Northern Ontario History – Page 14

Northern Ontario is to Southern Ontario is as Canada is to the United States – Well, almost… – by Livio Di Matteo (Northern Economist Blog – January 17, 2012)

January 19, 2012

Livio Di Matteo is Professor of Economics at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Visit his new Economics Blog “Northern Economist” at http://ldimatte.shawwebspace.ca/

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s recent comment that he does not want the future of the Northern Gateway pipeline to be decided by “certain” people in the United States who would like Canada to be one giant national park was remarkable in its parallels to the economic development situation in Northern Ontario.

In the case of the Northern Gateway, along with opposition from environmental groups and some First Nations in Alberta and British Columbia, a number of U.S. based environmental groups accompanied by some Hollywood celebrities have voiced opposition to the plan. In Northern Ontario, there have been complaints that the Far North Act and the Endangered Species Act will hinder northern development because of the wish of environmental groups in southern Ontario to turn the north into a vast provincial park.

The parallels are intriguing. The relationship between Northern Ontario and the south is remarkably similar to that between Canada and the United Canada. Relative to the United States, Canada is natural resource intensive and sparsely populated.

[Timmins] Mine shops aid war effort – by Karen Bachmann (Timmins Daily Press – January 14, 2012)

January 14, 2012

The Daily Press is the city of Timmins broadsheet newspaper

Karen Bachmann is the director/curator of the Timmins Museum and a local author.

Second World War impacted everyday life in the Porcupine Camp during 1942

A few local news briefs from 1942, courtesy of the Porcupine Advance newspaper. Jan. 25 was the date that was finally set for the official opening of the brand new United Church in Timmins. Located at the corner of Mountjoy Street and First Avenue, only the basement had been built at the time. Construction of the rest of the church was to move ahead in the spring with the help of both regular and volunteer workers.

Rev. J.C. Cochrane, D.D., superintendent of northern missions was secured as the guest speaker. A newly formed choir under the auspices of Mr. Wallace Young was prepared to sing special anthems and other musical numbers during the dedication service.

At that time, the charter roll of membership was to be presented as the basis of the organization, and the keys were to be turned over to the new church minister.

Lots to celebrate in [Timmins] 1912 – by Karen Bachmann (Timmins Daily Press – January 7, 2012)

January 7, 2012

The Daily Press is the city of Timmins broadsheet newspaper.

Karen Bachmann is the director/curator of the Timmins Museum and a local author.

HISTORY: Newspaper articles highlight the unbridled enthusiasm seen in the early days of the Porcupine Camp

OK, I’m feeling the pressure. This is the first article I get to pen for Timmins’ 100th anniversary, and it has to be special – so, of course, I’m frozen at my keyboard, awaiting Divine Intervention (or a third cup of coffee).

How to begin? What is there to be said?

Sadly, the stuff I should be writing about I am afraid to say, I have already written – the beginnings of the camp, the development of Northern Ontario, etc. … So, I pray your indulgence as I present to you a small piece based on the items from the front page from the very first Porcupine Advance newspaper, published on March 28, 1912 (Vol. 1, No. 1).

I have chosen to do this because the tone of that first newspaper and the articles presented back then really do illustrate the unbridled enthusiasm that was rampant in those early days of the Porcupine, and of the Town of Timmins.

Timmins Celebrating 100 years – by Karen Bachmann (Timmins Daily Press – December 31, 2011)

December 31, 2011

The Daily Press is the city of Timmins broadsheet newspaper.

Karen Bachmann is the director/curator of the Timmins Museum and a local author.

Timmins centennial kicks off New Year’s Day at the McIntyre Arena — one of the community’s icons

Well, here we are, finally, sitting on the cusp of our 100th anniversary celebrations for Timmins – and yes, we have much to celebrate, commemorate, ponder and enjoy.

From a small boomtown based on a hope and a prayer, Timmins has grown into one of the world’s most important mining municipalities.

We have been home to the world’s largest gold mine, the world’s largest zinc mine and one of the world’s deepest mines. We are still home to the mine that started it all, and it promises to be in production for many years to come.

Timmins also has many heroes in the fields of sports, culture, art, science and business. The city has seen many of its sons and daughters go on to tackle some of the world’s biggest challenges, be it in the laboratory or on a stage or in an arena or a lecture hall.

Drawings of the Porcupine Camp 1909-2009 Graphic Book – by Denis Newman

December 19, 2011December 18, 2011

A Great Christmas Gift

To order a copy of this $33.00 book, click here: http://www.highgradermagazine.com/books.html

Drawings of the Porcupine Camp 1909-2009 is a compendium of the Porcupine drawings of Denis Newman as we celebrate the Porcupine mines’ centennial.

Reminisce as you appreciate Denis Newman’s renderings of places where you worked and lived, or perhaps only visited in years past. These sketches will surely engender memories, both happy and sad, of all tha was near and dear to tose of us who knew and loved the Porcupine.- Syl Belisle

Denis Newman was born in Timmins and spent his early years on the Paymaster and Dome properties. After working at the Dome, Denis graduated from North Bay’s TEachers College and later Queen’s University. He now lives in Bellville with his wife Geneva. Most of his renderings focus on mine head frames and landscapes.

