Canadian Rockhound: Some Samples to Remember!

It is not an understatement that every rockhound or mineral collector has one or more specially prized specimens, for their excellent crystal form, beautiful colour, or rarity. Some specimens in collections, however, are special in that they reflect, not unusual physical characteristics, but rather interesting events and sometimes even those of historical interest. In 1951, I was appointed Resident Geologist for the Districts of Thunder Bay and Rainy River, Ontario, by the Ontario Department of Mines. One of the duties was to examine, free-of-charge, rock and mineral samples submitted by prospectors and others and identify their contents and evaluate their potential significance. Most of the samples submitted to me contained little of value, the minerals pyrite and chalcopyrite commonly being mistaken for native gold. However, occasionally I would be the unhappy recipient of a sample that was destined to attract the attention of the press and I would find myself in the headlines of the local newspapers, the Port Arthur News Chronicle and the Fort William Times Journal. One of these was a pebble alleged to be a diamond.

The Fort Frances Diamond

In May 1953, a boy, while walking along a riverbank near Fort Frances, came upon an amber-coloured pebble about the size of a man's thumbnail. He gave the pebble to two local prospectors, Elmer Corrigan and Bob McCormick, who were searching for nickel deposits, for identification. The prospectors, in turn, showed it to Tom Parks, at the time the Chief Geologist for Selco Exploration Company. While in a local tavern, Tom Parks and other geologists found that they could cut off the tops off beer bottles with the pebble, and expressed the opinion that it could well be diamond, recalling that diamonds had previously been found in the glacial drift in the Lake Superior region. A local jeweller claimed that if the pebble was a gem quality diamond, it could be worth many thousands of dollars. The story hit the press the following day, May 21.

Tom Parks was quite excited about the boy's discovery, although suspected that someone was trying to play a joke on him. He then brought the sample to me to perhaps verify his identification. I found that the pebble could scratch a sample of corundum in my collection. Corundum is the world's hardest substance other than diamond, and tentatively verified Park's identification. At this stage, a reporter for the New Chronicle appeared on the scene. The following day, I was in the headlines quoted as saying the pebble was indeed a diamond, probably of gem quality, and worth a great deal of money. I then had to demand a retraction, claiming that there was no assurance the pebble was a diamond. Unfortunately, by this time the story became international and appeared on the pages of Time magazine. Tom Parks was called to appear at the company's head office in London, England, for an explanation! The sample was eventually submitted to the University of Toronto for X-ray identification. It turned out that the pebble was merely a worthless variety of chert with a peculiar structure that made it unusually hard or tough. Perhaps my sample of corundum was impure!

Jules Cross Silver
Figure 1. A part of Jules Cross' Sample of ore from the now-defunct Silver Islet Mine, The dendritic native silver (black) contrasts sharply against the Quartz- carbonate gangue of the vein. The richness of the ore was remarkable.

Jules Cross Sample of Silver Islet Ore

One day in the early 1950s, as my assistant, Jim Baillie and I were setting up a mineral display for the Ontario Department of Mines in the District Court House in Port Arthur, Ontario, Jules Cross, the well known discoverer of the Steep Rock Iron Mine, came into the office to show me a sample of rich ore from the now-defunct Silver Islet mine at the foot of Sibley Peninsula. Being a resident of Silver Islet Landing, the mine's former town site, he had a particular interest in the mine and rightfully proud of his sample, rare because additional samples were unattainable and the sample was unusually rich in native silver, with an assay value of several thousand ounces per ton. I asked Mr. Cross if it would be all right to take a piece of the ore for our display. He readily agreed, perhaps already expecting the request. Jim Baillie then took the sample to a local stonemason who had a large diamond saw on a traveling crane to cut off a piece for our display. The mason, without much thought for preserving the original sample, removed a slice about two inches in thickness and several inches across, then cut it into two pieces. Baillie then polished the two pieces with his personal lapidary equipment for the display. When Mr. Cross returned to the office about two weeks later, we presented him with one of the two polished specimens. He hastily picked up his damaged sample and left angrily, letting us know in no uncertain terms that we had ruined it. He refused the polished specimen we had offered him and left in a huff, never to return! Figure 1 illustrates one of the polished specimens, showing a dendritic pattern of blackened native silver in a matrix of white calcite. The richness of the sample is most striking, and it is not too surprising that attempts to reopen the mine since its closure in the late 1800's have been made.

