Great Northern Ontario Mines

John Abbott is a professor of history at Laurentian University’s Algoma University College. He is the co-author of The Border at Sault Ste Marie and The History of Fort St. Joseph.

The mines and mining culture of Northern Ontario have long fascinated a
coterie of promoters, investors, and armchair adventurers in the south.
In the middle of the 19th century, George Brown, publisher of the
Toronto Globe and fervent promoter of that city’s interests in the
northwest, sent roving reporters into the upper Great Lakes country.
Their stories revealed a barroom culture populated by prospectors who
delighted in displaying samples of ore from the great mines of that time
and place. At the turn of the 20th century, Stephen Leacock enthralled
readers with his unforgettable vignette of the Temiskaming and Northern
Ontario express clattering through Mariposa after dark, its dining car a
glowing tableau of white tablecloths, gleaming sliver, and sleek mining
millionaires on their way to El Dorado in the north. Then, in the middle
of that century, mining enthusiasts celebrated the wonderful morality
tale of Viola Macmillan and the Windfall farce.

This book is about the great mines of Sudbury, Timmins, and Hemlo;
Kirkland, Larder, and Red Lakes. Readers will discover mines both
passive and active: the Campbell, the Williams, Creighton, McIntyre,
Kidd, and Macassa, among others. Here are details about their
discoverers and developers; the nature of the ore bodies; the mining,
smelting, and refining methodologies associated with them; their
tonnages, yields, and a myriad similar details.

The volume’s weakness lies in the author’s failure to define his
audience clearly. Most professionals (mining engineers, promoters, and
prospectors) already know at least as much as this slim volume conveys.
Certainly they will be acquainted with the technical terms he uses. The
general reader needs more assistance. There is a short glossary of
mining terms, but it is simply inadequate for the interested
novice—who, at the very least, will need Bates and Jackson’s
Dictionary of Geological Terms. The author’s references also require
some elementary diagrams to explain mining practices, and some
assistance on the industrial side of the business. For example, while
Barnes does explain the Mond method of extracting nickel from the
complex Sudbury ores, he leaves the reader in the dark about the rival
Orford refining process.

Prospective readers should be prepared to consult other works for
context. Philip Smith’s Harvest from the Rock: A History of Mining in
Ontario would be a good beginning.