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Northern Ontario History

Northern Policy Advice for Ontario’s Next Premier: Hudak or McGuinty? – by Livio Di Matteo

Livio Di Matteo is Professor of Economics at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario.  Visit his new Economics Blog “Northern Economist” at http://ldimatte.shawwebspace.ca/

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

A regional power authority could become a valuable tool for
northern development and provide the cheap electricity for
value-added processing and development necessary for mining
in the Ring of Fire. – Livio Di Matteo (January 17, 2011)

As Ontario heads towards its fall 2011 election, there will inevitably be discussion of what new policies can help drive Northern Ontario’s economy in the 21st century. Historically, economic development in Ontario’s North was a partnership between private sector resource exploitation and a public sector economic strategy to make the north an investment frontier for the south as well as a source of government revenue via the exploitation of natural resources.

Nineteenth century Ontario implemented a northern development scheme that could be termed a “Northern Ontario Policy” that operated parallel to the Federal government’s National Policy. Ontario’s Northern Policy provided a regional program of northern land grants to promote agricultural settlement and the building of the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway and colonization roads to foster access.  As well, there was the passage of the “Manufacturing Condition” which required that timber cut on crown land be processed within the province so as to retain value added as well as provide government revenue.

At its peak, the province of Ontario obtained nearly one quarter of its revenue from northern resources and used it to fund expanding provincial services.  Indeed, in the early part of this century, Ontario’s northern forests and mines were akin to Alberta’s oil today. 

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Battle of the Canadian Gold Rushes: Klondike Versus Northern Ontario – by Stan Sudol

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

The Yukon Klondike

I have a small complaint about Canadian mining history or more importantly, our media coverage of past gold rushes. The Yukon Klondike gold rush of 1896-1899 seems to take all the glory – thanks to writers like Jack London, Robert W. Service and Canadian literary icon, Pierre Berton – while northern Ontario’s four globally significant gold/silver discoveries in the first half of the last century do not get the historical respect they deserve.

The initial Klondike discovery, on August 16, 1896, at a fish camp near the junction of the Yukon and Klondike rivers, is credited to George Carmack and his Tagish Indian brothers-in-law, Skookum Jim Mason and Dawson (Tagish) Charlie. Robert Henderson, a Nova Scotia prospector is credited as a cofounder, since it was on his advice that the discovery was made, however he made no money from the find.

At the height of the rush, Dawson City, the main staging town at the mouth of the Klondike River had a booming population of about 30,000 and was known as the most cosmopolitan city west of Winnipeg and north of Vancouver.  Due to its isolation, all the claims had been staked by the time most people finally arrived. Some of the most memorable photographs from the period show a thin line of thousands of people climbing the legendary Chilkoot Pass – the shortest but most difficult route to the goldfields – bringing the required year’s supply of food and living material.

Fortunes were made and lost in Dawson City’s “rip-roaring” frontier atmosphere where prostitutes were tolerated and nearly everyone was on the lookout for charlatans and con men. Many became rich just supplying services to the stampeders.  In total, about 12.5 million ounces of gold was produced during this short-lived rush that lasted for less than a decade.

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Time For a New Northern Policy in Ontario – by Livio Di Matteo (Part 2 of 2)

Livio Di Matteo is Professor of Economics at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario.  Visit his new Economics Blog “Northern Economist” at http://ldimatte.shawwebspace.ca/ This column was originally published November, 2002.

It is in Ontario’s interest to see the north of the province become economically self-sustaining. A growing north will create economic activity and ultimately tax revenue. – Livio Di Matteo (November, 2002)

Nearly one hundred years after the beginning of its first Northern Policy, Ontario is faced with a need for a New Northern Policy.  The rationale this time is not to open up an investment frontier but to salvage the economic potential of a vast geographic region that suffers from locational disadvantages when it comes to economic activity.  While the north and the northwest are ostensibly at the center of the continent, unfortunately the bulk of the continent’s population with their attendant market demand and job opportunities lie elsewhere. 

Unless policies are put in place to boost economic growth in the north and northwest, these regions are likely to continue their decline and become a drain on the public purse of the province of Ontario.  It is in Ontario’s interest to see the north of the province become economically self-sustaining. A growing north will create economic activity and ultimately tax revenue. Moreover, given the continued growth and congestion in southern Ontario, there are benefits to dispersion of development in terms of the quality of life.

The legs of a New Northern Policy should focus on reducing the region’s locational disadvantages, augmenting its capital infrastructure, deepening its human capital and creating new governance institutions that would assert regional control over local development.

