Red Lake: Golden Treasure Chest.

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.

Of all the road-connected municipalities in Ontario’s northern extremities, Pickle Lake is northernmost and Red Lake most north-westerly. The first is more than 250 kilometres north of the TransCanada Highway (Hwy 17); the second about 150 kilometres. On a Torontonian’s mental map, either is a world away. From Toronto, on a determined traveller’s timetable, each is a three-day journey by road. Both began their modern iterations as gold-mining locations. Only Red Lake is sustained at present by a gold mine within its environs.

Michael Barnes has made a second successful career as a writer, whose interests have produced books on policing (his first career), and mining in northern Ontario communities. His latest book focuses on the history, present realities and future prospects of Red Lake. He begins by presenting a rudimentary digest of Red Lake’s geological history, but one based on the most recent research. This is followed by a survey of mineral prospecting in the 1920s, the men who drove the first stakes, and the gold rush that followed. Subsequent chapters trace the elaboration of underground networks at various mines, the construction of power plants and milling facilities, as well as the challenge of devising cost-effective modes of transportation with the outside world and working out the contentious problems of company consolidation and the transfer of ownership. The air service deserves and receives a chapter on its own. In fact, a Norseman air freighter dominates the cover on the book. The second half of the book focuses on the community of Red Lake, its satellite communities, and its mines and mining companies over the last fifty years. Of particular interest to the non-specialist reader are lucidly written descriptions of modern hard-rock mining technology and processes. Barnes concludes with a chapter on First Peoples and another on the development of the Gold Eagle prospect, with its promise of extending Red Lake’s mining economy into the twentieth century.

Recommended.