Silver-Rich Cobalt, Canada

An Accidental Discovery Opened Up Mining in the Canadian Shield.

- Bob Jones

The Canadian Shield is the original heart, or core, of the North American continent. The rocks date to the earliest millennia of the planet.

Today, scores of mines operate in and around the Shield, extracting a vast variety of useful metals and minerals. The region has given up everything from gold to silver, nickel and diamond and shows no signs of running out of useful minerals. This was not always the case; just over 100 years ago, little mining was going on for a number of reasons. The area was vast, remote and inhospitable. Heavy snows and bitter cold during the long winters, and wild animals, voracious mosquitoes, and black flies during the warm months discouraged all but the brave or foolhardy. Even in the 1970s, when I ventured 100 miles north of Montreal in early June in search of fluorescent minerals, I found myself in the midst of the black fly season. I itched for the rest of that summer. Imagine what it must have been like prospecting the region in the 1800s!

Then in 1903, something happened that changed mining and prospecting in the Canadian Shield forever. Silver was accidentally discovered 300 miles north of Toronto. In a few short years, massive silver production—exceeded only by that of Mexico and the United States—financed the search for and discovery of countless valuable mineral deposits across northern Canada, where mining is still ongoing today. How did all this happen?