In the summer of 1915, Thomas Creighton and five fellow prospectors staked what has become one of the biggest mining operations in Canada. But at the time, they believed it to be a gold deposit. The claims were on the eastern shore of a small lake in northern Manitoba that they decided to call Flin Flon Lake. With financial backing from mining promoter Jack Hammell of Toronto and later, Charles Hayden and Galen Stone of New York, and David Fasken and E. P. Earle of Toronto, 44 holes were drilled on the property over the next 2 years, outlining a sizeable copper deposit. Because no economic method of extracting zinc from an ore containing 15% talc was known at the time, they saw no value in the zinc contained in the deposit. But because of the war raging at the time and the unsolved metallurgical problems, all these backers dropped their options.
Undeterred, Hammell negotiated an option to The Mining Corp. of Canada which then developed the deposit with two shafts driven 500 ft apart. And when the property was optioned to the Harry Payne Whitney group of New York in 1925, a 50-ton- per-day pilot plant was built in Flin Flon and a flotation process for removing the talc was soon worked out by engineer Robert Phelan.
The results were so good that the Whitneys exercised their option and formed Hudson Bay Mining & Smelting to operate the property. Eighteen million tons of mineralized rock (the total outlined by then, averaging 1.71% copper, 3.45% zinc, 0.074 oz gold and 1.06 oz silver per ton to a depth of 900 ft) had suddenly become ore. From that point on things moved very quickly. HudBay was incorporated in 1927. A rail link to The Pas, 140 km to the south, was established in 1928 with government help and hydroelectric capacity was built on the Churchill River. Metal production started in 1930.
In 1987 the company produced 186 million lb of zinc, 150 million lb of copper, 69,000 oz gold and 1.4 million oz silver.
Today, an open pit, 300 ft deep, has obliterated the spot where Tom Creighton first saw the sulphide mineralization which set off this amazing chain of events. In fact, a total of 68 million tons of ore has been mined from the Flin Flon deposit, which now appears to be almost mined out. But as the accompanying stories attest, Hudson Bay Mining & Smelting is as active as ever, finding and mining zinc/copper/gold deposits in this part of the Canadian Shield.
The discovery of nickel at Namew Lake, 50 km south of Flin Flon, in 1984 has begun a new chapter in the history of the company.
In the summer of 1915, Thomas Creighton and five fellow prospectors staked what has become one of the biggest mining operations in Canada. But at the time, they believed it to be a gold deposit. The claims were on the eastern shore of a small lake in northern Manitoba that they decided to call Flin Flon Lake. With financial backing from mining promoter Jack Hammell of Toronto and later, Charles Hayden and Galen Stone of New York, and David Fasken and E. P. Earle of Toronto, 44 holes were drilled on the property over the next 2 years, outlining a sizeable copper deposit. Because no economic method of extracting zinc from an ore containing 15% talc was known at the time, they saw no value in the zinc contained in the deposit. But because of the war raging at the time and the unsolved metallurgical problems, all these backers dropped their options.
Undeterred, Hammell negotiated an option to The Mining Corp. of Canada which then developed the deposit with two shafts driven 500 ft apart. And when the property was optioned to the Harry Payne Whitney group of New York in 1925, a 50-ton- per-day pilot plant was built in Flin Flon and a flotation process for removing the talc was soon worked out by engineer Robert Phelan.
The results were so good that the Whitneys exercised their option and formed Hudson Bay Mining & Smelting to operate the property. Eighteen million tons of mineralized rock (the total outlined by then, averaging 1.71% copper, 3.45% zinc, 0.074 oz gold and 1.06 oz silver per ton to a depth of 900 ft) had suddenly become ore. From that point on things moved very quickly. HudBay was incorporated in 1927. A rail link to The Pas, 140 km to the south, was established in 1928 with government help and hydroelectric capacity was built on the Churchill River. Metal production started in 1930.
In 1987 the company produced 186 million lb of zinc, 150 million lb of copper, 69,000 oz gold and 1.4 million oz silver.
Today, an open pit, 300 ft deep, has obliterated the spot where Tom Creighton first saw the sulphide mineralization which set off this amazing chain of events. In fact, a total of 68 million tons of ore has been mined from the Flin Flon deposit, which now appears to be almost mined out. But as the accompanying stories attest, Hudson Bay Mining & Smelting is as active as ever, finding and mining zinc/copper/gold deposits in this part of the Canadian Shield.
The discovery of nickel at Namew Lake, 50 km south of Flin Flon, in 1984 has begun a new chapter in the history of the company.
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