Canada and Newfoundland

by Frank G. Carpenter

The discovery in 1923 of the largest silver nugget ever found renewed interest in the Cobalt deposits, and has led to the reopening of several old mines with profitable results. This gigantic find, which tipped the scales at more than two thousand pounds, was about ninety per cent. pure silver, and was valued at twenty thousand dollars. The discovery was made by Anson Clement, a carpenter, in the Gillies Timber Limit about five miles from Cobalt, and a team of horses with a block and tackle was needed to haul the giant nugget out of the ground. Nuggets of silver eighty and ninety per cent. pure and weighing three and four hundred pounds each are not uncommon, and I have seen chunks of silver ore the size of a paving brick that I could not lift. Indeed, much of the ore reminds one of the rich copper nuggets that are found in the Lake Superior region. Recently a vein of almost pure silver, which in one place was between four and five feet in width, was uncovered in the Keeley Mine, eighteen miles from Cobalt.

Before the discovery of the Cobalt deposits, British Columbia led in the production of silver in Canada, and still has an output about one third that of Ontario. Silver is mined also in Quebec and Yukon Territory, a new silver district of promise having been discovered at Keno Hill in the Yukon. Three thousand tons of ore has been taken from one of the Keno Hill mines in one season. This has to be carried on dog sleds and wagons forty-five miles to the Stewart River and then sent down the Stewart and the Yukon to the Pacific, where it goes by ocean steamer to the nearest smelter. Only an unusually high grade of ore can be handled profitably with so long a freight haul before smelting.

The Cobalt mines produce not only silver, but also four fifths of the world’s supply of cobalt. Cobalt and silver are frequently found together, but nowhere in such quantities as here. Cobalt is a mineral somewhat like nickel in its properties, and is also used instead of nickel for plating steel. It is used to make paints and pigments, and is often known commercially as cobalt blue. Silicate of cobalt furnishes the colour for all the finest blue china. Practically the entire Canadian output, most of which is smelted at plants in southern Ontario, is exported to England and the United States.

The cobalt can be plainly seen in the ore when the rock is exposed to the weather. It is of a steel-gray colour tinged with rose-pink, and where it occurs in the form of a powder it looks exactly like rouge. When heated it turns a beautiful blue. Arsenic and other elements are often found mixed with the cobalt-silver ore, and the region has deposits of nickel, copper, and lead.

A hundred miles to the north of Cobalt is the Porcupine gold district. The gold output ranks first in value among the metals produced in Canada, and four fifths of all that is mined in the Dominion comes from the Porcupine and Kirkland Lake districts of Northern Ontario. The Hollinger mine in the Porcupine area is the largest gold mine in North America and one of the richest in the world. It began operations in 1910, and within ten years after it was opened had produced almost a hundred million dollars’ worth of gold, and had paid dividends of thirteen millions. The Hollinger shaft goes down into the earth fifteen hundred feet or more and there are about thirty miles of underground tunnels.

There is no telling what minerals may not be discovered in this section of Ontario, which seems to be a part of the great mineral belt that extends from Lake Superior northward toward Hudson Bay. There is iron on the Canadian side of Lake Superior, and some of our richest mines of iron and copper are found on the western and southern shores of that lake. Petroleum, natural gas, and salt are produced in the peninsular region of the province between lakes Huron, Erie, and Ontario to the amount of more than three million dollars’ worth a year. About a hundred miles from Cobalt lies Sudbury, which has the richest nickel deposits of the whole world, and prospectors say that there are minerals all the way north to James Bay, which juts down into Canada at the lower end of Hudson Bay.

The silver deposits around Cobalt crop out on top of the ground in veins of almost pure metal hundreds of feet long. Millions of dollars’ worth have been mined without any underground workings.

The prospector in northern Ontario, the richest mineral region in Canada, safeguards his claim by erecting “discovery posts” bearing his name, number of his mining license, and date of his find.