NORTH OF FIFTY-THREE

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 31, 5 August 1936, Page 12

NORTH OF FIFTY-THREE

MINING IN CANADA

FLIN FLON AND GOLDFIELDS

(From '-'The.Post's" Representative.) . VANCOUVER, July 15.

Practically unique among.the Avorld't major producing mines is Flin'Floh, in Northern Manitoba, -on the fringe of the Arctic Circle, where the.-Hud-son Bay Mining and Smelting " Company employs 1500 men in-'a"plant hi which £6,000,000 has been invested, where work never ceases, day or night, summer or winter, where the payroll aggregates £500,000, and the producKwwffijS. allied tf^ i->

The name Flin Flon has its origin in popular' fiction.' Josiah Flihtabatty Flonatin, having secured the backing of Barnum, famous circus promoter, built a submarine in which he descended to the bottomless depths of a lake in an isolated region of the Rockies. After descending for two weeks, he located treasure—whole mountains of gold. "Flin Flon" filled his submarine with treasure. He wa» captured by a race of strange people who did everything backwards. Their language was English,' spelt in reverse. The streets were paved with gold. The coinage was iron. The women ruled the country; the men were delicate, carefully protected and sheltered. The ruling Princess, who was twice "Flin's" weight, and as boisterous as he was shy, wooed him so ardently that he fled from her capital, Esnesnon (Nonsense). Reaching the outer world, he found that a monument had been erected to his memory, in the belief that he was dead. Thereafter, all impossible tasks of prospeomg were credited to Flin Flon, th# miraculous man, and when gold way discovered in the northern wild'ernea* the new settlement adopted his name* Between Flin Flon and Fort Chuw chill, on the shores of the* Hudso* Bay, is Fort Prince of Wales, a strategy point in the struggle between England and France for supremacy in the northern part, of the American .Continent. The years 1690 and -1697 saw a series of conflicts between English and French forces in the Hudson Bay sector. England decided to build an impregnable fortress in the region. Work commenced on Fort Prince of Wales in 1733, and took 38 years to complete. Joseph Robson was the engineer. The original - plans called for a rampart 42ft thick. The Governor of Hudson Bay believed that a wall 25ft thick would be . sufficiently strong. When the cannon were tried out it was found that they ran off the walls. The walls were thereupon • rebuilt, the original specifications being followed.

Westward, on the border of Saskatchewan and the North-west " Territories, is Canada's newest goldfield fittingly named "Goldfields." Two prospectors, one of therff an, Irishman—there is an Irishman associated with the discovery of many of Canada's placer bonanzas—had heard Indians speak, a year ago, of rich ores at a hidden cay on Great Slave-Lake. They found that every panning showed traces of gold. The subsequent assays startled the mining world. Mail and machinery were rushed in by ah\ the only means of-travel, accommodating even canoes, which are lashed to tfcg undercarriage. In a territory given over for a century, to fur-tradiag, tha miner has introduced the bustle of c metropolis. Wireless brings delivery of goods within a day of leaving civilisation. Mails are equally rapid. It is just another example of the Canadian Arctic being' tamed.