EDITORIAL & OPINION — ODDS ‘N’ SODS — Tracing the Cargill phosphate

The Cargill phosphate deposit, about 14 miles southwest of Kapuskasing, Ont., is now headed for production. With about 62.5 million tonnes grading 19.5% P2O5, it will be the only phosphate mine in Canada. I found its host in 1954, following up an innocuous statement. Its discovery and ultimate ore zone delineation are instructive.

Early that spring, I helped Howard Banting with a magnetometer survey for an oil and gas company on some gravity anomalies in southwestern Ontario. The objective was to check for magnetite, which would disqualify the anomalies for drilling. The survey was a success; we found nothing.

En route to Toronto, we visited the company’s geologist to give him the good news. Afterwards, I casually asked if he had always been in soft rock exploration. No, he said, and explained that he began as a hard-rock geologist. Never found anything, though.

The only thing that ever happened to him was that he was almost lost. He was working for Lud Weeks of the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) on the Kapuskasing sheet and, one day, doing a traverse, his compass showed north, but the sun showed the opposite. He thought it happened north of the Trans-Canada Highway between Cochrane and Hearst.

I suggested to Howard that the fellow was near a potentially important magnetic body. There was no information on it, but I intended to find it. He offered to finance the enterprise through Continental Copper Mines, of which he was a director. The first step was to examine the field books in the GSC archives in Ottawa. I visited Dr. Weeks, who kindly fetched them.

Examining the books was tedious. Finally, I found the entry: “Something like 12 noon. Compass points north and sun says the opposite.” A very laconic statement. He was near Lost (now Cargill) Lake on the Lost River in Cargill Twp., far from where he thought he had been. He sampled a nearby rock outcrop that neither he nor his party chief could identify. Their descriptions seemed contradictory, reminiscent of the inspector’s tag line in the Katzenjammer Kids comic strip — “Katy did und Katy didn’t.”

The outcrop is shown on the map as granite near the eastern side of Cargill Lake. It was the only exposure for miles, and the prognosis for a mine was bleak. But I was struck by the inability of two trained people to agree on what appeared to be a common rock. It seemed to me that this outcrop and the magnetic disturbance were vital, yet unexamined, keys to the mineral possibilities of the area.

I enlisted the aid of my uncle, Alfred Michel, a resourceful prospector. We drove to the Lost River, near Kapuskasing, and attempted to canoe down to Cargill Lake. Our first setback came immediately, as the spring floodwater was too strong for our motor. By evening, we had scarcely covered two of the 20 miles I reckoned we had to go.

That night, as I listened to beavers slapping their tails, I decided we would walk to our target. We left early the next morning, travelling light — axes, compass, dip needle, sandwiches, tea pail and pockets crammed with raisins. That night, we sat against a tree in font of a smudge fire to deter mosquitoes and tried to sleep. I had done it before — it is very uncomfortable. The next morning we arrived at the lake, greeted by our second setback: in my haste, I had followed the wrong side of the river. The outcrop was on the other side, and we had no way to reach it.

Obviously, we should have flown in from South Porcupine, about 100 miles to the south. I elected the river route because of its apparent lower cost. We returned to Kap, drove to South Porcupine and flew to the lake. I dashed from the plane to the outcrop.

It was carbonatite. The magnetic anomaly that triggered the quest was huge. I handled the initial exploration, but massive drilling was the only way forward, and the property was farmed out.

Twenty years later, in 1975, the ore zone was finally delineated. The project has unforgettable memories. I left it in 1957, but the dated claim map is speckled with dead black flies and still smells of fly dope. But one question remains unanswered: what happened to the trousers that, on a lark, I nailed to the tree at our camp on Cargill Lake when I left for the last time?

— The author is president of Centaur Mining Exploration and resides in Toronto.