ODDS’N’SODS — Manitoba’s mining past

A good way to start an argument with a prospector is to tell him you are certain as to when the first mine in a province was discovered. Nine times out of 10, there will be a difference of opinion. Virtually the only exception is Manitoba, where the legend of the Red Cliff mine is undisputed.

On April 7, 1739, while encamped at his newly constructed Fort La Reine, near the site of today’s Portage la Prairie, La Verendrye, the most famous of the French explorers of the west, wrote in his journal: “I sent my youngest son Louis-Joseph with a savage to explore the region of Lake Winnipeg, and examine the rivers that flow into the lake, and also the mine which is on the lake.”

The mine that the 21-year-old had been sent to examine was the exposure of hematite or red iron ore at Red Cliff (sometimes called Red Rock) on the southeastern shore of Black Island, 5 1/2 miles from the western tip of the island.

No further reference to the Red Cliff deposit can be found in any of La Verendrye’s surviving journals or letters, but corroborative evidence of its existence can be found on the maps of the French regime.

Why was La Verendrye interested in the iron mine? He had been born in Trois-Rivieres, on the St. Lawrence, and he must have been familiar with the extensive outcrops of bog iron ore in the St. Maurice Valley, part of which was the seigneury of La Belle granted to his ancestors in 1672. This ore was the feedstock for Les Forges Saint Maurice, the first heavy industry in Canada. He may have hoped the discovery of a mine would result in increased grants for his exploration activities.

The natives had been quarrying the ore, red ochre, at Red Cliff for generations. They did not use it to produce iron or steel because they knew nothing about metallurgy; rather, they crushed and pulverized the red rock to make a crude form of rouge for facial and body decoration.

Prospectors first became interested in the iron ore on Black Island in the 1880s. In September, 1883, a Winnipeg entrepreneur, Frederick Proudfoot, commissioned a self-styled “assayer and mineralogist”, J.F. Latimer, to report on the iron formation. According to Latimer, the orebody outcropped for 150 ft. along the shore with an average exposed thickness of 7 ft. “I think we may safely assume that there are in the deposit (Red Cliff) several million tons of ore . . . a typical sample assayed 62% iron.” On the strength of Latimer’s glowing report, Proudfoot formed the International Mining & Smelting Company, which was financed largely by Minneapolis capital. A subsequent report by George Melvin, an English engineer, confirmed Latimer’s assays and estimated the ore reserves at 45 million tons.

In 1885, a dock was built at Red Cliff, and six tons of hematite were shipped by sailboat to Winnipeg and then by rail to Chicago where metallurgical tests were carried out at the J.H. Bass foundry. A car wheel was cast, and it was found that the ore was extremely low in deleterious elements such as phosphorous sulphur.

By 1890 the enthusiasm of the Minneapolis group had cooled, and they dropped out of the picture with the claims being turned back to Proudfoot. The claims changed hands once more, followed by a long period of inactivity, until 1943, when God’s Lake Gold Mines began a 2-year diamond drilling program. They found that the hematite persisted to a depth of 80 ft. and below that the drills entered rock carrying unaltered sulphides. The mining company had hoped the sulphides would be copper-bearing. But when little or no copper was found the project was abandoned.

In February 1963, the original Proudfoot locations reverted to the Crown, and in 1971, Black Island was made part of a provincial park. At the same time the iron formations on the island were withdrawn from staking, thereby writing the final chapter in the story of Manitoba’s first mine, which had first been seen 232 years before.

— A resident of Winnipeg, George Reynolds retired as general superintendent of the San Antonio mine in 1966.