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Time For a New Northern Policy in Ontario – by Livio Di Matteo (Part 1 of 2)

Livio Di Matteo is Professor of Economics at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario.  Visit his new Economics Blog “Northern Economist” at http://ldimatte.shawwebspace.ca/ This column was originally published November, 2002.

Ontario obtained enormous benefits from the exploitation of northern resources and deliberately pursued a policy of resource revenue maximization that was partly responsible for launching the north on a development path that has brought us where we are today. – Livio Di Matteo (November, 2002)

The 2001 census revealed that for the first time, there has been an absolute decline in the population of Northwestern Ontario.  From a peak population of 244,117 attained in 1996, 2001 revealed a decline of 3.8 percent to just over 234,000. This absolute decline came on the heels of decades of relative decline as the population of the Northwest grew more slowly than that of Ontario as a whole.  Given that the population growth of regions is often a key indicator of economic growth, a historical view of the numbers is of some use.
 
Table 1 reveals that from the period 1871 to 1951, the population of Northwestern Ontario grew faster than Ontario as a whole.  As a share of Ontario’s population, the Northwest’s population peaked at about 3.6 percent of that of the Ontario total shortly after World War II and has since declined. During the 1990s, slower population growth rates in the Northwest tipped over into negative growth and we have reached the lowest share of Ontario’s population in 100 years.  We now account for barely two percent of Ontario’s population.  This relative decline has affected northern Ontario as a whole.

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A Northern Province for Ontario? – by Livio Di Matteo (Part 2 of 2)

Originally published in February,1997

Livio Di Matteo is Professor of Economics at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario.  Visit his new Economics Blog “Northern Economist” at http://ldimatte.shawwebspace.ca/

These figures suggest that a province of northern Ontario would be as viable economically as Saskatchewan, Manitoba or any other of the Atlantic provinces and should be able to
generate comparable levels of government expenditure and revenue. – Livio Di Matteo

While the North would definitely have been economically viable as a separate province at the turn of the century, that does not mean it still would be today. Modern northern Ontario has seen a decline in its traditional natural resource and transportation employment base. Since the mid-twentieth century, the north’s economy and population have grown at a much slower rate than the south and the north has possessed a chronically higher unemployment rate. Since the 1960s, the north’s economy has been supported by a substantial expansion of government spending to the point where the broader public sector accounts for nearly one-third of the labour force.  

As well there has been a decline in the importance of natural resource revenues to the Ontario government to the point to where they account for barely one percent of provincial revenue.  Combined with the higher per capita cost of providing government services in the north, the implication is that the last twenty-five years have seen a reversal of the traditional fiscal flows from the north to the south.

Nevertheless, interesting questions are what an economy of northern Ontario would look like in terms of  size and whether it would provide the necessary tax base for our current level of government services. Unfortunately, estimates of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) are not provided on a regional basis. However, using data from the 1991 census, it is possible to construct a crude approximation to the region’s GDP using household income data which yields a regional output of nearly 21 billion dollars. With a population of about 870,000, the economy of northern Ontario would be at the middle ranks of Canada’s provinces. Northern Ontario’s economy would be bigger than any one of the Atlantic provinces, slightly smaller than Manitoba’s and about the same size as Saskatchewan.

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A Northern Province for Ontario? – by Livio Di Matteo (Part 1 of 2)

Originally published in February,1997

Livio Di Matteo is Professor of Economics at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario.  Visit his new Economics Blog “Northern Economist” at http://ldimatte.shawwebspace.ca/

Between 1867 and 1899, the timber industry produced about 28 percent of total provincial revenues. These revenues contributing greatly to the welfare of Ontario citizens. Whereas northern Ontario accounted for at best 10 percent of the province’s population it consistently provided about one quarter of the province’s total revenue. – Livio Di Matteo

There are periodic calls for Northern Ontario to form a separate province, which seem to surface whenever the north feels it is being poorly treated by the provincial government.  The demand for a separate province feeds on the large amount of northern lore regarding the supposedly exploitative nature of the relationship between the north and southern Ontario.  A persistent theme in northern Ontario history is that it served as a natural resource frontier for the economy of the industrialized south by providing resource inputs into southern industry.  Moreover, much importance is attached to the natural resource rents from forests and mines which provided the Ontario government with a large proportion of its tax revenue in the first half of this century.

