Canadian Rockhound: My Favourite Rock Find - A Piece of Canadian History

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My Favourite Rock Find: A Piece of Canadian History
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My Favourite Rock Find:
A Piece of Canadian History

By Kathleen G. Beattie

All rock collectors have their favourite specimens, but what is the best 'find' you've ever made as a rockhound? Is it a doubly-terminated apatite crystal from Bear Lake Diggings, a shatter cone from Sudbury, a micro-crystal from Mont Saint Hilaire or an Alberta ammonite? One of my greatest mineral discoveries is an elusive, long-searched-for geode. I had always dreamt of finding an amethyst geode in-situ and, after years of searching, the specimen I found very nearly fit the description. On the rocky ledge of a roadcut in Hastings County, Ontario, I found a lightweight stone I instinctively knew would prove to have a geode-like vug. Eureka! It was not amethyst, but drusy quartz with a velvety hematite staining (Figure 1). Just as good, just as exciting.

Figure 1: Drusy quartz with hematite staining, from Musclow Greenview Roadcut, Hastings Co., Ontario. Photo by Kathleen Beattie.

Over the years I have collected many other interesting minerals, such as actinolite from Hastings County (Figure 2), beryl from the Beryl Pit Mine (Figure 3), and garnet and diopside crystals from Haliburton County (Figure 4) in Ontario.

(A)

(B)

Figure 2: Actinolite (rare) from Graphite Roadcut, Hastings Co., Ontario. (A) With feldspar crystals. (B) A small sample with well-defined crystals. Photos by Kathleen Beattie.

Perhaps my best find as a rockhound, however, came not from an old mine site or roadside outcrop, but from amidst the clutter of a junk shop. There it was sitting on a dusty shelf, a dirty-looking fist-sized lump of black rock. But, it caught my eye. Someone had long ago taken the trouble to grind and polish this seemingly dull stone on two sides, fashioning it into a paper weight or other memento of sorts. As soon as I picked up that nondescript stone and felt its considerable weight, I knew it was a metallic ore. On inspection, the dirt revealed itself to be black tarnish, and that told me it was silver. But a closer look would tell me I was also holding a piece of Canadian history.

Figure 3: Blue-green beryl crystal in feldspar pegmatite, from the Beryl Pit, Renfrew Co., Ontario. Photo by Kathleen Beattie.

Garnet

Figure 4: Garnet and diopside crystals in 'blue' calcite, York River Skarn, Haliburton Co., Ontario. Photo by Kathleen Beattie.

Let me take you back in time to Haileybury, Ontario, to the evening of September 22, 1922, on the auspicious occasion of the First Ceremonial of the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. It was a fair evening as the Shriners of Northern Ontario walked into the Rameses Temple for that first meeting, with the soft sound of dry leaves rustling and falling from the trees in the slight chill of the autumn air. To mark the event, the Nobles of this bustling silver mining region were honouring their most distinguished and prosperous resident, William H. Wright.

Just over a decade earlier, British-born Wright and his brother-in-law Ed Hargreaves, fed up with their house painting business, had set out from their Haileybury home to prospect for minerals further afield in the Temiskaming District. With $30, they were able on that first foray to stake only three claims on the mossy bedrock along the eastern shore of Kirkland Lake. The ground they staked glittered with gold, real gold. Before long, they had built a headframe and incorporated the Wright-Hargreaves mine. It made them millionaires. Later, after returning from WWI, Wright built a new 150-ton mill and, thus, the gold-mining town of Kirkland Lake was born.

By that autumn night in 1922, Bill Wright was living in a handsome house on the faulted shore of Lake Temiscaming, along what Haileybury townspeople called 'Millionaire's Row'. Tonight was his night, as he was to be named Illustrious Potentate of the fledgling Shriners group. On this special night, W.H. Wright would also be given a shining sample of Haileybury silver, 22 ounces of high-grade ore with a telltale pink erythrite 'cobalt bloom' (Figure 5). A small silver commemorative plaque adorned its polished dendritic surface, engraved with the words:

PRESENTED TO
ILL.POTENTATE W.H. WRIGHT
BY THE NOBLES OF NORTHERN ONTARIO
ON THE OCCASION OF THE FIRST
CEREMONIAL OF RAMESES TEMPLE AT
HAILEYBURY SEPTEMBER 22-1922

Cobalt
(A)
McKinley-Darrogh Mill ruins
(B)
Figure 5: (A) This historic silver specimen was presented to W.H. Wright in 1922, in Haileybury, 12 days before the Great Fire destroyed the town. (B) McKinley-Darrogh Mill ruins, Heritage Silver Trail, Cobalt, Ontario (August, 2002). Photos by Kathleen Beattie.

Little did any of the Nobles of Northern Ontario know that William H. Wright's tenure as Potentate was to be short-lived. On this clear, crisp evening no one could know that their wonderful town was about to be destroyed by one of the ten worst disasters in Canadian history. Haileybury would burn to the ground less than two weeks later on October 4th, 1922, in what was to be known as the Great Fire. Over 2000 square miles of brush and town would be incinerated, leaving 3,000 people homeless and 11 dead. Of the 70 houses that remained standing, those along stately Millionaire's Row were saved, doused with the indigo waters from that deep graben, Lake Temiscaming.

Somehow, W.H. Wright's rock survived the fire because 70 years later this lost trinket became my $3 treasure. Worth far more than its weight in silver, how it came to be blackened with tarnish and undistinguished on a second-hand store shelf remains a mystery. After the fire, Wright moved to Barrie to carry on his many, varied business interests and horse breeding hobby. With a fortune of $35,000,000, he became one of Canada's wealthiest tycoons who would go on to buy two Toronto newspapers, The Mail & Empire and The Globe, and merge them into The Globe & Mail in 1936. In honour of its first owner and president, the Toronto-based national newspaper would for many years be housed in the William H. Wright Building. He died in 1951 at the age of 75 and, I am told by the curators of the Haileybury Heritage Museum, that his only heir was a niece in Barrie, also now deceased. To commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Great Fire, in the fall of 2002 the town of Haileybury held a reunion of a small handful of survivors and unveiled a lakeside sculpture dedicated to the heroes of that fateful night.

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