GOLD IN CANADA

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIII, Issue 71, 6 March 1933, Page 5

GOLD IN CANADA

BRITISH COLUMBIA RUSH PEGS ON AN OLD FIELD. LIKE QUILLS ON A PORCUPINE. Vancouver, Feb. 8. Gold production in British Columbia increased by 4U per cent, in 1932, synchouising with activity in hardrock and placer mining activity that has had no parallel since the days of the big “rushes’’ of the Yukon and Cariboo. Every stream in the province has been lined by diggers in pairs. Old-time sourdoughs, long since retired, have gone back, north and east, supported from their own resources or from syndicates of Canadian or American capitalists. The gold commissioner in the Cariboo says claim pegs at Barkervillc, scene of a famous early rush, are as thick as quills ou a porcupine. Even the cemetery has been pegged thrice over. A line of gqld-seckers is continually on the move, following the gold belt. Starting at the south-east corner of the province, near Fernie, it stretches, parallel with the Rockies, through. Northern British Columbia, into the Yukon. The first field is in the Koo tenays, with Rossland prominent in the quartz output. Westward there were good gold values in the ores of Greenwood and the placer fields ot the Similkameen. From here the next field is the Fraser river, the lowest point at which placer gold was discovered. Northward, along the Fraser, are Quesuel and Barkerville, where, in area of 2000 square miles, millions of dollars of placer gold were recovered. According to geological reports ten times as much remains to be won in this sector, by the cynanide process. Where gold mining costs were very heavy in the gold rush days modern machinery has cheapened them, and now leads to intense activity.

Two pieces of ore, just taken from the Pioneer mine, illustrate the value of deposits now being worked. One, weighing 72 pounds, valued at 7500 dollars (£l5OO at par) was recently taken to New York by a well-known financier, Ben Smith, after an inspection of the mine. Another, weighing 24 pounds, valued at 5000 dollars (£lOOO at par) is being exhibited in the window of a Vancouver jeweller. The first half-ton of ore recently taken from the 800 ft. level was valued at 50,000 dollars. -Mills, hydro-electric plants and aerial tramways are operating on a 24-hour basis. On the stock exchanges in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal, gold issues, which have no competition, are constantly rising. The genesis of the boom is in London, the world’s greatest gold share centre. Already, the adverse trade balance in Canada, a feature of the years 1929 to 1932, has been overhauled and wiped out by domestic gold production. On the exchanges, gold is at present the only outlet for the human urge to speculate with hope of gain. The rising output of gold has done much to stabilise credit and business conditions, and to sustain the natural optimism of the people of Canada, who will look back on the so-called world depression as the period in which they reached second place among goldproducing countries.