The case that usually follows is that northerners should have their own province so that the economic benefits from northern resources are retained for northerners.  The failure of the north’s economy to grow at the same rate as the south over the last 30 years, with the subsequent outmigration of youth, is blamed on the absence of provincial status and the ability to control our own economic destiny.  The implicit argument is that the North would be better off economically as a province though there have not been any arguments rooted in economic analysis to evaluate this point.  Moreover, given that the market for natural resources is international in scope, no explanation of how being a separate province might change the terms of trade for northern Ontario resources has been offered.

The best case for a province of northern Ontario rests in the past during the period 1870 to 1920 which was a time of rapid growth on par with the Prairies.  However, the Prairies were federal territories which obtained provincial status while northern Ontario remained part of Ontario. 

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Breakaway Country [Northwestern Ontario] – by Livio Di Matteo

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper. This article was originally published in the Financial Post on September 06, 2006.

Livio Di Matteo is professor of economics at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, and a co-author of a recent paper in Canadian Public Policy dealing with “Mantario.”

How can we empower people in these regions to help solve their own problems rather than wait for a supplicated solution from a pharaoh in a distant capital? In an act of supreme neglect, the Canadian federation has allowed its vital “zone of transit” [Northwestern Ontario] to decline to the point where an errant moose could choke the lifeblood of the nation. – Livio Di Matteo (Sept/06)

The isolated residents of northwestern Ontario are tired of life as a resource extraction colony. One option would be to create a new province – Mantario

The northwestern portion of Ontario, comprising the Districts of Thunder Bay, Kenora and Rainy River, represents 60% of Ontario’s land and an area the size of France. It was an imperial acquisition of the 19th-century when the province viewed itself as “Empire Ontario.”

It is a region rich in natural resources but sparse in population, and yet it is vital to the Canadian federation as an east-west transport corridor for road, ship and rail. Indeed, one can only imagine how different Canadian history might have been had northwestern Ontario become part of Minnesota. While alienation from Southern Ontario has affected all of Northern Ontario, sparking periodic calls to separate, the feeling has become particularly acute in the region stretching from White River to Kenora.

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Thirty-Eight Years of Progress [Timmins History]– by Norman E. Green

A Brief History of the Porcupine District

Hollinger Consolidated Gold Mines Limited: Public Relations Section – Timmins (This document was published between 1947 and 1949.

More than two hundred years before gold was discovered in the Porcupine, a narrow winding trail made its way from Porcupine Lake to the Mattagami River. Indians and Trappers, carrying canoes and heavy packsacks on their backs, crossed this trail many times, intent only on reaching their destination at either end and continuing their journey.

Little did they realize that beneath their feet, in places close enough to be marked by their boots, lay unmeasured wealth, gold which has since played a prominent pat in all phases of the history of our country.

Following the discovery of silver at Cobalt, and the development of that area, interest in the possibility of similar deposits in the Porcupine district was aroused. In 1896, 1898, 1899, 1903, 1905, and 1906, parties of government surveyors working in the district were impressed by the nature of the country and the possibilities it offered. In 1908, Dr. W. A. Parks, of Toronto University, examined the district and in his report stated: “I regard the region south of Porcupine Lake as giving promise to the prospector.”

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Timmins Unhappy With Canadian Hall of Fame Gold Discoverers Exclusions – by Gregory Reynolds

This column was originally published in the Late Summer, 2010 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.

Timmins Owes its Very Existence to Six Men Not Three!

Timmins city clerk Jack Watson says with a note of bitterness in his voice:
“We submitted all six and were upset with the decision. We appealed but lost.”

The community that calls itself The City With a Heart of Gold has every right to the motto because literally the ground beneath it, the heart of Mother Earth, has arteries of gold.

There has been gold production in Timmins continuously since 1910 and it will continue for  many more decades. There is no reason for a thriving modern city to be located in the middle of nowhere; there is no port to support international trade, no junction of railways, no meeting of highways that is a destination point.

Yet, Timmins is in the midst of a four-year celebration of 100 years of history and achievements.

No achievement was greater than the exploits of these six men: Sandy McIntyre, Hans Buttner, Harry Preston, John (Jack) Wilson, Benny Hollinger and Alex Gillies.

They discovered in 1909 the gold deposits that became the Big Three producers in Canadian mining history, the Dome (1910-still in production), the Hollinger (1910-1968) and the McIntyre (1912-1988).

Yet earlier this year the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame inducted just three of the six into its illustrious membership. Wilson and Harry Preston found the gold outcrop that was to become the Dome or as its workers fondly called it, The Big Dome. Only Wilson made into the Hall.

