Last updated Hollinger Mine. The headframe is the light-colored building in the center, unusual in that it is built of concrete. The dome-shaped building to the left is an ore storage facility.
The Hollinger Gold Mine was discovered on October 9, 1909, by Benny Hollinger, who found the gold-bearing quartz dike that later became known as Hollinger Mines. With his friend, professional prospector Alex Gillies, Hollinger had travelled to the Porcupine region in the wake of the Wilson expedition, which had recently discovered the future Dome Mine site. Hollinger and Gillies staked three claims each, and one for their former partner, Bernard "Barney" P. McEnaney, who had been unable to join them due to severe sciatica.[1]
The main Hollinger gold mine operated from 1910 until 1968. During that period 65,778,234 tons were milled, producing 19,327,691ounces of gold, indicating an overall grade of 0.29. The value of the gold produced is placed at $564.7 million.
Rumors of gold in the Porcupine area had been circulating for some time, but every attempt to start production had resulted in poor returns. In June 1909, a group of prospectors found a rich vein that would eventually become the Dome Mine, but at the time, it too remained undeveloped. However, the news was now out and prospectors started flowing into the area, resulting in the Porcupine Gold Rush.[2]
In 1909, Benny Hollinger, a young barber from Haileybury, and his partner, Alex Gillies, started prospecting in the area. When they met the Wilson expedition, they were told that all the good lots were staked for at least 4 miles (6.4km) west. So they went west, past the already staked-out claims, until they came upon an abandoned test pit near Pearl Lake, where Reuben D'Aigle had given up three years earlier. The two were exploring the site when Hollinger dug into a mound that demonstrated how unlucky D'Aigle was:[3]
... Benny was pulling moss off the rocks a few feet away, when suddenly he let a roar out of him and threw his hat to me. At first I thought that he was crazy but when I came over to where he was it was not hard to find the reason. The quartz where he had taken off the moss looked as though someone had dripped a candle along it, but instead of wax it was gold.[3]
They staked twelve claims near their discovery. Because different sponsors had staked them, they flipped a coin to determine how to divide them. Hollinger won the toss and took the higher ground.[3]
Noah Timmins, who had been successful with the La Rose silver mine in Cobalt during the Cobalt silver rush, purchased an option on Hollinger's claims and immediately started work on setting up mining operations. He set out in the fall of 1909 from mile post 222 on the Temiskaming & Northern Ontario Railway (T&NO) with a crew of twenty-eight men, two teams of horses, and two tons of supplies. Following an old lumber road, they had to blaze their own trail where the road had become overgrown. They arrived at the mine site on New Year's Day, 1910. Soon, Timmins had acquired 560 acres, which included the Hollinger, Miller, Gillies, Millerton, and Acme Gold claims. The Hollinger was incorporated and the Timmins group formed Canadian Mining and Finance Company Limited.[3]:99–103
In May 1911, the surface plant was lost to fire. Then the July 1911 Porcupine Fire devastated the area. However, the torrential rains afterwards exposed more quartz veins. By 1914, the mill was producing 800 tons a day from 54 veins. Electric locomotives were introduced in 1916. Eventually, Hollinger Consolidated Gold Mines encompassed 440 acres.[3]:104,127
By the end of the 1920s, the Hollinger was the largest gold mine in the British Empire and paid annual dividends of more than $5 million. By 1927, a 3.5 mile aerial tramway was in operation.[3]:129
In the 1930s, Hollinger Consolidated Gold Mines built 250 houses which were located in one area of the Town of Timmins. These houses remained in place right up until the late 1970s. The three room homes were designed and built identical to each other in every respect with the exception of the impregnated tar paper the covered them. Every second home was green with a red roof and the other was red with a green roof.
By 1945, the mine had 350 miles of underground railway, used by 36 electric locomotives, and 1,500 ore cars.[3]:140 The mine was so big that by the 1960s, it had almost 600 miles (970km) of tunnels.
Fire
Porcupine Mine Rescue Station
On February 10, 1928 smoke began to curl up from the main shaft house. At first no one could understand how fire could take place in a hard-rock mine. The Hollinger had its own safety inspector, in addition to the government official, but they had not visited all of the more than 100 miles (160km) of underground workings.
Hundreds of miners escaped to surface, but the news soon spread that others had been trapped on the 550-foot (170m) level. At that time mined-out stopes were not backfilled with waste rock, but one on the 550-foot (170m) level had been filled over the years with mining debris such as powder boxes, sawdust and wooden crates. It's believed that the fire started as a result of spontaneous combustion in this area.
There were accounts of individual heroism, and the Department of Mines, the T&NO, many others, and the community itself put forth a stellar effort to battle the disaster and alleviate the suffering. A relief train was sent up from Pennsylvania with rescue personnel experienced in coal-mine fires.
In the end, 39 miners succumbed to the smoke and carbon monoxide poisoning. An inquiry into the disaster recommended that mine rescue stations be set up in major mining camps. In 1929 the Porcupine Camp received the first mine rescue station in the province.[3]:129
Stompin' Tom Connors, the famous Canadian musician, composed and recorded a ballad about another later fire at the nearby McIntyre Mines (in February 1965), with Lord Thomson's "CKGB Recording" entitled "Fire in the Mine".
Current ownership/activity
The mine shut down in 1968, but was reactivated in the seventies as an open-pit mine.[3]:140
The mine site was acquired in December 1999 by Kinross Gold, prior to the bankruptcy of Royal Oak Mines. Most of the work on the site has concerned the management of ground subsidence resulting from the collapse of drifts and stopes that were not backfilled. Extensive subsidence has occurred at the Hollinger Golf Course to the southwest of the mine site.
