Odds ‘n’ Sods — Caught in the act of high-grading in the ’30s

Living in northern Ontario or Quebec during the “Dirty Thirties” had its compensations. It was one of the few places where manual jobs were occasionally available, thanks largely to the demand for workers in the mining industry.

There were some high-grade mines operating then, and the fascination of gold sometimes induced otherwise morally upright individuals to resort to procedures that might enhance their chances of accumulating a share of the fabulous metal. The northern camps were no exception, and attracted their fair share of “entrepreneurs.”

I recall quite vividly a mucker employed at the Dome mine who told me about a claim he and a friend had staked in Tisdale Twp. It was situated fairly close to three or four small properties in the Preston East area. He mentioned the claim had very promising showings of high-grade ore, and invited me to see for myself. After a short walk through a sparsely wooded area, we climbed down to the bottom of a pit which recently had been excavated.

My friend brushed off a small section of a side wall, and there it was: a nice showing of white quartz liberally speckled with beautiful yellow gold. He had papers to indicate he was the owner of a very promising claim, and I still have the certificates that I purchased, at $10 each, the following payday. One thing he did not tell me was that the gold had been blasted into the rockface with a 12-gauge shotgun. (He no doubt believed the one about poker hands, where “a gun beats four aces.”)

On another occasion, I was at the end of a line of miners leaving the dry at the end of a shift. As we passed through the main gate, a security guard invited the miner ahead of me to return to the mine office and bring his lunch pail. It developed that a dry attendant noticed the lunch pail was on the heavy side, and presently found that the thermos bottle contained some “high-grade” wrapped in paper and placed between the vacuum glass and the outside of the container. The miner was probably a good weightlifter but didn’t realize that gold has an atomic weight about the same as lead. Security had waited until the miner passed through the gate before helping to arrange for his change of employment.

I remember when one mine captain was tipped off about an over-industrious miner who reputedly worked during his lunch break. Curious about this unusual behavior, the superintendent approached the unused stope with his lamp turned down, Sure enough, there was a miner sitting on an empty Forcite box tapping away at a piece of rock with a sampler’s hammer. In fact, he was separating high-grade from a piece of quartz and putting it into a partially filled container, which he obviously did not intend to donate to the mine.

The superintendent relit his lamp, thanked the entrepreneur for his enterprise, put the contents of the container in his shoulder bag and sent the miner to surface to pick up his final cheque.

Other attempts included hammering the malleable gold into small cubes that could be fastened with chewing gum into spaces between teeth or dentures. this method was not recommended for miners with dental spaces in the front, or for those who might be inclined to smile upon arriving at surface.

And then there was the stranger who showed up frequently around Porcupine or Kirkland Lake and who would offer to buy any high-grade, with no questions asked. Most miners assumed the “stranger” was on the payroll of the local mines and not and honest-to-goodness fence.

Miners caught at high-grading were blacklisted and not considered suitable for employment in the mining industry. That may seem equivalent to “giving a man a fair trial and then hanging him,” but, under the circumstances, it was generally accepted as just treatment by the mining fraternity.

— Orval Bush worked in the Kirkland Lake, Timmins, Noranda and Elk Lake areas in the 1930s. Now retired, he lives in Stittsville, Ont.