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Michael Barnes Keeps Northern Ontario’s Mining Heritage Alive – by Adelle Larmour

Established in 1980, Northern Ontario Business  provides Canadians and international investors with relevant, current and insightful editorial content and business news information about Ontario’s vibrant and resource-rich North. This article is from the November, 2010 issue.

Chronicled the North’s Facinating History and Folklore

Humility and hard work has kept one Ontario author’s pen to the parchment. 

Michael Barnes, a prolific Haliburton-based writer and author of several Canadian bestsellers, describes himself as a middle-rank writer that people don’t remember. Yet he has produced more than 50 books, the majority of them about the history of Northern Ontario.

“I’m one of those people that fill up bookshelves in libraries,” he said.

Even though people may not remember his name, they recognize him as the fellow who writes mining books. “That doesn’t bother me. I would rather have the guy up the hydro pole shout down and say: ‘I just read your latest book.’… I want them in the hands of the average person.”

His written contribution to preserving the history of Ontario’s North was recognized by the Canadian government when he was named a Member of the Order of Canada in 1994.

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Chile Mine Rescue Teaches Us That Modern Civilization Built on Mining — John R. Hunt (On the Rocks)

I spent most of one night and the next day watching the rescue of the Chilean miners. Like most people I am delighted, and a little surprised, that the rescue was successful. The news they are likely to make a very healthy buck out of their adventure is also pleasing.

I thought the commentators missed one point when they were pontificating about mining and miners. If it were not for the metal ore miners dig up, modern civilization could not exist. This is not an exaggeration. Just walk around your home and consider all the things made out of metal, or held together with metal.

Plastics have replaced some metal but I even your computer has some vital bits of gold and other precious metals performing tasks I do not understand and cannot spell. That awful tangle of wires that connect your computer, printer, scanner and also connect to the power source are most likely made of copper, possibly from the same mine the 33 Chileans were trapped in.

Mining is dangerous, even if safety regulations have made mining a lot safer in Canada than in many other countries. Even as this is written there is news of miners trapped beneath the surface in Ecuador and a much bigger and nastier accident in China.

According to many reports the Chinese mines kill more than 2,000 miners a year. There are not only many big operations which can be supervised but also many illegal small mines where anything goes.

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Elliot Lake Uranium Mining History – Our Wild Atomic City – by Alan Phillips (Originally Published in Maclean’s Magazine – May 25, 1957)

Denison Mine was the largest uranium deposit in Elliot Lake, Ontario.

Here’s a Graphic Picture of Ontario’s Elliot Lake

A billion-dollar order for uranium
A $300-million spending spree to fill it
A lawless horde of transients
A Communist struggle to control mine workers
A serious outbreak of disease

Just off the Trans-Canada Highway skirting Lake Huron’s north shore, a buried vein of ore snakes north through the Algoma Basin in the shape of an upside-down S. It curves for ninety miles beneath the pineclad granite knolls, a mother lode that is spawning eleven giant uranium mines in the greatest eruption of growth since gold gave birth to Dawson City.

The hub of these mines is a chaotic city-to-be called Elliot Lake. Twenty-two months ago it was just a stand of timber dividing two lakes, so wild that a bulldozer leveling brush ran over a large black bear. Today it’s a prime example of a boom town, familiar symbol of dynamic growth – and trouble.

For a couple of months this spring Elliot Lake made headlines that had nothing to do with uranium. An outbreak of jaundice packed ninety victims into nearby Blind River’s 59-bed hospital. About three hundred cases were reported before the disease began to wane early last month. Provincial health officials insisted that the outbreak did not rate as an epidemic while union officials were demanding the mines shut down until the sewage system was improved.

Infectious disease is an age-old bugbear of the boom town, which has its other ageless features. It is the nation in miniature with its time span speeded up as in a silent movie.

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February 29, 1912 Speech to the Empire Club by Professor Arthur P. Coleman, University of Toronto – Ontario Mines and Miners

The Empire Club of Canada, established in 1903, in Toronto is recognized as one of Canada’s oldest and largest speakers’ forums with a membership comprised of some of Canada’s most influential leaders from the professions, business, labour, education and government. Over its history it has been addressed by more than 3500 prominent Canadian and international leaders – men and women who have distinguished themselves in many fields of endeavour.

The Empire Club’s luncheon meetings attract audiences of 200 to 1,000 and usually take place on Thursdays at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel from September through June. Consult their events page for a detailed listing of this year’s events and links to their reservation forms. The addresses are broadcast on Rogers Television and many attract newspaper reports and editorial comment.