The Hollinger mine site property was purchased by Goldcorp in 2016, and became an active open-pit mine.[4]
Hollinger Legacy Project
In 2012, Goldcorp signed a three-phase land-use plan agreement with the city of Timmins, which schedules mine closure for 2019. Future plans for the site include a new public park featuring Hollinger Lake, a sandy beach, picnic areas, and wilderness trails. The "Hollinger Legacy Project," aims to have completed Phase I by October 2017 and to complete the project in 2019. [5][6]
Timmins is a city in northeastern Ontario, Canada, located on the Mattagami River. The city is the fourth-largest city in the Northeastern Ontario region with a population of 41,145 (2021). The city's economy is based on natural resource extraction, and is supported by industries related to lumbering, and to the mining of gold, zinc, copper, nickel and silver. Timmins serves as a regional service and distribution centre. The city has a large Francophone community, with more than 50% bilingual in French and English.
Swastika is a small community founded around a mine site in Northern Ontario, Canada in 1908. Today it is within the municipal boundaries of Kirkland Lake, Ontario. It has frequently been noted on lists of unusual place names.
Cobalt is a town in Timiskaming District, Ontario, Canada. It had a population of 1,118 at the 2016 Census.
William Henry "Bill" Wright was a Canadian prospector.
Dome Mine is situated in the City of Timmins, Ontario, Canada; and was developed during the Porcupine Gold Rush.
Hollinger Park is a municipal park in Timmins, Ontario, located at the southeast corner of Algonquin Blvd. and Brunette Road.
Kinross Gold Corporation is a Canadian-based gold and silver mining company founded in 1993 and headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Kinross currently operates six active gold mines, and was ranked fifth of the "10 Top Gold-mining Companies" of 2019 by InvestingNews. The company's mines are located in Brazil, Ghana, Mauritania, and the United States. It trades under the KGC ticker in the New York Stock Exchange, and under K in the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Noah Anthony Timmins was a Canadian mining financier and developer who is now counted among the founding fathers of Canada's mining industry.
The McIntyre mine is an abandoned underground gold mine in Schumacher, Ontario, Canada, which has earned a place in Canadian mining history as one of the nation's most important mines. Its iconic headframe, located near downtown Timmins, has come to represent the entire Porcupine Gold Rush. The McIntyre also yielded a considerable amount of copper over its life.
The Porcupine Gold Rush was a gold rush that took place in Northern Ontario starting in 1909 and developing fully by 1911. A combination of the hard rock of the Canadian Shield and the rapid capitalization of mining meant that smaller companies and single-man operations could not effectively mine the area, as opposed to earlier rushes where the gold could be extracted through placer mining techniques. Although a number of prospectors made their fortune, operations in the area are marked largely by the development of larger mining companies, and most people involved in the mining operations were their employees.
Reuben Bennett "Sourdough" D'Aigle (1874–1959) was a Canadian prospector who made numerous discoveries in the Klondike, Ontario, Quebec and Labrador. Although successful with several of these ventures, he remains best known for missing the Porcupine Gold Rush by only a few feet, a huge deposit being discovered directly beside one of his abandoned test digs. His last major discovery was a major iron deposit in Labrador, although he was unable to personally develop the site due to the Wall Street Crash of 1929, which dried up development funds. He was so well known that his death was mentioned in Time Magazine, who quoted his easygoing take on his losses in Labrador; "I was just there a darn sight too soon, but I have certainly enjoyed myself."
The city of Timmins, Ontario, Canada contains many named neighbourhoods. Some former municipalities that were merged into Timmins continue to be treated as distinct postal and telephone exchanges from the city core.
The Cobalt silver rush started in 1903 when huge veins of silver were discovered by workers on the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway (T&NO) near the Mile 103 post. By 1905 a full-scale silver rush was underway, and the town of Cobalt, Ontario sprang up to serve as its hub. By 1908 Cobalt produced 9% of the world's silver, and in 1911 produced 31,507,791 ounces of silver. However, the good ore ran out fairly rapidly, and most of the mines were closed by the 1930s. There were several small revivals over the years, notably in World War II and again in the 1950s, but both petered out and today there is no active mining in the area. In total, the Cobalt area mines produced 460 million ounces of silver.
Violet Rita "Viola" MacMillan was a Canadian mineral prospector and mining financier. During her career, she was one of few women in the mining industry, was the first female member and, later, president of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada, and the first woman inducted into the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame.
John McMartin was a businessman, mining executive and political figure in Ontario, Canada. He represented Glengarry and Stormont in the House of Commons of Canada from 1917 until his death in 1918, as a Unionist Party member.
Ontario Mine Rescue is the program that creates, oversees and evaluates mine rescue training and standards in the province of Ontario. The Ontario Mine Rescue program is administered by Workplace Safety North, part of the prevention arm of the Ontario Ministry of Labour.
Benjamin Hollinger (1885–1919) was a Canadian barber turned prospector from Haileybury, Ontario, now considered one of the Founding Fathers of Timmins, Ontario, Canada. He was born April 10, 1885 in Point Alexander, Ontario, the youngest son of schoolteacher John Hollinger and Sarah Sutherland.
The Timmins Underground Gold Mine Tour was a tourist attraction owned and operated by the City of Timmins from 1990 to 2013.
Henry Timmins was a Canadian shopkeeper who, with his younger brother, Noah, became an influential mining financier. The brothers are considered to be among the most significant founding fathers of the Canadian mining industry.
Alphonse-Arthur "Al" Paré was a Canadian mining engineer.
References
↑ Bachman, KarenArchived 2017-11-07 at the Wayback MachineThe Daily Press, "Mines focal point of local industrial history", October 20, 2017. Retrieved November 2, 2017.]
↑ Pain, S.A. (1960). Three Miles of Gold. Toronto: The Ryerson Press. p.6.
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