Hitler's Radium

One day in the early fifties a well-dressed gentleman brought into my office a small vial containing a white powder which he claimed he had smuggled out of Germany at the close of the Second World War. He said he had obtained it from a nuclear facility and asked if it could be radium. I checked it with my Geiger counter and found it to be phenomenally radioactive. It certainly could have at least contained radium, although certainly nothing with which I was familiar. From my office, the gentleman must have gone straight to the office of the Port Arthur News Chronicle, for it was not long before a reporter and a cameraman came to see me for confirmation. Foolishly, I allowed the cameraman to take my photograph, while holding the vial and wearing the earphones of the Geiger counter. The following day my picture appeared on the front page of the newspaper. But even worse, I was mistakenly quoted that the powder was indeed radium and worth many thousands of dollars! You can imagine my mother's surprise to seeing her son suddenly looking at her from the television set during the national newscast! I don't know what happened to the sample after this rather embarrassing affair. But if the owner continued to carry the sample with him in his pant pocket, he surely must have been quickly sterilised!

Fraudulent Samples

Fraud was found to be common. One trick was to show me a rich mine sample, such as might have been obtained at the Geco mine at Manitouwadge, or the then-abandoned Zenith mine north of Schreiber, knowing that I would instantly recognise an unusual high content of copper or zinc. The "prospector" would then present the sample to a local businessman with a request for a grubstake of few hundred dollars in return for an interest in the "new" discovery In the event the businessman became suspicious, he was told that the resident geologist had also seen the sample and would verify it's potential value. Sometimes, the businessman would do so, and was quickly forewarned. More often than not, however, he did not take my advice, preferring, I suppose, to keep his investment a secret, and seeing a lucrative profit After all, others had made fortunes through grubstaking bone fide prospectors in the early days in the Province. I would only find out weeks later, that the "prospector" had disappeared with the money. It was difficult to explain to a businessman, who had never done any prospecting on his own, that a sample from a new find would nearly always show some evidence of weathering in the form of brown hydrous iron oxide.

On another occasion, while attending the Department's exhibit at the Canadian Lakehead Exhibition, a visitor presented me with a sample he claimed he had discovered in the glacial drift south of Lake Superior in Wisconsin, and wanted me to verify that it was a pebble like the one found near Ft. Frances, presumably so that he could convince some of his acquaintances to purchase it at a reasonable price. The sample, however, was not a pebble but rather a cut and faceted diamond, perhaps stolen and smuggled across the border! He disappeared before he could be reported the police.

A Gift for the Premier of Ontario on His Retirement

At the time of the retirement of the Hon. John Robarts, Premier of Ontario, George Wardrope, then the Minister of Mines and representative of the Port Arthur Riding, asked me to locate a suitable mineral specimen from Northwestern Ontario to celebrate the occasion. There were several possibilities: native gold from one of the Red Lake Mines, a polished sample of rich ore from the Manitouwadge area, amethyst from a vein deposit near Port Arthur, jasper from the Gunflint iron range, and agate from one of the beaches along the Lake Superior Islands. George Wardrope chose agate, provided we could provide a sample at least 6 inches in diameter. This was a real challenge for most agate samples in the area were about one inch in diameter or less. The problem was mentioned to a local dentist, Dr. Howard Quackenbush, a member of the Thunder Bay Mineralogical and Lapidary Society. Fortunately, Dr. Quackenbush had recently purchased a bucket of pretty pebbles from a native of Manitoulin Island for a dollar on the off chance it might contain a good specimen eroded from the Keweenewan lava flows in that locality. Amongst these samples was an ovate specimen of agate about 8 inches in length and 3 inches in diameter. I purchased the sample from Dr. Quackenbush for the princely sum of 8 dollars! Dr. Quackenbush kindly used his diamond saw to obtain a slice about one inch thick. This was polished on both sides and mounted on a bed of purple amethyst crystals. It made a lovely gift, which was shipped to Toronto in a specially made wooden case, and finally presented, to the Premier. The accompanying photograph (Figure 2) illustrates the nature of the gift, keeping in mind the sample comes from the heal of the pebble after it was sliced by Dr. Quackenbush, and is much smaller than the gift presented to Mr. Robarts.

