EDITORIAL PAGE Staking rush, or facsimile thereof

The last of Ontario’s great races from claim staking to the mining recorder’s office turned out to be little more than a race to the telephone. The biggest problem was finding a telephone. When 2,400 acres of ground came open along a greenstone belt 100 miles west of Thunder Bay, the local mining recorder readied for a flood of claims to register. When such prospective ground came open in the past, every airplane, helicopter and 4-wheel drive vehicle, every dog-sled and every pair of snowshoes in the area might have been employed to give staking parties a chance to be the first out and the first back to register their claims with the recorder.

This time, the stakers simply rushed to the nearest telephone and sent the necessary documents by facsimile machine to Thunder Bay where the recorder’s office is.

But not only has technology done away with the need to race from claim to recorder. With the promulgation of regulations governing the province’s new Mining Act, stakers will no longer have to rush that documentation back to the recorder’s office. A time record of the staking activity will be sufficient.

The “fax” machine and new legislation have spelled the end of a romantic era in exploration in the province. You will still have to be first out there to stake the claims, but that race back to town will not carry the same sense of drama.

Even sadder, in this case, was the lack of interest in the prospective ground. That apathy might indicate the passing of an even greater era in Ontario mineral exploration — the era when there was sufficient incentive to prompt prospectors to go out and get those claims.

The rush anticipated by the Thunder Bay mining recorder never materialized because it was hardly worth the effort for prospectors or junior mining companies to go out and stake. Not only is the expense too high to hire a helicopter for access, but the opportunity to vend the claims once they are staked is low because there are so many others trying to vend properties at fire-sale prices.

The staking rush that never materialized marks the end of an era in Ontario, but we hope it does not portend the end of prospecting in a province that still holds a wealth of mineral potential.