek brokers in big city offices, lonely prospectors in frontier camps, geologists and bush pilots, road builders, professional engineers. But their spokesperson is a women who lives in a pink penthouse, wears a mink coat and buys size ten dresses from Sophie of Saks.

For fourteen years Viola Rita MacMillan has been president of the Prospectors and Developers Association, the largest organization of mining men on the continent, and in that time she has made scores of biting speeches that lash out at anything and everything impeding the development of mining. The sophisticated apartment and the soigné clothes are really only trappings. As she says herself, “I’m a miner. I love this business and I want to stay in it until I die.”

She doesn’t look much like a miner she so proudly calls herself. A small woman, she stands just over five feet tall and weighs little more than a hundred pounds. She has alert cobalt-blue eyes and short dark hair. The most striking thing about Voila MacMillan is the agility and speed of her movements. She darts about so quickly that bigger people sometimes feel almost cumbersome, when they are in her presence.

Mrs. MacMillan often says with firm conviction that Canada’s future greatness depends to a large extent on the growth of the mineral industry. For more than thirty years she has dedicated her unusual energy and persistence to that industry. In returen she has gained both money and prestige.

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Viola MacMillan: From the Ground Up: An Autobiograpy (Afterword) – by Virginia Heffernan (Part 2 of 2)

Virginia Heffernan, principal of GeoPen Communications, is a science and business writer who specializes in writing about mineral and energy resources. She provides research and writing services to both corporate and government clients and is a regular contributor to publications such as Investment Executive, The Northern Miner and Canadian Consulting Engineer. www.geopen.com/

“From the Ground Up” is an autobiography of one of Canada’s most notable mining women Viola MacMillan, best known for her involvement in the infamous Windfall mining scandal of 1964. Although her autobiography presents her side of the controversial story some gaps and context were missing. Virginia Hefferernan’s thorough investigation cleared up many of those gaps and provided much needed context in the “Afterword” final chapter of the autobiography.

Afterword (March 2001)

The frenzy begins

“Some of the drillers started buying stock through their brokers, who would have told their other clients that if the drillers were buying, there must be something in the core. The market activity just blossomed from there, almost regardless of what the MacMillans did,” says Ford. Blossomed is an understatement. On Monday morning, Windfall shares opened at $1.10. Before the market closed at 3:30 PM, 1.57 million shares had changed hands and the price had reached $2. When rumours that the core contained 2.4% copper and 8% zinc surfaced later in the week, the trading accelerated and by the closing bell on July 10th, the price had doubled again to $4. “Such trading removed from the market any semblance of order and reduced it to a scene of uncontrollable speculative frenzy,” observed Justice Arthur Kelly, the judge who presided over the royal commission.

In the absence of any concrete information, the press and brokerage houses latched onto rumour. They became enthusiastic boosters of the Windfall play, fuelling even more optimism in the market. The Northern Miner congratulated the “Mining MacMillans” for taking an intelligent gamble on the Prosser claims and The New York Herald Tribune reported a “major base metal drill core.” Brokers added credence to the rumours by reporting them to investors as fact. “Frustrated by their efforts to get accurate information and feeling under compulsion to provide whatever information was available, (the brokers) gave out such reports as they were able to gather,” concluded Justice Kelly. Just like during the Bre-X mining scandal that was to hit three decades later, the  information mongers whose impartiality is so vital to the investing public were either unable or unwilling to see that the emperor was wearing no clothes.

Throughout this frenzy, the MacMillans kept their lips sealed save for two statements issued to the press on July 7th and again, under orders from the TSE, on July 15th. Both releases were equivocal, saying little more than that the first hole had been stopped at 530 feet, the core had not yet been sent for assay and drilling would continue. The second release read as follows:

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Viola MacMillan: From the Ground Up: An Autobiograpy (Afterword) – by Virginia Heffernan (Part 1 of 2)

Virginia Heffernan, principal of GeoPen Communications, is a science and business writer who specializes in writing about mineral and energy resources. She provides research and writing services to both corporate and government clients and is a regular contributor to publications such as Investment Executive, The Northern Miner and Canadian Consulting Engineer. www.geopen.com/

“From the Ground Up” is an autobiography of one of Canada’s most notable mining women, Viola MacMillan, best known for her involvement in the infamous Windfall mining scandal of 1964. Although her autobiography presents her side of the controversial story some gaps and context were missing. Virginia Hefferernan’s thorough investigation cleared up many of those gaps and provided much needed context in the “Afterword” final chapter of the autobiography.

Afterword (March 2001)

The name Viola MacMillan evokes one of two responses. Those who knew her personally describe a generous and dynamic professional who became the sacrificial lamb of a corrupt Bay Street. Those introduced to her by the press recall a scoundrel who swindled innocent investors out of their savings. Will the real Viola Rita MacMillan please stand up?

If MacMillan were alive today, she would readily rise and state her case, just as she did on the 1960s television program, “To Tell the Truth.” As her memoirs divulge, she was an aggressive personality who rose from humble beginnings to achieve success in the mining industry: Canada’s own Horatio Alger, some would say. Despite her tiny stature – she stood just five feet tall and weighed little more than 100 pounds – she fought her way to the top of a man’s world by sheer force of will and a refusal to take ‘no’ for an answer. “Anybody, regardless of sex or circumstance, can do anything they want to do. All you need is the guts to stick to things,” was her favourite response to queries about the secret of her success.

But she rarely spoke of what became known as the Windfall affair, a mining scandal in the 1960s that triggered a royal commission investigation, exposed weaknesses in the market regulatory system and shamed several high-ranking officials. Even MacMillan’s otherwise detailed autobiography gives scant attention to an event that not only rocked her world, but changed the dynamics of share trading in Canada forever. MacMillan carried a long list of accomplishments to her grave, but her name will always be synonymous with Windfall.

MacMillan and the mining industry were joined at the hip.

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