The blossoming of an industry (1940-56)

Feb. 29, 1940

Falconbridge Nickel Mines Ltd. has an insurance policy against the possibility of losing its Norwegian refining facilities in the form of an offer from The International Nickel Company to provide accommodation for Falconbridge matte on a toll basis for the duration of the war.

This announcement, one of the most far reaching of the year in connection with the Canadian metal industry, came from J. Gordon Hardy, president of Falconbridge, in the course of his address to shareholders at the annual meeting held last Thursday at Toronto.

May 10, 1945

The ending of the European War will not see an immediate bursting open of development activity in the Canadian Mining North.

It will be weeks before any important numbers of men become available for the mining industry because warplant cutbacks will chiefly chase men into city civilian jobs, and the release of soldiers will be at best a slow procedure.

The base metal mines are shorter of men than at any time in the war and the demand for base metals continues high and urgent on the part of their customers. The Japanese War remains to be finished and in government circles there is no disposition to believe that it will be a quick and easy job.

The producing gold mines are also suffering from the most acute labor situation of the war period. If this were to last a couple of months more, several mines would be brought to a shut down, with dire effects upon their business communities. This situation, it is reported from Ottawa, must receive consideration.

There may be special situations where permission can be granted to developers of new mines to start preliminary work, that is, situations where such work would not interfere with other mining operations. But, it would appear that new developments, generally, will have to wait a little while longer before getting the green light. In the meantime they can, of course, keep on with their diamond drilling, confident that as soon as new labor begins to show any strength they will be given every encouragement to get going underground.

May 30, 1946

The shaft has been collared at Dickenson Red Lake. A portable compressor and other equipment was delivered last week. Preparations are well in hand for starting actual sinking. Five or six important ore zones are within easy reach of the shaft. It is expected that a large proportion of the initial development will be in material of mineable grade. Present plans anticipate a 500-ton mill.

Recent work, diamond drilling and resampling of old holes, has considerably cleared the geological picture. Many ore sections have been cut lately, representing several new ore zones as well as extensions to previously known bodies, The Northern Miner finds at the property.

All the exploration work to date has been within the four claims south of Balmer Lake and west of Balmer Creek. There are still 12 claims which have not been explored. That matter will be attended to at a later date.

Some difficulty was found in obtaining a suitable shaft site. Four vertical diamond drill test holes were put down before deciding on a site — ore kept getting in the way. There is still ore at the selected location, but not enough to warrant further delay.

June 9, 1949

Spurred by new discoveries of pitchblende as prospectors were able to get at the actual prospecting after spending some time in putting up camps, cutting trails and other preliminary jobs, the search for uranium ore north and east of Sault Ste. Marie is gaining momentum. Some 3,700 claims or the equivalent of 250 square miles, have been staked, and recordings are being made at the greatest rate since the discovery last fall by Robt. Campbell of what is now Camray, on the shore of Theano Point. In two days last week the recorder at Sault Ste. Marie put through 250 locations, or about a year’s average before the present excitement. Staking has spilled over into the Sudbury Mining Division, as prospectors work easterly along the north shore of Georgian Bay.

June 9, 1949

Ontario’s third ranking gold camp, the Red Lake area, is in pretty fair shape these days. At least, the health of the camp is as good as can be expected in these trying gold mining times, The Northern Miner can report after a tour through the district. This favorable sentiment, though, is restricted entirely to the present producing operations.

Outside exploration and development are at the lowest ebb in many years and Red Lake has seen some pretty flat times in the history of its first quarter century. Where two or three years ago there were scores of drilling projects in progress and as many more in prospect, to say nothing of a half-dozen underground jobs, today all The Northern Miner can find to report is one machine plugging away in solitary glory on the Macfie property and an X-ray program of assessment drilling winding up on the MacBuck group. Boymar, successor to McMarmac and Richmac, with its long exploratory drive on the 775 level, is the only development flag flying.

