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Northern Ontario History

First-hand account of the “romance of the Klondike” – by Karen Bachmann (Timmins Daily Press – July 16, 2016)

http://www.timminspress.com/

Ah, the romance of the Klondike. Or perhaps more appropriately – ah, the romance of the Porcupine Gold Rush; venturing into the wilderness, armed with a canoe, a pick, and a dream! Well, as a good friend of mine reminded me, “it’s always romantic for those who were not there,” and he certainly was right.

Waltzing into the Porcupine back in 1908-1909 was no great picnic; the railway did not venture this way which meant walking and portaging with little stops along the way at halfway houses, a.k.a. “tents with airs above their station.” But why listen to me? Here is an excerpt from the diaries of Charles Auer, one of the early prospectors to the Porcupine – and I’ll wager big bucks he didn’t find the whole affair “romantic:”

– Friday, June 14th, 1 p.m. –

For the past two hours, we have been wind-bound about two miles north of the mouth of the Abitibi with a heavy sea driving directly on shore so that we will have to stay here until it lets up as we cannot weather the seas to get around a point about half a mile to the south.

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Canada’s forgotten silver boomtown – by Douglas Baldwin (CIM Magazine – June/July 2016)

https://www.cim.org/en/

Douglas Baldwin is a retired history professor from Acadia University, Nova Scotia. This piece has been adapted from his new book, Cobalt: Canada’s Forgotten Silver Boom Town.

To order the book, click here: http://www.cobaltboomtown.com/#!shop/vu6uk

Most Canadians know about the Klondike Gold Rush, but few realize that the stampede for silver in Cobalt, Ontario only five years later far surpassed the Klondike in terms of profits, production and long-term impact.

Concentrated in an area less than 13 square kilometres, Cobalt mines supplied almost 90 per cent of Canada’s silver production between 1904 and 1920, and by the time the boom petered out in the 1920s, the camp had become the fourth-largest silver producer ever discovered. The early history of hard rock mining in Ontario is essentially the story of the discovery of silver near Cobalt in 1903.

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[Ontario Geological Survey] 125 years of mining details – by Susanna McLeod (Kingston Whig-Standard – June 7, 2016)

http://www.thewhig.com/

Eyeing up the terrain, the prospectors made their best guess. Yanking out scrub plants, shovelling away the soil and then clearing the fine dust with their hands, they examined the bared ground for telltale markings. “This is it! We’ve found it!” The ore was theirs, and the first step to a profitable, if backbreaking, future.

“The evidence that Ontario possesses great mineral wealth is abundant, and is constantly accumulating,” announced the Royal Commission report in 1890. Discoveries were being made across the province — precious minerals of gold and silver, and valuable veins of copper, zinc, galena and iron. Plus, there were rich finds of plumbago (graphite), granite, marble and mica. However, discoveries were often based on innate knowledge of the miners and a dash of good fortune, rather than scientific data.

There was good reason to establish a new provincial agency. A powerful industry was emerging from the very earth under their feet, and the government was preparing to provide assistance.

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Sudbury could lead ‘Northern renaissance’ — Robinson (Sudbury Star – May 25, 2016)

http://www.thesudburystar.com/

Sudbury could be the centre of a “Northern renaissance,” David Robinson believes, if Northern Ontario had more control over its destiny and its economic development.

Robinson, a Laurentian University economics professor, wrote a report entitled Revolution or Devolution?: How Northern Ontario Should be Governed, released last month by the Northern Policy Institute. The report calls for an alternative model of governance to give the region more control over its resource-based economy, which more than half of Northerners believe would be managed better locally than by a centralized Ontario government.

The process, called devolution, could include granting Northern Ontario legislative powers, creating an elected but advisory Northern Ontario assembly, and the creation of a semi-autonomous district with most of the powers of a province. A strong case can be made, Robinson says, that there would be significant economic advantages from devolution of powers.

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Chinese more likely to build rail link to Ring of Fire – by John R. Hunt (North Bay Nugget – May 4, 2016)

http://www.nugget.ca/

A recent report may be good news for the development of the Ring of Fire. It also is a sad commentary on the state of affairs in Ontario and Canada. The report stated that representatives of a Chinese railway had visited the Ring of Fire with a view to connecting it to the nearest rail head.

