ODDS’N’SODS — Feeling no pain in Red Lake, Ont.

Prospector Sandy McIntyre discovered and staked the McIntyre Porcupine mine in Timmins, Ont., in 1909. Seventeen years later, he joined the Red Lake gold rush, entering town on snowshoes from the railway at Hudson, near Sioux Lookout.

He had trekked 135 miles with the McIntyre crew to work the company’s claims, which were discovered and staked at the same time as Lorne Howey’s discovery of the Howey gold mines. Sandy liked the excitement of seeing hundreds of men, with dog teams, on the trail. He enjoyed sleeping out in the open on the lakeshore at night for the 8-day journey.

At Red Lake, Sandy worked in the McIntyre assay office as a helper until spring. He then built himself a log cabin just outside the McIntyre and Howey claim line.

He sometimes came to work with a glow-on. No one ever found out how or where Sandy was getting his joy juice, until one day Sandy met an old friend and took him to his cabin and showed him his secret still. It was made from a 15-gallon, steel, gasoline drum, the lid of which had been carefully cut off. He boiled the drum clean and placed a porcelain glazed bowl inside with an inverted enamelled dish pan, which filled inside the bowl’s rim. The bowl floated on the mash, which was made of raw potatoes, beans, three cups of sugar, two yeast cakes and two gallons of water. This concoction was allowed to ferment for two days, after which time it was placed on the iron wood stove and slowly boiled for two hours. It was then taken off the stove, and the steel barrel lid, along with the inverted dish pan, was removed. What remained in the porcelain glazed bowl were about two quarts of clear, colorless liquid, which was subsequently poured into bottles. About a half a glass of liquid, mixed with warm water and sugar, made for a stimulating drink.

The spent mash was dumped outside behind the cabin and gobbled up by hungry stray dogs until not a shred of evidence was left. The porcelain bowl and enamelled dish pan were washed out. The steel barrel served as a swill barrel for dish water.

Sandy left Red Lake in late 1929 and returned to work in the drill steel shop of the McIntyre Mine in Schumaker, Ont. He retired at age 70 and died five years later, in 1943, in the veteran’s ward of the Christie Street Military Hospital in Toronto.

— A regular contributor, Donald Parrott is a retired operating engineer in Thunder Bay, Ont.