Ontario Mines and Miners (February 29, 1912)

Mr. President and Gentlemen,

Probably some of you are not quite familiar with the fact that Ontario has been a mining country for a very long time. Nearly 100 years ago, in 1815, a little iron mine was worked on the north shore of Lake Erie, of all places in the world, and a certain amount of iron was smelted, about a ton a day. It was poured right into moulds to make potash kettles and stoves, for which there was good sale. This was quite a prosperous mining industry for a time, but there were ups and downs, and in two or three years the industry disappeared, and now one cannot even find the ruins of the old smelter.

Then came copper mining, about half way through the century, begun by two English companies on the north shore of Lake Huron at Bruce Mines. They have been revived once in awhile in later times, but have not amounted to much since those early days when they were prosperous.

Then came the turn for gold. The present generation thinks there never was any gold mining before Porcupine was discovered; but gold was found in earlier years over many parts of northern Ontario, and you can scarcely go fifty miles through the whole width of the province without seeing abandoned gold mines. Gold was first struck in 1856 in the township of Madoc and one or two adjoining townships.

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A History of the Canadian Shield – Canada’s Mineral Treasure Trove – David Kilgour (Part 2 of 2)

The Honourable David Kilgour P.C., is the Conservative Member of Parliament for Edmonton Southeast. http://www.david-kilgour.com/mp/house.htm

North of the Fiftieth Parallel

In addition to its northeast and northwest, Ontario also has another north, the one beyond the fiftieth parallel where boreal forests become tundra. Sioux Lookout, Moosonee and Red Lake/Balmertown are its major cities; places like Pickle Lake and Ear Falls are its “towns.” Most of its approximately 30,000 residents live in isolated communities, accessible mostly by bush planes.

Culturally, the various Ontario Norths differ both from each other and from the southern part of the province. Many non-British newcomers reached parts of northern Ontario and Prairie Canada in roughly equal numbers and at about the same time. Today, despite the passage of three generations, multiculturalism has triumphed in numerous northern communities.

Francophones are found everywhere in northern Ontario, although most numerous in the northeast, and today command reasonable access to francophone education, radio and health services in a number of census districts. A second major group is the aboriginal peoples who predominate “north of fifty” either as status Indians, with treaty rights, as non-status Indians, or as Métis. Ojibway is spoken in the south; Ojibway and Cree in the centre; Cree only in the north. Band councils and Band chiefs are the municipal governments of these peoples. It troubles small native communities who live from fishing and hunting that their band chairmen are not yet recognized by Queen’s Park and Ottawa as they are by other Indians.

The living conditions of Ontario aboriginals tend to vary with the situation of the neighbouring white centres. The Fort William band members near Thunder Bay live quite well; conditions for people living near less prosperous centres are often outrageous. Native communities in some remote reserves compare unfavourably with settlements in developing world nations. Virtually nowhere today do hunting, fishing, trapping, and wild rice harvesting provide decent livings. High school and junior education is generally inadequate for young persons choosing either to remain in the north or to seek future-oriented jobs in the south.

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A History of the Canadian Shield – Canada’s Mineral Treasure Trove – David Kilgour (Part 1 of 2)

The Honourable David Kilgour P.C., is the Conservative Member of Parliament for Edmonton Southeast. http://www.david-kilgour.com/mp/house.htm

The Canadian Shield is, to most Canadians and foreigners alike, the quintessential Canada. I share this view having lived in the Gatineau Park spur of it for more than a decade and having often vacationed at Lake of the Woods for many more years. In countless ways, the Shield is idyllic. I think, for example, of the hundreds of motor boats which gather each July 1st in Kenora Bay at the north end of Lake of the Woods to watch Canada Day fireworks. Mingled with townspeople at these annual events under the stars are summer residents from all over the country. Many would move to the area to live year round if they could somehow earn a living; some do.

Approximately two million Québeckers and Ontarians combined live on the Canadian Shield. Since its borders are physical rather than political, residents on both sides of the provincial boundary lack effective structures through which they can pursue common regional concerns. The north of both provinces contains relatively thinly-populated frontier hinterlands; for many years, each of them has had only a limited influence on its respective provincial parliament and upon Ottawa policy makers.

The Shield in fact occupies more than forty per cent of our national territory across five provinces, but contains only eight per cent of our national population. In recent years, vigorous natural resource competition from developing countries, a declining resource-orientation of the world economy, and the weakened political position of the American economy have reduced mineral exploration and development across the region. Decades ago, it also contributed to the development of our national self-identity through the art of the Group of Seven and considerable writing about Northern self-reliance.

John Diefenbaker’s view that our national future lay in harnessing the distant North was popular in its day.

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