Manitoba’s base metals sector had novel beginning manitoba base

The large and sophisticated base metal mining industry in Manitoba began in December, 1914, when a local Indian, David Collins, showed Thomas Creighton a mineralized outcrop near what is now Flin Flon. Creighton and John Mosher returned in 1915 to stake 16 claims over the showings, one of which was called Flin Flon. The colorful name was taken from the hero of a novel the team had brought with them — Flintabbety Flonatin.

In October, 1915, Sidney Reynolds and Fred Jackson discovered the Mandy copper deposit, 5.6 km to the southeast. In 1916, the first diamond drilling in northern Manitoba outlined a 22,675-tonne orebody with 20% copper.

Mining began in 1916, with the ore shipped without milling to the Trail, B.C., smelter after spring breakup in 1917. Mining operations ceased in 1919, with the last ore shipped in early 1920. Mandy produced another 113,000 tonnes of lower grade ore in 1943-44.

In 1927, Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting Co. set up a pilot mill near the Creighton discovery. This later became the Flin Flon mine, by far the largest copper-zinc deposit in Manitoba. This deposit is mined on both sides of the Manitoba/Saskatchewan border.

The railway reached Flin Flon in 1928 and in 1930 the HBM&S copper smelter and zinc plant produced its first blister copper and zinc slabs. Operations began at 2,700 tonnes per day with an open pit that mined the upper 91 m of the main Flin Flon deposit.

In 1937 operations went underground when two shafts were sunk 1.6 km apart. During World War II output was increased to a peak of 5,400 tonnes per day.

The large capital investment by HBM&S in the late 1920s for rail, mine, smelter, refinery and a hydro- electric plant at Island Falls, Sask., laid the groundwork for opening up the prolific Flin Flon-Snow Lake belt and, later, the Lynn Lake belt to the north. Small satellite deposits were brought on stream between 1948 and 1960 at Cuprus, North Star, Don Jon and Schist Lake in Manitoba, and Coronation and Birch Lake in Saskatchewan. First Snow Lake mine

In 1960, the first of the Snow Lake area mines, 120 km east of Flin Flon, was opened at Chisel Lake, followed by Stall Lake in 1964, Osborne Lake in 1968, Dickstone and Anderson Lake in 1970, Ghost Lake in 1972 and Lost Lake, reached from Ghost Lake workings, in 1977.

More recently the Spruce Point and Rod deposits went into production in 1982 and 1984, respectively. In the Flin Flon area the White Lake mine started in 1972, Centennial in 1977, Westarm in 1978 and Trout Lake in 1982.

A concentrator, installed at the Stall Lake mine site in 1979, treated ores from all the Snow Lake mines prior to rail transport of the concentrates to the Flin Flon processing facilities. Ore from Spruce Point, 40 km southwest of Snow Lake, is trucked directly to Flin Flon.

Even during the early years, prospectors kept pushing north and in 1922 Philip Sherlett (a Cree Indian), Carl Sherritt and Richard Madole discovered copper-zinc at Cold Lake, later to become the Sherridon mine which was the beginning of Sherritt Gordon Mines. A 65-km railway from Flin FLon reached the Sherridon townsite in 1929. Eldon L. Brown, Sherritt Gordon’s general superintendent, brought the Sherridon mine into operation in 1931, with a production rate of 1,360 tonnes per day.

Falling copper prices caused mining to be suspended in 1932, but operations resumed in 1937 and 7.7 million tonnes of ore were milled with a then-market value of about $59 million before the ore was exhausted in 1951. The town of Sherridon, established to serve the mine, grew to 1,500 people at its peak.

Knowing that Sherridon would eventually run out of ore, Brown launched an active exploration program. Between the wars. prospectors and geologists continued to push north into the Lynn Lake area. The first discovery in the Lynn Lake greenstone belt was a gold showing discovered in 1937 at Lasthope Lake, 32-km south of the present town of Lynn Lake.

In 1942, Austin McVeigh found mineralization assaying 1% copper and 1.5% nickel near what became the Sherritt Gordon A mine at Lynn Lake. The small nickel-copper disovery, near the present town of Lynn Lake, was staked and explored after the war.

From 1943 to 1950, magnetic and electromagnetic surveys and drilling outlined 11 nickel-copper ore zones totalling more than 12.7 million tonnes. Three main groups of orebodies, EL, A and Farley, were eventually outlined by geophysics and exploration drilling. Novel move

In a novel and courageous move, Sherritt decided to transport the entire mine facilities and townsite of Sherridon to the new Lynn Lake site when the Sherridon mine was exhausted. From 1946 to 1953, 208 buildings weighing 36,000 tonnes, including the mill, school and bank, were moved 265-km by tractor train over winter ice and trails.

The railway reached Lynn Lake in 1953 and the A and EL copper- nickel mines were put into production in 1953 and 1954, respectively. The nearby Farley mine subsequently opened in 1961. All of the known economic Lynn Lake nickel deposits were exhausted in 1976.

In the 1960s copper and zinc deposits were found by Sherritt Gordon at Fox Lake, 45-km southwest of Lynn Lake, and at Ruttan, 25-km east of Leaf Rapids. The Fox Lake mine began production in 1970 and the Ruttan mine in 1973. The Fox mine closed in 1985.

After the Lynn Lake discoveries, the next important development began in 1946 when the International Nickel Co. of Canada (now Inco Ltd.) initiated an extensive 10-year exploration program in the Mystery-Moak Lakes area of north- central Manitoba. In 1956, Inco announced the discovery of the major Thompson nickel-copper deposit. Work on the earlier discoveries at Moak Lake was suspended in 1956 when the higher grade Thompson deposit was found and the site of a proposed town was moved to where the city of Thompson now stands. $400-million complex

Eleven months after the discovery of the Thompson orebody, Inco signed an agreement with the Manitoba government that led to the development of the deposit. Work began immediately on a $400-million complex designed for 10,800 tonnes per day. As the first fully- integrated complex of nickel mining, concentrating, smelting and refining in a single plant area, Thompson became the non-communist world’s second-largest nickel producing centre. Thompson, currently the third-largest city in Manitoba with a population of about 14,000, was built to service the complex.

The railway spur reached Thompson in 1957 and the first electrolytic nickel was produced in 1961. Other deposits, ranging from seven to 70 km southwest of Thompson, at Soab North and South, Pipe No 1 and 2 and Birchtree, were discovered and put into production between 1967 and 1971. These are closed at present. Further southwest, Falconbridge Nickel Mines discovered a number of nickel deposits and opened the Manibridge mine, which operated from 1970 to 1977.

While the major activity was in the north, base metal exploration and mining also occurred in the southeast part of the province. In 1917 and 1920, small copper and nickel deposits were discovered in the Maskwa Lake and Bird River areas. These were drilled intermittently in the 1930s and 1950s and Dumbarton Mines mined the small Dumbarton-Maskwa deposits, 130 km northeast of Winnipeg, from 1969 to 1976.004 Reprinted from Mining in Manitoba.