Despite this lack of new effort the camp is in fundamentally good shape. Rising out of the ashes of the 1945-46 drilling boom are last year’s two new producers, Starratt Olsen and Dickenson, and Dome’s Campbell Red Lake which turned over its fine new mill only a week ago. Three new producers starting up within a space of a year is no mean achievement for a camp that turned out its first gold 18 years ago. Last year’s $4,000,000 output represented an increase of more than 25% over 1947 and it will be 50% higher again this year.

Nov. 3, 1949

At Pine Point on the south shore of Great Slave Lake, not far east of Hay River, northern terminus of the Mackenzie Highway, Canada’s hopes for a big new lead-zinc mining camp have been entrusted to one of the most ambitious exploration programs undertaken in recent years. Here, 300 miles north of Edmonton, Consolidated Mining and Smelting Co., assisted by the minority participation of Northern Lead Zinc Ltd. and Hoyle-Ventures, is pouring men, money and machines into a grand scale prospecting venture, which if it succeeds, will mean the establishment of a sizable industry in a section of the country previously notable only for a few scattered trappers.

Sept. 3, 1950

Cartier Construction Company, Quebec, has been awarded the contract for building the 360-mile railway from Seven Islands, on the St. Lawrence River, to the iron range along the Quebec-Labrador boundary. Associated with Cartier are Fred Mannix & Co. Limited, of Edmonton and Vancouver; Morrison-Knudsen Corp. Boise Idaho; and McNamara Construction Company, Toronto.

The line will be known as Quebec North Shore and Labrador Railway Company. It will be wholly owned by the Iron Ore interests.

Work is to start at once. Completion of a temporary dock, at Seven Islands, for handling construction equipment is to be rushed. This equipment will be distributed this winter over the first 100 miles of the route, so that grading can be gone on with in the spring. Tunnels, of which there are several in the first few miles in the climb to the height of land from the St. Lawrence, are to be completed this winter, along with some of the heavier rock cuts. This will permit speedier grading.

Airfields are to be cut at regular intervals to service construction. Men will be put on cutting right-of-way and other pre-grading work this winter as fast as they can be accommodated in a big scale.

Oct. 11, 1951

New Brunswick is in the midst of the greatest wave of exploration in the province’s history, The Northern Miner learns from government and mining company officials.

The excitement revolves around copper and zinc showings mainly, along with some lead, in three sections of the province. The showings for the most part have been known for some time but have aroused new interest in the light of the great demand for base metals with accompanying high prices. One official summed up his company’s ground by saying that normally they wouldn’t take a second look
but now the need is so great that they couldn’t afford to chance passing anything by.

Some of the mining greats have taken an interest in the province, including such organizations as Noranda, Ventures, American Metal and Kennecott Copper. Other interested parties are M. J. O’Brien Ltd., F. M. Connell, B. W. Newkirk and Anacon Extension Ltd.

Diamond drills are known to be working on at least three properties and plans are heard for exploration programs on other blocks.

July 16, 1953

With upwards of 1,700 men and scores of machines swarming over two mountainsides, the Noranda subsidiary, Gaspe Copper Mines, is transforming a section of the Gaspe wilderness into the site of a modern industrial enterprise and a thriving town. It is one of the biggest “new mine” jobs ever attempted in Canada and has few counterparts elsewhere.

Without being seen, the scope of the job is hard to imagine and the bald figures hardly convey a sense of the effort and accomplishment that lies behind the development of a big-tonnage mine, the sprawling surface plant and the building of a brand new town which in a few years is expected to be supporting a population of at least 4,000 people.

A year ago a handful of workers was on the job and there was scant evidence that these hillsides, already denuded by logging operations, would soon give birth to activity of a different, and more permanent, sort. Today, broad acres have been cleared, miles of road have been constructed, blocks of houses line the streets in the rapidly growing townsite, and at the mine two big buildings already up and foundations in for several more sketch the shape of the industrial giant that will start to breathe a year hence.

