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Sault Star - February 4, 2012- There's gold in them hills: eastern shoreline of Lake Superior has brilliant past

5/22/2012

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Picture
Grace Gold Miners and cook staff, 1908
If you enjoy watching shows like Gold Rush Alaska  and  reading about the famous Klondike Gold Rush, you might be surprised to know that  the rugged eastern shoreline of Lake Superior is also home to a dynamic gold  rush history which continues to this day.
 
A picnic in 1897 on Mackey Point on scenic Wawa Lake was the staging area for  Algoma’s first gold rush when Louise Towab and William Teddy uncovered a gold  laced quartz vein.  While the  Klondike gold fever was still fresh in everyone’s blood, one thousand hopeful souls flocked to the tiny Michipicoten River Village and Hudsons’ Bay Company post.  Visions of rich placer gold  fired their imaginations. Every creek bed, river and stream were staked and panned.  
 
By September 1897, some 1,700 claims were staked. The area was proclaimed a mining division and the first Ontario Mining Recorder’s Office was set up at the  abandoned Michipicoten HBCo. Post.  WaWa City was surveyed and registered in 1899.   The gold seekers soon discovered that there were no nuggets to be  had.  The most productive “gold  mine” in the area was the local hotel and tavern known as the Balmoral Hotel,  which sat where the Lakeview Hotel presides  today.
 
The rugged Michipicoten mountains did reveal their worth to  those more patient and practical prospectors who secured finances and resources  to drill, explore and develop some of the more profitable veins hidden beneath  the forest floor.   Dozens of  mining camps began to dot the landscape.  Of note during this first gold boom were the Grace, Norwalk, Jubilee,  Sunrise and Kitchie Gami.  In March  1903 newspapers reported “8 gold bricks  valued at $8,630 were received at the Imperial Bank from the Grace Mine, result  of 4 weeks’run.”  At the  current price of gold these bricks would have been worth over  $700,000.

The stock market crash of 1929 threw many in despair.  But in Wawa the gold rich quartz veins  called out to many who were driven by sheer determination to make a profit.  The high unemployment rate in Sault  Ste. Marie at the time led to an influx of grubstaking.   Merchants would fund grubstakers to travel up the coast to  Michipicoten and WaWa City to look for gold with the understanding that if gold  was found, the merchants would get their share. New gold veins were uncovered,  many new mines were opened and some of the original abandoned mines were dusted
off and reactivated.
          
Many of these grubstakers added their muscle and long hours to  the hard-working crew at places like the Minto, Darwin and Parkhill mines.  Labourers were told they would not be  paid until the mine actually poured its first gold brick.   Even though it was the “Dirty Thirties”, a headline in the Sault  Daily Star on January 6, 1932 read “Michipicoten Snaps Fingers at Depression,  Advances More in 1931 Than in All History.”  The Parkhill was mining veins that were  producing 1.9 oz/tonne at 50 to 100 tonnes per day.   The price of gold per ounce in 1932 was $20.67.    The price of gold today is $1685.00/oz.  Local gold mines today on average  produce 850 tonnes of ore per day which assay at approximately .3  oz/tonne.
 
During this second Wawa Gold Rush, immigrants flocked to the  many mine sites which came to be known as Gold Park.   Many could not speak English and were unable to find jobs anywhere else  especially for the relatively higher mining wage of $.50/hour.   Life in Gold Park was good.   The area boasted 300 souls while the Wawa town site was little more than  a supply depot. With the onslaught  of World War II, iron ore became the new resource on demand and gold mines were  quickly phased out. Workers and  families at the Gold Park communities moved themselves, their furniture and  sometimes their homes to the booming communities of Wawa and Sault Ste  Marie.

Gold mining activity in Wawa was reignited in the late 1960’s,  when the original Cora shaft of the Jubilee gold deposit was reopened.  In the late 1980’s old mine shafts from  the past 80 years were pumped out at sites like the Sunrise, Kozak, Canamax,  Kremzar and Citadel.  Today the  high price of gold and advanced mining technology continues to encourage  exploration of the original gold veins of the 1897 Wawa gold rush.    Gold mining is still an important part of the unique resource based economy of Northern Algoma at Wesdome, Richmont and Edward Mines.

