ODDS’N’SODS — The Ringsleben-Lakes connection

I first met Bill Ringsleben and Harold Lakes at the Emerald mine at Salmo, B.C., in the 1940s. Canadian Exploration had recently bought the Iron Mountain holdings from War-Time Metals and was anxious to reopen the tungsten mine and explore the area for other metal potential.

H.L. Batten, the company’s managing director, had a high regard for Ringsleben and believed, moreover, that combining the talents of Bill with local consultant Harold Lakes would ensure success for the venture. He was dead right.

The two oldtimers put their heads together and soon things were popping on Iron Mountain. Ringsleben, with vast experience searching for and developing minerals in Eastern Canada and South America, was a natural stimulus for the dedicated, imaginative and enterprising Lakes. The latter had acquired extensive skills working in the Kootenays as well as in the western U.S. The Emerald mine was soon producing at 300 tons per day. Meanwhile, Bill and Harold had directed their attention to a gossan zone on the Jersey claims and fostered a major surface mapping program of the entire claim area. Both men were a challenge to the young professionals-to-be around them. Ringsleben was quiet in manner, soft-spoken, and always accompanied by an engaging open smile and an equally attractive sense of humor. Lakes, on the other hand, was brusque, direct, detailed in his tasks and demands, and yet dominated by kindness and an open, whimsical manner.

In the company of two such fine prime movers, the project on Iron Mountain expanded so that, by the early 1950s, it encompassed a major tungsten mine and a substantial lead-zinc mine at Jersey, both of which were to continue to enrich the treasury of Placer Development for the following 25 years. I did not tarry long at the Emerald and subsequently moved to Ontario. There was a monstrous activity in the north-central section of that province, with mine prospects sprouting up like mushrooms in the prolific Precambrian Shield outbacks.

I first landed in the Manitouwadge camp in the early 1950s, where drillers were outlining a major copper-zinc orebody at the Geco site. Also ongoing was a large-scale assessment of the area on all sides of the initial find, with camps and drill sites scattered far and wide.

We were quartered in a tent camp beside Manitouwadge Lake and totally dependent on air support for all our services and supplies. With the advent of autumn, the weather deteriorated so that the plane traffic was intermittent. Late one evening, when we were all seated in the cook tent for coffee and pie prior to retiring, the tent flaps opened and into our midst stepped a wet, sodden, tired and much-weakened figure of a bushman with a packsack on his back. Here was a still-smiling Bill Ringsleben. He had flown in from Geraldton that day and landed a good many miles from our site so that he could drop in on several other camps. We sat Bill down by the hot camp stove where he could dry out and be served a hearty meal by the cook. Meanwhile, Bob Coutts went

to his bunk and returned with some remnant scotch to revive our erstwhile visitor.

Ringsleben retired early that evening and rose at dawn the next day to go into details of the program and to record our progress pursuant to his role as a consultant to the owners of the mine.

Across this continent, there are a good many mines and prospects which have the stamp of Ringsleben Lakes on them. And there are a good many sound professionals who, inspired and motivated by the character of these two stalwarts, ventured forth toward sound and lasting developments in the frontier lands of other countries.

— S.J. Hunter is a retired mining engineer who resides in Vancouver.