Eldorado: Canada's National Uranium Company

T.D. Regehr is a history professor at the University of Saskatchewan and
author of The Beauharnois Scandal: A Story of Entrepreneurship and
Politics.

Eldorado Gold Mines, Limited, and its successor company, Eldorado Mining and Refining Limited, were and are very unusual Canadian Companies. Despite its original name, Eldorado did not produce gold. Instead, the history of this company falls quite logically into two parts. From 1926 until World War II it was privately owned by pioneer mining promoters Charles and Gilbert LaBine and produced radium for medical applications, notably the treatment of cancer, in a difficult and competitive market.

During the second period, from 1942 to 1960, the company was nationalized and shifted to uranium production to meet urgent requirements of the United States military. Uranium contracts with the United States set the parameters of the company’s operations. In the late 1950s, the military requirements for uranium had been largely met, and Eldorado’s markets disappeared. The company was able to stretch out deliveries of some of the uranium under contract, but by 1960, the terminal date of this study, the original mine, at Port Radium on Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories, was closed, and operations at the Beaverlodge mine (Uranium City) in northern Saskatchewan, and the refining facilities at Port Hope, Ontario, were sharply curtailed.

The strength of this book is the wealth of technical and operational detail, which is related in a manner that even a non-expert can follow. Clearly Professor Bothwell has not only spent a great deal of time with technical manuals and the relevant scientific literature; he has understood and made intelligible to others this information.

The book, of necessity, also devotes a good deal of space to the complicated and controversial national and international negotiations that were an integral part of uranium marketing. At times the details of these negotiations obscure the broad outlines of the company’s history. Yet, when viewed as political and diplomatic history, these discussions retain a rather parochial company and Canadian focus.

The discussion of Eldorado’s peculiar position as a Crown corporation is more descriptive than analytical. Basic questions regarding the role of the state and private enterprise arise again and again, and some further analysis would be a most welcome supplement to the factual and narrative material given in the book.

This is a well-researched, authoritative, and readable history of the important and highly complex corporation that made Canada a very active participant in the development of nuclear energy.