True to Noranda tradition, nothing is being skimped. This is a big job. The operators know it and they have planned accordingly. They are building, for the future, a plant that is destined to be operating for many years. And as they build now, so will they reap later. The initial cost represents a financial hurdle that was no mean feat, even for Noranda with all its millions of assets, but the big expenditures now will pay off in low operating costs throughout the life of the mine.

Dec. 9, 1954

Manitoba is to be the scene of a really large-scale investigation of nickel ore possibilities. The locale is Moak Lake, a short distance north of Mystery Lake and 40 miles north of the Hudson Bay Railway, 450 miles north of Winnipeg. Here International Nickel will sink a shaft 1,300-1,400 ft., and then do 10,000 ft. of crosscutting and drifting. The main idea is to provide setups for an extensive campaign of underground drilling, deemed the only way to truly determine the ore situation.

Peridotite, the nickel host rock, does not outcrop and there are other limitations upon the information that can be secured from further surface drilling. Hence the underground program. The surface drilling has indicated, The Northern Miner can say, the existence of 50,000,000 tons of ore running 0.7% nickel, with some portions running higher and some showing lower values. Widths of up to 300 ft. of material have been had.

Since 1947, the International Nickel Company of Canada has been actively engaged in extensive exploration work in Manitoba covering in the main region along the Hudson Bay Railway between Herb Lake and Moak Lake, where numerous occurrences of nickel were reported in favorable geological settings. Extensive airborne geophysical work has been carried out by the company and since nickel bearing rock of the area rarely outcrops at surface a great deal of diamond drilling has been necessary to investigate encouraging indications.

Sept. 16, 1954

Consolidated Denison Mines is drilling the first deep hole at its uranium prospect in the Quirke Lake area, Algoma district, Blind River, and expects to contact the possible extension of the Algom Uranium Mines orebody before the end of the month, it is reported.

The hole is going down close to the joint boundary, near which Algom Uranium has started sinking a shaft. So far, geological formations intersected have conformed to the structure on the Algom property, says R. Benner, engineer, and it should follow that the formation will continue to depth.

If ore conditions extend into Consolidated Denison Mines property, it is anticipated they will be intersected at about 2,100 ft.

Sept. 22, 1955

Management and financing of Bethlehem Copper Corp. has been taken over by American Smelting and Refining Co. Bethlehem holds a 100-claim copper prospect in Highland Valley, about 26 miles southeast of Ashcroft, British Columbia.

Under the terms of the agreement, repayment of preproduction expenses is to be on a pro-rata basis from 80% of the first returns. The remaining 20% and all net profits are to be split on a 55-45 basis between American Smelting and Refining and Bethlehem.

A five-year program will be carried out, dependent on first year’s results. During the first year it is proposed to complete 10,000 ft. of diamond drilling together with surface work to cost $200,000. Blocking out of ore and production preparation work is expected to require two additional years. Mill construction and commencement of production are expected to be completed during the last two years of the program.

Oct. 27, 1955

Signatures were placed on the formal contract this week covering sales of uranium precipitates to be produced by Consolidated Denison Mines.

The premium price contract is for a total of $182,250,000 worth of precipitates to be delivered to Eldorado Mining and Refining by March 31, 1962. Target date for commencement of production is Apr. 1, 1957.

Several new records have been established by Consolidated Denison culminating in the signing of the purchase contract. It was less than a year ago (Nov. 11) that The Northern Miner stated the No. 3 hole had penetrated bands of uranium bearing conglomerate.

Between that time and late this June, diamond drilling had succeeded in outlining an indicated 12,500,000 tons grading 0.112% uranium oxide. There is no surface exposure of Denison’s ore to indicate the presence of any of this tonnage. It all lies deep underground.

March 1, 1956

With production and net income at an all-time record high, and with ore reserves increased to a new tonnage record, Asbestos Corp. in 1955 had the best year in its history.

It was a year of growth, in which the new Normandie mine was brought to full production, while the company’s other leading properties were kept at maximum capacity.