See below for more images:

[Kirkland Lake History] ERNIE’S GOLD: A Prospector’s Tale – by Brian (Chip) Martin

December 18, 2011

For an autographed copy of Ernie’s Gold, please contact the author at: chipmartin@sympatico.ca.

Great Christmas Gift: $20.00 plus shipping!

In the early 1900s, young Ernie Martin immigrated from Staffordshire, England, to Canada to seek his fortune. He finally ended up in Kirkland Lake, where gold was to be found if you were willing to work at it. Ernie was. And so was Harry Oakes. The two of them became prospecting partners. Ernie and Harry worked hard and non-stop to find a vein of gold so they could start a mine.

When it finally happened, the mine grew into a huge money-maker for the two of them. Ernie’s first wife, Mary, also was a prospector, and in fact ended up financially far better off than Ernie. Why was that? How is it that multi-millionaire Ernie Martin arrived at the end of his life virtually a pauper? This is a book full of surprises and answers — and a few questions.

Excerpt from Ernie’s Gold: A Prospector’s Tale:

Meanwhile, in Kirkland Lake, the town had reached a population of 13,000 and was weathering the Depression better than most communities. Job-seekers streamed in looking for work, but only a few were successful. Many moved on and only a few stayed behind. Relief rolls began to grow but remained comparatively small. At a time when one in ten workers was on relief in the depth of the Depression, only 205 families were on the dole in Kirkland Lake.

[Kirkland Lake History] ERNIE’S GOLD: A Prospector’s Tale – by Brian (Chip) Martin

December 18, 2011

For an autographed copy of Ernie’s Gold, please contact the author at: chipmartin@sympatico.ca.

Great Christmas Gift: $20.00 plus shipping!

Excerpt from Ernie’s Gold: A Prospector’s Tale:

Mary wasn’t particularly attractive, being rather short and sturdy in build with a sallow complexion and deep-set eyes. Her fierce, independent spirit discouraged some suitors who were seeking a more traditional mate; but in a land where men far outnumbered women, Mary’s odds had improved.

NFB Film: The Hole Story – by Richard Desjardins and Robert Monderie

April 5, 2015December 14, 2011

The following is from the National Film Board of Canada Press Kit

THE FILM

“Don’t know much about mines? Not many people do. Mines don’t talk. Especially about their history.” Richard Desjardins and Robert Monderie explore this history in their latest documentary, The Hole Story. Produced by the National Film Board of Canada, the film continues in the same provocative vein as their earlier Forest Alert.

The history of mining in Canada is the story of astronomical profits made with utter disregard for the environment and human health. It’s also a corrupt and sometimes sinister story. For example, during the First World War, nickel from Sudbury was sold to the German army to make the bullets that ended up killing soldiers from Sudbury in the Battle of Vimy Ridge. In Cobalt, a town in Ontario that once had no garbage collection, people were dying of typhoid.

Meanwhile, the first Canadian mining magnates were growing filthy rich selling silver to England from the 40 mines surrounding the town.

Timmins has its own shameful mining story. In the woods,50 kilometres west of the railroad, prospectors quickly staked their claims before heading to the government office to register their hectares and take ownership of the subsoil.

[Kirkland Lake History-Harry Oakes] ERNIE’S GOLD: A Prospector’s Tale – by Brian (Chip) Martin

December 18, 2011December 4, 2011

For an autographed copy of Ernie’s Gold, please contact the author at: chipmartin@sympatico.ca .

Great Christmas Gift: $20.00 plus shipping!

Excerpt from Ernie’s Gold: A Prospector’s Tale:

By all accounts, Harry Oakes had a comfortable upbringing, not the sort of background that would likely compel him to dream of riches and spend his life pursuing them. Unlike Ernie Martin and so many other men who stepped off the T&NO train at Swastika, Oakes didn’t see finding gold as a means of escaping modest circumstances.

[Kirkland Lake History] ERNIE’S GOLD: A Prospector’s Tale – by Brian (Chip) Martin

December 18, 2011December 4, 2011

For an autographed copy of Ernie’s Gold, please contact the author at: chipmartin@sympatico.ca.

Great Christmas Gift: $20.00 plus shipping!

Excerpt from Ernie’s Gold: A Prospector’s Tale:

By the time Mabel (Fetterley) had arrived in the Swastika area, Mary Violette had already been in mining country for several years. Mary came from even farther away, the small farm community of Goshen, Indiana. She would have a significant impact on the life of Ernie Martin.

Mary was born in 1874 on a farm at New Paris, just south of Goshen, the second of five children of Benjamin and Caroline Violette. Hers was a prominent family in the area, some of whom opted to drop the final “e” in their name. Mary’s father was the youngest of ten children born to John Wesley and Chloe Violette, who were among the area’s first settlers. One of Benjamin’s older brothers, John H., was not content to stay in farming and in the spring of 1850 joined the California Gold Rush. He was twenty.

