Prospector celebrates centennial

Former prospector Frank Hoey is literally 100 years young.

At the one-century mark, Hoey still lives on his own, reads without glasses, owns a baseball cap with the words “Frank The Rock Hoey” printed on the front, and plays with his grandchildren, albeit somewhat less rambunctiously than when he played soccer with them when he was 94.

Perhaps this should not come as a surprise. After all, Hoey was the man who won the Montreal, Que., snowshoe-racing championship in the late 1920s — a feat that afforded him the privilege of dropping the puck at a Montreal Canadiens game and later served him well as a pioneering prospector in Canada’s frosty north.

On Sept. 10, Hoey celebrated his centennial in warmer climes at his home in Frankford, Ont. Members of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) came from all corners of the province to mark the occasion. Hoey served as a PDAC director for close to 30 years.

He was the son of an Irish father, who worked for a shipping line, and a Scottish mother. When Hoey was eight, his family migrated to Canada from Glasgow, Scotland. They eventually settled in Montreal, where he and his five siblings learned to speak French.

His four sisters were sent to “normal school,” an antiquated name for teacher’s college, while Frank and his brother worked for a stonemason and educated themselves by reading books.

He married Frances Dickson in 1948 and they had a daughter, Margaret, in 1949.

He worked for several mining companies before setting up his grubstake syndicate in the early 1950s. A traveller by nature, he prospected all over Canada, from New Brunswick to British Columbia, from the Yukon to northern Quebec. He located several significant deposits in Quebec and created quite a stir in the mid-1960s when he discovered a uranium deposit near Havre-St. Pierre, about 200 km east of Sept-les.

“I had some prospectors who worked under me and they looked up to Frank,” says friend and former business associate, Jim Walker. “He was a professional. . . all business.”

In 1977, Hoey hung up his pickaxe and retired to his quaint Frankford home. The subsequent arrival of his two grandchildren has helped him enjoy his golden years, despite the passing of his wife several years ago. He no longer owns snowshoes. Nowadays, he lives vicariously through the athletes on his favourite channel — The Sports Network. He watches all the sports, except baseball — even at 100 years of age, he finds America’s favourite pastime just too slow.