They were invited or welcomed by KWG Resources, a mining company which is developing a property in the Ring of Fire. KWG has long argued that a rail link is much more essential than highway access.

The Ring of Fire may be the richest mineral deposit since the discovery of nickel at Sudbury and the founding of silver in Cobalt. It has the potential to create thousands of jobs with many opportunities for First Nations in the area.

Presumably the Chinese are capable of doing a good job, but so are companies from many other nations.

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Book details Cobalt’s rise to mining prominence – by Lindsay Kelly (Northern Ontario Business – March 31, 2016)

http://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

A new book about the history of the Town of Cobalt takes an in-depth look at its role in shaping the Canadian mining industry and its underappreciated contributions to the country’s economy.

Cobalt: Canada’s Forgotten Silver Boom Town, written by Prof. Douglas Baldwin, is a 380-page illustrated account that’s been four decades in the making. Baldwin first visited Cobalt in 1975, while researching its history for the Ontario Ministry of Culture and Recreation.

His interest piqued, Baldwin wrote a half-dozen more articles and scholarly journals about Cobalt over the years until 2005, when, on the cusp of retirement from teaching, he responded to an ad seeking someone to research Cobalt’s history. Baldwin’s research continued until he had enough for the book.

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How forest fires shaped the history of Timmins – by Karen Bachmann (Timmins Daily Press – March 19, 2016)

http://www.timminspress.com/

You cannot talk about the history of Northern Ontario without talking about forest fires and their impact on the development of the region.

The Great Porcupine Fire of 1911 almost wiped out the entire Ontario gold mining industry in one day; fortunately, the early investors and residents of the camp were made of stronger stuff and they chose to remain here and rebuild (and they most certainly reaped the rewards of their decisions!).

Lesson learned: there is no escape route once the rail lines are destroyed.  Fast forward to 1916 – yet again, the north is threatened with huge forest fires, and Timmins, although not in the thick of it, certainly did not come out clean.

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PoV: Ted Szilva made Sudbury a better place – by Don MacDonald (Sudbury Star – March 16, 2016)

http://www.thesudburystar.com/

Don MacDonald is the editor of the Sudbury Star.

Ted Szilva will be best known as the creator of the Big Nickel, an iconic landmark that now helps define Greater Sudbury for many Canadians.

Szilva, who died last week at the age of 81, was much more than the Big Nickel, however. He was a bit of a visionary who helped the city re-imagine itself.

A firefighter and not quite 30 when he opened the Big Nickel (a nine-metre or 30-foot replica of a 1951 Canadian nickel) in 1964, he went on to build an underground mine at the site, located on hill overlooking the intersection of Municipal Road 55 and Big Nickel Drive. He did so mostly on his own and with no support from municipal leaders at the time.

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[Sudbury Big Nickel Iconic Landmark] Ted Szilva has passed away – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – March 11, 2016)

http://www.thesudburystar.com/

The man responsible for the creation of one of Canada’s best-known landmarks has died at age 81. Ted Szilva was an ambitious young firefighter when he came up with the idea of producing a giant coin as a symbol for the world’s nickel capital.

The replica 1951 nickel, which cost $35,000, led to the creation of Big Nickel Mine, an attraction of Science North, and eventually Dynamic Earth.

Szilva went against public opinion when he set out to produce the Big Nickel. He raised the funds to create the Big Nickel monument by selling medallions and coins he developed.
”I would get $6,000 to $7,000 in one day through the sale of the medallions,” he said told The Sudbury Star’s Harold Carmichael in 2003. He could not get bank financing because he was told his was a “crackpot” idea.

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[Ontario] Finding riches in the rocks – by Susanna McLeod (Kingston Whig-Standard – March 2, 2016)

http://www.thewhig.com/

Looking at the countryside, the geological sage saw more than soil and granite, more than batholiths and schist. Willet Green Miller “read the secrets of the rocks and opened the portal for the outpouring of their wonderful riches.” Joining Queen’s College as professor of geology and petrography in 1893, Miller was later appointed Ontario’s first Provincial Geologist. Earth science wasn’t just a job for Miller, it was his life blood.

When Miller arrived in Kingston at age 27, he was already immersed in geology. Born in Norfolk County in 1866, he was raised on the northern shores of Lake Erie. Receiving a good education, Miller attended high school at Port Rowan, then enrolled in Natural Science at University of Toronto. His initial aim was chemistry.

