Outpost Island Mine 1936, 1941, 1951

Gold was discovered here in 1935 by prospectors, and some development was undertaken in 1936-1938.  Tungsten ores became valuable during World War II, so the owners (Slave Lake Gold Mines Limited) investigated the tungsten possibilities of the mine. It produced small amounts of gold, copper, and tungsten during 1941-1942, and then again in 1951-1952 during the Korean War. It was a small deposit and was not considered economic because of unpredictable tungsten market prices in the 1950s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outpost_Island_Mine

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Outpost Island itself is scarcely a mile long and a few hundred yards wide with little vegetation, but during 1935 one of the most spectacular gold finds in the north had been made there. Other rich finds had been made throughout the Islands with assays running from $100 to many thousands of dollars per ton. Diamond drilling was commenced on these properties early in 1936 and, at the request of Slave Lake Gold Mines, a small radio station was established by RC Signals at their mine on Outpost Island.

LCpl. Joe Slean arrived there by plane on 14th March 1936. His radio equipment, consisting of a ten watt Marconi type 48031 transceiver caught up with him on 30th March and communication was established with Fort Rae and Fort Smith on 4th April 1936.

Late in August 1936, when F/L Coleman and LAC Joe Fortey of an RCAF aerial mapping party were reported missing in the Barren Lands, Slean and the Outpost radio equipment were moved to Fort Reliance at the eastern end of Great Slave Lake, which was to be the base for search operations for the lost aircraft and crew. Regular schedules were kept with Fort Rae RC Signals and Government Survey parties at Aylmer Lake and Lac de Gras, sub-bases for the search.

The communications provided by "Outpost Joe" were invaluable in bringing the search to a successful conclusion on 16th September with the finding of the downed aircraft and crew of Coleman and Fortey extremely weak from hunger but very much alive. They were immediately evacuated 'outside' to recuperate from their harrowing three weeks in the Barrens before returning to duty. The radio station remained open until gas and a new crew had been flown in to the downed aircraft and it was brought back from the Lac de Gras area to Reliance on 20th September. The following day Slean and his radio equipment were returned to Outpost Island.

Mining activity on the islands continued briskly until the spring of '38 when the results of much underground exploration indicated that the rich mineralization was mainly on the surface and did not extend to any great depth. Due to high transportation costs, the mines could not be profitably operated under such conditions and by the late Fall of '38 all operations had been abandoned.

http://www.nwtandy.rcsigs.ca/1930_39.htm#1936

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On February 1st, 1941, 12 days after George D. was born, a mine and processing mill, located on a small isolated island in Great Slave Lake, began producing gold. Six years earlier traces of gold had been discovered on several of the Outpost Islands, a scattering of dozens of small islands at the extreme western end of the East Arm of Great Slave Lake 65 kilometres north-north-east of Fort Resolution.

From 1935 through to 1938 considerable exploratory work was done on these islands including the sinking of a shaft 137 metres (450 feet) below one of the islands. The result of this work was encouraging and the property was then sold to Slave Lake Gold Mines Limited and in late 1940 they had expanded the underground workings and had begun construction on a 50-ton mill and associated buildings, including accommodation for more than 50 miners and their families.

There was a particularly surprising find in the ore being processed. Along with the gold there was also tungsten and since this was during the Second World War and tungsten, essential to the production of armaments and as a steel hardener for tools, was in short supply the future of the mine looked very bright.

At that time the Outpost Mine was the only mine in North America producing tungsten. Yet in 1942, Slave Lake Gold Mines Limited went bankrupt. The mine’s isolation made the cost of processing and shipping ore, even if it contained valuable gold and tungsten, a borderline operation. In order to survive, the mine needed lots of investors, something very hard to find during the war.

The first hint of problems at the mine came in June of 1942 when expected shipments of supplies and equipment, orders that had been placed the previous winter, were not being shipped because suppliers weren’t being paid by the mine’s head office in Toronto. The miners working underground had no idea that the mine was in trouble until the beginning of August of 1942 when their pay cheques for the previous month bounced. The mine manager claimed the problem was temporary and kept people working underground but closed the mill.

On September 8th, 1942 the manager gathered everyone together and said there was no money to pay them, the mine was closing and, to add insult to injury, there was no money to hire a boat to get the men and their families off the island. For some men this was a desperate situation. They had no money to pay for their own transportation and with freeze up only a few weeks away there was the distinct possibility that they would be stuck on the island for months.

The stranded men came up with a plan to build a barge. They took apart some of the mine buildings for wood and between September 12th and 24th 1942 put together a barge dubbed the ‘Stinky D’! It was capable of carrying the twenty-five stranded men, women and children to the south shore of Great Slave Lake and up the Slave River as far as Fort Smith.

There, the plan was to drag the barge over the portage between Fort Smith and Fort Fitzgerald and sail it up the Athabasca River to Fort McMurray. From there the men and their families would ride the train to Edmonton. Everything changed when the barge arrived in Fort Smith. Most of the men found work either with Imperial Oil in Norman Wells or with the Los Angeles-based construction company Bechtel, Price, Callahan who were salvaging material left after construction of the CANOL pipeline.

International Tungsten Mines Ltd eventually acquired the Outpost Island Mine. Over several years they conducted further exploratory work on the islands but the mine never reopened.

http://www.pwnhc.ca

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