Will Sellwood see its second boom with a [Ring of Fire] chromite smelter? – by Rita Poliakov (Sudbury Star – November 26, 2011)

November 26, 2011

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

You can still find the town of Sellwood on Google Maps. It’s not much of a map though, with one long street and a small marker off to the right, in the middle of a patch of nothingness. The site itself isn’t all that different.

About 20 km from Capreol, on a long, potholed road, there’s a sign marking the Moose Mountain Mine site, which, if all goes well, may one day host a ferrochrome production facility for Cliffs Natural Resources.

Other than some construction work (workers are grinding rocks into gravel), the site is a rocky wasteland, filled with ponds that probably started off as open pit mines and orange-tinted rocks that hint at iron deposits.

But in the early 1900s, Sellwood was a town of promise. “Sellwood was going to be the iron ore capital of the world,” said Stu Thomas, president of the board of directors of the Northern Ontario Railroad Museum in Capreol.

Timmins Arena was home to many NHL players – by Karen Bachmann (Timmins Daily Press – November 19, 2011)

November 19, 2011

The Daily Press is the city of Timmins broadsheet newspaper.

Karen Bachmann is the director/curator of the Timmins Museum and a local author.

A few news items from 1947 for your reading pleasure. For all the art lovers out there, Miss Helen Chisholm of the national art gallery came home to spend Christmas at her residence, 8 Maple St. S.

According to the news item “Timmins is proud to be the home town of Miss Chisholm, who has made quite a name for herself in the field of art … This past summer, Miss Chisholm was one of a group of artists who enjoyed a series of classes at Banff, Alberta, that scenic resort in the Canadian Rockies. The classes were in charge of A.Y. Jackson (a member of the Group of Seven). We anticipate still greater achievements from Miss Chisholm, another of Timmins’ offspring who aspire to a brilliant future.”

For those of you who think that nothing happened in Timmins, here is your gruesome story of the day. It appears that the body of a local trapper was found frozen in the Mattagami River.

[Kirkland Lake] Canada’s Mile of Gold regains its luster – by Euan Rocha (Reuters Canada – November 3, 2011)

November 3, 2011

http://ca.reuters.com/

KIRKLAND LAKE, Ontario (Reuters) – With a gleam in his eyes, Sidney Hamden recalls the glory days of Kirkland Lake, the little Canadian mining town in northern Ontario that was long ago dubbed “The Mile of Gold”.

Hamden, a spry 82-year-old, remembers his first big break in 1947 at the Lake Shore mine, then one of the deepest gold mines in the world, producing 8.5 million ounces between 1918 and 1965.

“We had seven mines. I personally don’t know of any other place that had seven major mines within a radius of two miles,” said Hamden. “If I’m not mistaken, in 1948 there were approximately 50 different places to buy groceries around town. We had 17 different hotels in the Kirkland Lake area alone.” But Kirkland Lake’s fortunes waned through the 1950s and 1960s, as costs rose and the price of gold stagnated.

Family story provides literary gold [Kirkland Lake history] -by Laura Stricker (Sudbury Star – November 3, 2011)

November 3, 2011

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

A man takes his wife on a cruise around the world. A month later, she discovers his mistress on board and gets revenge on her husband the best way she can think of — by beating him and giving him a black eye.

The man in question was Ernie Martin, a prospector who came to Canada from England hoping to strike it rich. Ernie, who was worth $13 million in 1936, is rarely mentioned in history books and his story has never been told. Until now.

Brian Martin, a London Free Press journalist and author, penned Ernie’s Gold: A Prospect Tale, a book about the o r’s prospector’s life and how he made his money. He was in Sudbury on Wednesday for two public events at the Mackenzie Street branch of the Greater Sudbury Public Library.

“Ernie’s Gold is a story about Ernie Martin, who is my great uncle, my grandfather’s brother.

[Northern Ontario history] Building Highway 11 – by Gregory Reynolds (Highgrader Magazine – Late Fall, 2011 issue)

November 2, 2011

This column was originally published in the Late Summer, 2011 issue of Highgrader Magazine which is committed to serve the interests of northerners by bringing the issues, concerns and culture of the north to the world through the writings and art of award-winning journalists as well as talented freelance artists, writers and photographers.

When northerners are not talking about the weather, they complain about the sorry state of many of the highways in Northern Ontario. They look with envy at the first-class highways and byways in the south and talk bitterly about Highway 17 being a death trap and think Highway 144 between Sudbury and Timmins should have a sign saying: “Drive at your own risk and only in daylight. Large trucks, moose and bears have the right of way.”

Still, the North does have a few highways that are no longer part way between cow paths and obstacle courses and residents do manage to get about.

It was not always so and the story of the Yonge Street extension that became today’s Highway 11 could be the history of any major traffic route in the North. While the money for highways came from the south, northerners built their own roads, prisoners, farmers and bush workers between seasons, the poor and those on the welfare rolls.