Mr. A. P. Low, in his report of his examination of the country between Lake Winnipeg and Hudson bay, says “The rocks in several places
Are Highly Magnetic,
and probably contain large quantities of iron ore, both disseminated in small crystals through the rock, and in large masses.” When being examined before the Senate committee in 1907, Mr. Low, then Director of the Geological Survey of Canada, drew attention to the fact that the map of Keewatin showed a large number of lakes, like Gas lake, Island lake, Favourable lake, Severn lake, Trout lake, etc., and remarked that wherever these patches of water are seen it indicates softer rocks than the other parts. These rocks are usually Huronian, and in many places they carry good indications of minerals, copper pyrites and different sulphides of that kind. At Trout lake there is a large area of what is called norite rock. These are the rocks in which the nickel deposits of Sudbury occur, and there is great probability of a small deposit being found up there.
There have been no indications of coal discovered in Keewatin, but Mr. Low explained that on hurried trips such as he had made it was impossible to examine mineral deposits very much, and one is liable to lose many of them. The general character of the southern part of Keewatin as regards mineral resources is good.
In the bank of Nelson river, opposite the mouth of Pine creek, Mr. J. B. Tyrrell reports a dark grey, rather fine-grained diorite or uralitic diabase, probably forming part of a large dyke cutting the gneiss. “Near the north end of Little Playgreen lake is a light reddish-grey massive biotite-granite cut by veins, a foot or more in width, of red pegmatite containing crystalline masses of molybdenite, with occasional crystals of pyrite and magnetite.”
Mr. Tyrrell reports copper and arsenical pyrites in a diabase dyke exposed in an island in Pipestone lake two miles and a quarter from the mouth of the river.
He reports the cliffs on the lower part of Burntwood river as being “occasionally overlain by a small thickness of peat.” He reports other deposits of peat in the district north of Lake Winnipeg.
Before the Senate committee of 1907, Mr. Tyrrell explained that the primary object in all his explorations was the mineral development of the country, and any other information that he collected was incidental. He stated that there is a district from Cumberland House northeastward towards Nelson river which is underlain by what are known as
Keewatin and Huronian Rocks,
the same kind as those in which minerals are found in northern Ontario at the present time. The very existence of those rocks was barely known. There had been practically no exploration of them, no prospecting, so that no one could say as to whether they were to be a barren portion of those rocks which are rich elsewhere, or whether they were to be like the Huronian and Keewatin rocks elsewhere, rich in mineral of some of the kinds so much desired. Comparing them with the rocks in other places, they have large possibilities. From that point there is an area of sandstone in the vicinity of Cree lake which may contain copper, but nothing much was known of it. It is about the age and character of the rocks that are rich in copper around Lake Superior, but no mineral wealth has yet been found in it.