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February 26, 2011 - Sault Star Wawa vs. Wolves - call it the nature of the beast

6/15/2011

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Picture
Sled dog team and Michipicoten River Residents in front of St. Margaret Mary Church c. 1920

Those of us who enjoy our after dinner stroll with Fido in tow should be aware that we are not the first residents to anxiously glance toward the shadows near the edge of town and beyond the comforting glow of our flickering street lights.   

Like all citizens of Northern Algoma, Wawa residents live in a remote and scenic corner of Northern Ontario. We know that our dues for being lucky enough to call this our home, is to endure suffocating black flies, blinding lake effect snow squalls, hungry black bears and curious wolves. 

During the severely cold winter of 1910-11, residents of Wawa (both human and canine), were desperate for meat.  A load of frozen beef hauled by horse and sleigh on the Grasset Trail between Missinabi and Wawa was trailed by a hungry pack of wolves for several miles.  One by one, quarters of beef were shoved off the sleigh and sacrificed to the wild dogs in order for the driver and horse to gain a mile or two before the pack reappeared to resume their next course.  Every morsel of meat gone, the driver feared that his horse would be next on the menu before reaching the safety of the Helen Mine camp near Wawa.

The sacrificed meat was originally destined to feed the 200+ hungry iron miners and their families.  The only other available meat in the vicinity was a small heard of caribou that wintered between Wawa and Michipicoten Harbour.  With permission from the Dominion Government, desperate residents dispatched the entire herd.

Wolves were a concern again during the winter of 1924-25.  The Sault Star headline for November 22, 1924 read “Joe Ball, of Michipicoten, With Clothes Torn Off, Won Desperate Battle with Wolf Which Attacked Him – Hobbled by a snowshoe and unarmed he strangled the wolf with a piece of trappers’ cord.  Beat off three others with snowshoe he was able to remove from his right foot.” (The Sault Star, 22Nov1924)

During the lean years of World War I, many citizens began raising their own live stock for food.  Alex Ross, a long-time resident on Broadway Avenue had to dispatch the largest wolf he had ever encountered in order to save one of his prize pigs.  “Skinned, the pelt was over 7 feet long, the biggest wolf I ever seen and the only one I ever got during my long years up here and he had to come right into my back yard and ask to be shot.” (The Sault Star, 4Jul1935)  Mr. Ross’s sow had both ears chewed off and became a local curiosity for Wawa residents and visitors alike.

In 1935, a Sault Star correspondent postulated the theory that the rise in daring wolf attacks in the Wawa area was due to the cross-breeding of timber wolves and domesticated dogs.  At the turn of the 20th Century, hardy sled dogs were a valuable addition to the winter work force at the bustling Michipicoten Harbour and railway operations.  With the collapse of the Clergue empire in 1903, the 28 dogs were “turned loose, and soon became wilder than the worst wolves and hunting in a pack, old timers say, [giving] rise to the stories of parties being trailed by hungry wolves …These dogs, in time, crossed with the wolves and gave rise to a large variety of timber wolf.”  (The Sault Star, 26Feb1934)

Advice for us from Joe Ball in 1924 after a pack of young wolves attacked him:  “A wolf is always hungry and is never hungry.  By which he means that he can defer eating till another day if he wishes to…Young wolves are notoriously venturesome like young dogs.  Anyone acquainted with young dogs knows how irresponsible they are…and it may be agreed that a young wolf has no more sense than a young dog…Mr. Ball has no fear of a wolf.  But he thinks no one should be foolhardy.” (The Sault Star, 22Nov1924)

Wawa vs. wolves will continue to be a story of respect for our nature and our heritage.

                                                                    --oOo--

To read the original 1924 Sault Star article on Joe Ball's harrowing fight with the wolves, go to my first blog "Wawa vs Wolves".
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    Johanna Rowe

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