BOOK REVIEW — New book explores history of Elliot Lake

.BReviewed by Stuart McDougall

The Power and the Promise: The Elliot Lake Story, is a detailed account of the discovery of uranium in a little-known area of northern Ontario and of the town to which this discovery gave rise.

Author Catharine Dixon offers a comprehensive history of a town at the mercy of mining executives and politicians. In this respect, the book serves as an informative introduction to the everyday political manoeuvrings that take place in most mining towns, and Dixon seems convinced that the lust for money and power is, to a large degree, behind such manoeuvrings.

The author is nothing if not thorough, chronicling, in impressive detail, the initial discovery of uranium in 1953 — an event which triggered the “backdoor staking bee” of J.H. Hirshhorn, one of the largest staking rushes since the Klondike gold rush in the Yukon.

The town officially came into existence only two years later, in 1955. Stimulated by the American military demand for uranium, Elliot Lake experienced an economic boom from 1956 to 1963. But the American government’s decision, in 1959, not to renew its contracts dealt what proved to be a devastating blow to the region. In the later 1960s and 1970s, the uranium industry was revived by the advent of nuclear power, and, in the early 1980s, long-range sales to Ontario Hydro generated considerable growth. But by the middle of the decade, falling prices once again took their toll on the town.

Dixon provides insight into how Elliot Lake has been affected by these boom-and-bust cycles, and she deals frankly with the decision-makers at the town hall and in the mining offices, many of whom were controversial, and some of whom she judges to have been self-serving.

Curiously, Dixon’s penchant for detail is, to a certain extent, one of the book’s weaknesses, for in attempting to provide “the whole story,” the author occasionally lapses into awkward repetitiveness. Nonetheless, her inclusion, at the end of each chapter, of the experiences of residents, combined with short descriptions of local events, lends the work a scrapbook-like quality that is not unappealing.

Readers should be warned that Dixon’s is far from an unbiased account of the history of Elliot Lake. As the author has resided there for the past 40 years, it is perhaps not surprising that her personal views tend to color much of the book. Moreover, this reader, at least, was left with the nagging suspicion that, in writing The Power and the Promise, Dixon was motivated less by the historian’s desire for comprehensiveness than by personal frustration over some of the decisions handed down by the town’s municipal and mining officials over the years. (It is ironic that the future of a town once dubbed “the jewel of the North” may lie with government officials whose predecessors, according to Dixon, seem to have hindered any such prosperity.)

Whatever her motives, however, the book serves as an excellent example of what life is like in a mining town, and of the uncertainty that its residents face once those operations close down.