Figure 2. Sample of Lake Superior Agate mounted on a base of amethyst crystals. The sample is similar to the gift presented by the Hon. George Wardrope to Premier John Robarts on the latter's retirement from the Ontario Government. Like many samples from the Thunder Bay area, the amethyst crystals have a reddish iron oxide coating.

A Grab Sample from Manitouwadge

A prized sample in my collection is one given to me by a local and knowledgeable prospector named Jack Brodie of Fort William. In the summer of 1953, Jack Brodie was employed by the U.S. Steel Corporation, which was investigating iron deposits in the region. A magnetically anomalous area detected by an aeromagnetic survey attracted the company to the Manitouwadge area Northeast of Marathon. Here another prospector named Roy Barker showed Brodie a deposit of sulphide mineralization, which Barker and his friends had recently staked. The deposit, or at least that portion of it shown to Brodie, was seen to contain copper mineralization but not of very high grade. But Brodie noted that the zone of weak mineralization was over 100 feet wide. He reported this to his supervisor, who apparently showed little interest. This excited Brodie, who, now having an opportunity to option Barker's property, collected samples to show prospective investors. One of these samples, still in my possession, contains about one percent copper. With this grade over a width of 100 feet, the deposit definitely appeared to have economic possibilities. Brodie, however, was unable to raise the money he needed to option the property. Subsequently, several engineers examined the deposit, but few showed any real interest. The property was eventually taken up by the General Engineering Co. based in Toronto. Diamond drilling surprisingly indicated that the deposit of disseminated mineralization, which had attracted Brodie, surrounded a core of massive sulphide mineralization very rich in copper, zinc, and silver. The now famous Geco mine has yielded many millions of dollars worth of metals and has been one of Canada's richest mines. To his credit, Brodie was the first knowledgeable person to bring the discovery to my attention.

McQuaig Float

Jack Brodie, while prospecting on his own in the Pigeon River area, was able to obtain samples of gabbro rich in pentlandite and chalcopyrite from an apparent outcrop found in Devon Township close to the American border crossing. This "showing" was once held by Falconbridge Nickel Mines, following its discovery by a geologist named McQuaig. When tested by drilling, however, the "showing" was soon found to be a large glacial erratic mostly buried in the glacial drift. Not to be deterred by this knowledge, Brodie prospected "up-ice" and found a prominent mesa capped by mineralized diabase in the adjoining Pardee Township. With samples from the Devon Township "float", he attempted to option his newly staked claims to various companies. Eventually the claims were taken up and a newly formed company, Great Lakes Nickel Mines, Ltd., tested the deposit by diamond drilling and underground exploration. This company succeeded in outlining, in the lower part of the intrusion, a large deposit of low-grade copper-nickel-platinum mineralization. Unfortunately, the mineralization was too low grade to be mineable under the economic conditions of the time.

Jim Baillie's Native Gold

In 1959, I was instructed by the Minister of Mines, Jim Maloney, to map the Big Duck Lake area north of Schreiber, where two of his friends, Vincent (Pete) Feeley and Joe McDairmid, had acquired a large property that contained numerous quartz veins, some of which were reported to contain native gold. With money obtained by operating an illegal gambling house at Cooksville, Ontario, they enthusiastically prospected their claims. But they met with little success. They remained avid in their search, however, and when my assistant, Jim Baillie, a rather irascible type, showed them a small sample containing native gold, and refused to tell them where it was found, they became distraught and reported this to the Minister.

The Minister immediately directed me to report to him in Toronto. I was on the verge of being fired and only escaped this fate by telling him that Baillie refused to disclose the location of his discovery because he thought that the two gamblers would have placed too much emphasis on the importance of the sample, which Baillie thought was a fluke occurrence. I don't suppose the Minister was taken in by this explanation, but both Baillie and I escaped dismissal, perhaps because of the Minister's association with the two men who were by this time under investigation by the provincial police. But in truth, I don't suppose Baillie's sample came from the area at all! Baillie was just being his usual ornery self!

Conclusion

In conclusion, the writer would like to stress that the average rockhound should not be too concerned if his/her collection lacks colour or beauty if it happens to contain a few specimens having memorable stories to relate to one's friends or other collectors. The actual gathering or collection of samples, or the historical events they represent often are more interesting than the samples themselves, and can incite a keen interest in mineral exploration, successful or otherwise, and present-day resource management.

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