ODDS’N’SODS — Major Dunlop and Red Lake

A native of Toronto, Maj. C.J. Cunningham-Dunlop was one of Canada’s outstanding mine-finders. He was born on Sept. 16, 1873, the son of James Cunningham-Dunlop, a professor of Upper Canada College in Toronto (who was born in the village of Dunlop in the parish of Cunningham, Ayrshire, Scotland, where this hyphenated name can still be found today).

Maj. Dunlop served in the South African War and, in 1915, moved to St. Catharines, Ont., to work for Coniagas Reduction Co. In 1918, he moved to Haileybury, Ont., to attend the Haileybury School of Mines. Later, he became field engineer for Coniagas Mines in Cobalt, Ont., and staked claims for the company in the northern Ontario communities of Kirkland Lake, Larder Lake, Rouyn, Red Lake, Uchi Lake and Woman Lake.

He received secret information about the Howey gold discovery in the Red Lake area in October, 1925, and went in by canoe to stake claims for Coniagas on the northern side of the discovery (early prospectors had favored the southern side).

Dunlop left Red Lake just before freeze-up in November, 1925. He believed the area would become an important gold-producing camp because he had found gold values near Balmer Creek, at the junction with Chukuni River.

He returned to Haileybury and resigned from Coniagas, and then went to Toronto where he raised finances and formed three new syndicates — Dunlop Red Lake, Toronto Red Lake and Patricia — early in January, 1926.

He took his own dog team from Haileybury and a crew of 12 men by train to Hudson, Ont., near Sioux Lookout, where he hired three more dog teams to carry his camp gear and supplies into Red Lake (135 miles along a chain of frozen lakes and rivers).

The crew staked 57 claims in Balmer Twp., 30 claims for the Dunlop Red Lake Syndicate and 27 claims for the Toronto Red Lake Syndicate. Stripping and trenching began on May 27, 1926, as soon as the snow melted.

Visible gold was found on claim K138, and 1,000 ft. of trenching was carried out. Two test pits were sunk, and more visible gold was found in each; 1,200 cu. ft. of rock were removed from the pits.

He took his dogs back to Haileybury and purchased supplies. Dunlop estimated that on his way out, he had met 500 men and about 5,000 sled dogs going into Red Lake. The trail was well-packed and hard, and men were eager to get their outfits and supplies into Red Lake before spring breakup in April.

Dunlop brought in two stem diamond drills to work both properties on Balmer Creek in the winter of 1927-28, but no defined orebodies could be mapped (visible gold was observed in isolated veins).

The properties went open after Dunlop’s death in 1929. When he was on his deathbed, he urged his sons to keep in good standing those Red Lake claims on which he had found visible gold. This was not possible, however, and several individual prospectors restaked several claims, but they eventually let them go again.

Prospector Gordon Shearn of Red Lake, who has been in Red Lake since the rush of 1926 and had worked for Dunlop, felt that these open claims would become producing gold mines in the future.

Shearn hired a partner in early January, 1944, and they restaked Toronto Red Lake’s original 16 claims on Balmer Creek. The weather was minus 40 F, but they finished staking and recording. Shearn then optioned his claim group to Irvin Isbell of Toronto, who then sold half of his interest to John Dickenson, a mining engineer who formed Dickenson Red Lake Mines. (Dickenson was financed by John Brewis and Arthur White of Toronto.) The company soon found an orebody by drilling; a shaft was sunk and a mill purchased. The mine went into production in 1948 and produced more than 3 million oz. gold by the end of 1994.

— A regular contributor, Donald Parrott is a retired operating engineer living in Thunder Bay, Ont.