ODDS’N’SODS — Northern `Diamond Queen’ (1)

The search for gem stones in the Northwest Territories is not the first diamond story to come out of Canada’s North.

Under the front-page headline “Famous Story Dies With Diamond Queen,” an obituary in the Nov. 26, 1952, edition of The Northern Mail (a weekly published out of The Pas, Man.) told of the death of “the North’s fabulous Diamond Queen.”

Who was this Diamond Queen? Where did she come from? How did she acquire the title and what was she doing North of 53?

She had no direct involvement in mining. Unlike Viola MacMillan, she had never organized a mining company, and unlike Manitoba’s Kathleen Rice, she had never staked a mineral claim (although a Manitoba prospector had named a claim after her). Nevertheless, she was closely associated with mining people, in both South Africa and Canada.

She was Sophie May Ryan, born in London, England, the day after Christmas in 1876. A beautiful girl, she had a lovely singing voice which was said to very powerful considering her height — a mere 5 ft.

Sophie performed on the London music hall stage in her early teens. Sometime in the mid-1890s, the troupe with which she was appearing went on a tour of South Africa. She was enthusiastically received at Kimberley, in the heart of the diamond field.

The miners applauded her singing by showering her with rough diamonds from the diggings that were tossed on the stage. She became known as “the Diamond Queen,” a sobriquet she kept for the rest of her life.

Legend has it that Sophie had many suitors. One of the most ardent was the diamond magnate Barney Barnato, arch rival of Cecil Rhodes for control of diamond mining.

When her troupe returned to England, she remained in the country and married Captain Law, a British army officer stationed in South Africa. In 1902, they emigrated to Canada, settling in Toronto. When her husband died, she decided to move west, arriving in The Pas sometime in 1911.

In those early days, The Pas was a rough, tough frontier town whose main activities were logging, trapping and fishing. The mining boom was still a few years away. Why she chose The Pas as her home base is a mystery, but she was to spend the next 40 years there.

Innumerable stories about the Diamond Queen have been told over the years, many of them apocryphal. One of the better-documented tales follows. I might as well call a spade a spade and inform readers that Sophie began bootlegging shortly after she reached The Pas. Northerners took a tolerant view of bootlegging and the Manitoba Provincial Police had the unenviable task of enforcing the highly unpopular liquor law.

One day, the town council ordered a raid on the Queen’s place, news of which was leaked. A large crowd was on hand to watch the fun, and they saw more than they anticipated. When the police squad started pounding on the door and demanded admittance, some of the Diamond Queen’s guests became worried that their names might appear on the court docket as “found-ins.” “Relax and enjoy your drink,” the Queen said. “I can handle this situation.” As she headed for the door, she began removing various pieces of clothing until she was in what is known in Canada’s other official language as en deshabille.

She opened the door and, making out that she was being assaulted, grabbed one of the policemen and yelled: “Rape! Rape!” The cops, startled by this unexpected counter-attack, retired in some confusion to the jeers of the spectators. (Needless to say, the Diamond Queen would not be an acceptable role model for a Sunday school teacher.)

In 1915, she formed an alliance with Gilbert Lacroix, a blacksmith, with The Pas Lumber Company. This alliance was to last for more than 30 years. She began calling herself Mrs. Lacroix and when it looked as if Herb Lake would have producing mines, they opened a roadhouse on the Hudson Bay Railway, along the trail to Herb Lake. The trail was dubbed the “Gordon Highway” after The Pas politician who later was to give his name to the Sherritt-Gordon mine. — George Reynolds resides in Winnipeg, Man.