CANADIAN WEALTH

Taranaki Daily News, 5 August 1937, Page 15

CANADIAN WEALTH

D1SCOVERIES OF RAD1UM MADE. WORK IN FROZEN WILDERNESS. Canada, which is at present producing two granunes of radium a month, hopes to double its production this year, and it is possible that the Arctic belt may ■ hold in its chilly wastes the promise of relief for millions of suffering men and women. The great proven value of radium in medicine and surgery may be dwarfed by potentialities still unrealised. On the edge of the Arctic Circle ia the Bear Country, which extends across the north of Canada and is probably the oldest and richest part of the World. Yet this tract man has only just begun to explore. Around the Great Bear Lake itself there is evidence of some gigantic upheaval which took place about 100,000,000 years ago. Precious metals of all kinds were thrown to the surface of the earth, amid fantastic rocks, and an explorer can walk upon exposed veins of gold, silver and copper. In 1930 the Great Bear Country,- which lies 1500 miles beyond the most northern, railway— and, indeed, the rest of the North— was regarded as useless for mining purposes owing to the difiiculties of transport. The aeroplane has changed all, that. ! It has brought the North within a day's journey of the city of Edmonton, and permits the regular despatch of supplies and ^quipment and the regular transport of radium ore. Seaplanes are used in summer; in winter the planes are fltted with skis. Sil- • ver, also mined in profitable quantities, is piled up to await transport by v/aler during the short Arctic summer. A brief and brilliant summer, however,. in hardly compensation for the long, dark months of winter. As late July there are large fields of ice in the lake, and after the middle of August frosts may be expected. Lake trout of over 401b have been caught in Great Bear Lake, but apart from fisli, nearly all supplies of food must be imported. In the worst period of winter the temperatuxe sometimes falls to 62deg. below zero. The men wear "parkas"— hooded coats of caribou skin — and moccasins. Varied Temperatures. In summer the average temperature is 80deg., while the highest recorded in three seasons was 88deg. The sun brings a sudden lavish extravagance of vegetation; if seeds are sown, spring, summer ;incl autumn plants will all bloom togethcr in conlu.ilng abundance. But Ihe

summer plagues often make a man wish for winter— deer-flies, black-flies and mosquitoes. Throughout the development of the Great Bear Country the Dominion Department of Mines has guided and assisted progress, It established the presence of radium in the relatively high proportion of one part in 10,000,0001 its chemists succeeded in concentrating it to one part in 100,000. This concentrate, representing 95 per cent. of the radium present in the original ore, is refined at Port Hope. The total time taken . in the production of radium concentrates of 96 to 98 per cent. purity is three months instead of six months taken by processes used elsewhere. The utmost caution is necessary throughout the process. The men employed never even see ptire radium, and M. L. Pochon, the French scientist, who is ip charge of the operations, has seen it only once, when he was working with Mme. Curie. His account illustrates why he never wishes to see it again:— "Mme. Curie wanted to settle various problems, but when she got the radium isolated its behaviour was shocking. It bored througli the vessel it was in, and began playing such violent tricks that she put it back in solution, quick." Enormous Energy. Figures give a poor idea of the extraordinary power of radium, but it is startling to learn that one gramme has the potential energy of 3000 tons of coal,. and that radium rays have a penetrating power as great as some of the heaviest naval guns. As a further illustration, the ore residue which remains at Port Hope after the radium has been refined is mixed with ordinary fertiliser in the ratio of about one to nine, and increases twofold to threefold the yield of agricultural products. This dangerous and intractable elcment, locked.. in its . distant fortress of stone and snow, becomes available to doctors and hospitals to fight the scourge of cancer, only as tlie result of an imqiense body of scimtific progress — one achievement to tlie credit of the same science which has built ghastly weapons of destruction. The chemist studying the uses and manipulation of radium, the engineers who ^rovide aeroplanes and mining equipment, the geologists on whose advice mines are opened and developed— ail these • share a triumph with miners who. live and work at the last outpost of civilisation. 1 In their summer these miners have two months and a-half continuous daylighi; in winter they never see the sun [ for six weeks. Yet they live and work comfortably enough in a land considered a few years ago to be the outer wilderness.