By graduation in 1890, Miller’s interests had expanded to earth science. “Luckily, the influence of his father, who was interested in all aspects of nature including trees, flowers and rocks, would inspire him to take geology and mineralogy courses,” said Miller Museum of Geology at Queen’s University. The student’s passion was sparked. He wanted to learn more.

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Ontario ‘colonization’ turned to clay – by Tom Villemaire (St. Catharines Standard – February 28, 2016)

http://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/

Tom Villemaire is a writer based in Toronto and the Bruce Peninsula.

At the start of the 20th century (seems so long ago), southern Ontario felt like it was all filled up.

To attract attention to northern Ontario, the clever minds at Queen’s Park did a little marketing. They coined the term “New Ontario.” And they cranked out pamphlets that said things like: “There is no place in Ontario where bigger crops of hay, roots, barley, peas, oats and wheat can be grown.”

And only about 60 years after Ontario failed miserably at settling the central part of the province by building colonization roads, it decided to try its luck farther north. So in 1912, Ontario passed the Northern and Northwestern Ontario Development Act.

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[Goldcorp gold mine] PGM underground set to close end of July – by Len Gillis (Timmins Daily Press – January 16, 2016)

http://www.timminspress.com/

TIMMINS – As a mine manager, Goldcorp’s Brendan Zuidema said Friday he holds a bit of sadness in his heart to be the man at the helm as the last of three great gold mines of the Porcupine Camp is about to come to a close.

“Yeah, the Hollinger Mine, the McIntyre Mine and the Dome Mine were the Big Three,” said Zuidema. “The Hollinger and the McIntyre are both closed. We are still mining the Hollinger open pit, but that is more a reclamation project to close that property. So Dome is the last of the Big Three. I think in terms of ounces over 105 years, Dome has been around 17 million ounces.”

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Zuidema outlined the details for the eventual shutdown of what is believed to be the longest running gold mine in Canada, the Dome Mine. Discovered in 1909, it was the first major discovery in the Porcupine Camp. The Dome went into production in 1910 and went on to outlast every major gold mining operation discovered in those early days of Timmins.

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[Goldcorp] Dome Gold Mine closing had to happen eventually – by Ron Grech (Timmins Daily Press – January 15, 2016)

http://www.timminspress.com/

TIMMINS – Nobody at the time of the discovery of its deposit in 1909 would have predicted the Dome Mine would still be in operation in 2016. But here we are, albeit, with the Dome in its final months.

Goldcorp announced this week it will be shutting down the Dome underground operation, likely around the end of July. Close to 200 people — 115 employees and 76 contractors — will be out of work as a result.

The Dome has been virtually mined out.  The company revealed at a press conference held in Timmins on Friday that there are still some traces of gold in the rocks but it’s just not worth digging up and processing at any price.

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Remember This? Helen Mine started it all [Algoma Steel] (Soo Today – January 17, 2016)

https://www.sootoday.com/

It was named after its original owner’s sister

At the end of the 19th century, local prospectors Benjamin Boyer, Jim Sayers and Alois Goetz found what they thought was gold while searching for minerals in the Algoma area.

The men took their sample to Francis H. Clergue who recognized the mineral as iron ore, not gold. The three men offered the land to Clergue for $500. Upon purchase Clergue created the Helen Mine which he named after his sister.

Mining began at the new Helen Mine and on July 1, 1900 the Canadian Blast Furnace Company (of Midland, Ontario) purchased and processed the first iron ore. The payroll at that time was just $107,535 for almost 400 employees.

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History of Elliot Lake – Life of an Elliot Lake miner at work – by Kevin McSheffrey (Elliot Lake Standard – December 30, 2015)

http://www.elliotlakestandard.ca/

Elliot Lake has been in existence since 1955, and grew out of the wilderness following geologist Franc Joubin’s uranium discovery earlier that decade.

Joubin’s discovery resulted in a dozen uranium mines in the area, 11 around Elliot Lake and one on the North Shore. Two mining companies were involved: Rio Algom, headed up by Joseph Hirshhorn and Denison Mines, headed by Stephen Roman.

The discovery attracted mine workers from across the province, the country and around the world.

However, the boom was followed by a bust in the early 1960s when the United States government cancelled its contracts with the two mining companies.

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