Chapter VI: St. Lawrence Town: Its Triumph and Tragedy  (continued)

The Canadian government refusal to impose a duty on foreign fluorspar left the Corporation in a quandary. The company revived some of the mines, but did so with little hope of conditions improving. Fluorspar prices in fact declined after 1957 and did not rise again until 1969. The low prices made it impossible for the Corporation to obtain further loans; and all the while pumping, wage, hydro and other costs were draining the company's financial reserves.

Added to mining costs was the imminent liability of thousands of dollars in workmen's compensation. Government and private investigations in the 1950s made it likely that any mining company remaining in St. Lawrence would have to compensate scores of miners who, from the earliest days of mining, had unknowingly been contracting a range of diseases related to their work underground. (The last half of the chapter covers this aspect of the St. Lawrence mines.)

Members of the Seibert family have claimed that the Corporation suffered from having no parent company to absorb its losses when fluorspar prices were low. On the other hand, a Royal Commission appointed in April 1967 to investigate the aforementioned diseases wrote:

"...the Seiberts attained their initial success in fluorspar operations at St. Lawrence, and... because of that success, the family, through St. Lawrence Fluorspar Inc., Wilmington, Delaware, continued in the fluorspar business with mining operations in Mexico and a flotation plant in Wilmington..."⁽²¹⁾

Be that as it may, the St. Lawrence Corporation was by 1961 technically bankrupt.

Halfway through the troubled interval between the suspension and sale of the Corporation mines, and perhaps because of it, Walter Seibert died on 9 June 1961 at the age of 59. His wife and sons assumed control of the company, but found that death duties on the estate and its inherent liabilities were too formidable. After Seibert's death they stopped mining operations and put Corporation holdings up for sale.

Stories concerning the disposal of the St. Lawrence Corporation property entailed proposals and counter-proposals, offers and rejections, near-sales and cancelled commitments. Over half a dozen companies investigated the feasibility of acquiring the holdings, only to decide against it. A major stumbling block, it seems, was the prospect of having to pay workmen's compensation to diseased miners. This liability coupled with the mines' water problems and rockbursts deterred many potential buyers.

When the Corporation property first went on sale in 1961 the adjacent fluorspar mining company, Newfoundland Fluorspar, expressed an interest in its purchase, but was informed that Newfoundland's Premier Joseph R. Smallwood disliked the idea of one company having a monopoly on the Newfoundland fluorspar industry. Four years later, no one having bought the holdings, the Seiberts approached Newfluor's parent company, the Aluminum Company of Canada, to reconsider its offer. This time, pressures both from the companies involved and from within St. Lawrence itself forced the government to subdue its objections. On 9 June 1965, four years to the day after Walter Seibert died, the material assets of the St. Lawrence Corporation of Newfoundland Limited passed over to Newfoundland Fluorspar Limited, and a new phase of mining began.

Newfoundland Fluorspar

It is a small but noteworthy coincidence that Daniel Colford, who in 1925 staked the claim that led indirectly to the formation of the St. Lawrence Corporation, in 1930 also staked two claims that led indirectly to the formation of Newfoundland Fluorspar or Newfluor. He staked the claims for Joshua Hookey, owner of a broom-making establishment in St. John's. Although neither of the two 1930 claims contained mineable fluorspar veins, they whetted Hookey's appetite for fluorspar property. Over the next seven years he accumulated nearly two dozen claims, all of which were subsequently purchased by Newfluor in 1940.

Few of the Hookey claims actually belonged to Hookey alone. Some he secured with the backing, if not the name, of William Cave, a St. John's merchant. Others he filed for jointly with Daniel Colford and a St. John's grocer, John Caul. The four men became known around town as 'Hookey and Co.', a cooperative enterprise with each member contributing his claims and expertise. Hookey acted as property manager, Cave as financial supporter, Colford as prospector and Caul in something of all three capacities.

Hookey and Co. had no sooner entered the St. Lawrence fluorspar ring than they came into direct confrontation with the Corporation. On 26 August 1931, prospector Gordon Dawe staked four claims for Hookey along Salt Cove Brook, aligning the claims with true north, according to the existing Crown Lands Act. Three days later, Aubrey Farrell staked some of the same claims for Walter Seibert, aligning the claims with magnetic north. The case arose in court. The judge declared Dawe's orientation correct, and the claims fell to Hookey.⁽²²⁾ Seibert might have appealed the decision had not his geologist and mine manager, Dr. W.S. Smith, assured him that the claims were not worth the litigation costs. Neither Dr. Smith nor Seibert - nor Hookey for that matter - guessed that the property covered the north end of what was to become the single most productive fluorspar vein in the area: the Director.

While Hookey and Co. were accumulating claims, Walter Seibert and the Corporation were gaining recognition among United States steel manufacturers and bringing St. Lawrence fluorspar to the attention of the American business community. Hookey and Co. possessed land adjacent to the Corporation property and sat in what could have been an extremely strategic position. Had they waited for three more years they could have named their price to any one of a number of companies desirous of providing fluorspar for steel-hungry, warring nations. Instead, they accepted the first offer to come their way: they succumbed to the shrewd and powerful Edwin M. Lavino.

Edwin Lavino was the president of E.J. Lavino and Company, a Philadelphia firm involved in the ferro-alloy business. Exactly how and when Lavino first learned of the Hookey claims is unclear; one rumour alleged that Dr. W.S. Smith informed him, a rumour substantiated by Dr. Smith's leaving the Corporation in April 1939 to work for Lavino.⁽²³⁾ Whatever the initiation of Lavino's interest, it bore ripe fruit; and on 11 May 1937 he incorporated the American Newfoundland Fluorspar Company Limited to acquire and develop the claims. E.J. Lavino owned 51 per cent of the shares and the Hookey contingent owned the remaining 49 per cent. On the same day, the parties signed a contract which can go on record as being one of the toughest mining deeds in Newfoundland mining.

The salient features of the Hookey-Lavino contract were as follows: in return for Lavino advancing the American Newfoundland Fluorspar Company $10,000, Hookey and Co. were to relinquish all control over their fluorspar claims, company funds, management and mining policy. If and when the claims were mined, Lavino was to be the sole selling agent for the ore until all advances made by him were repaid and for a ten-year period after that.

Mining began within a month of the agreement's signature. Mine manager A.J. Wallace hired 35 miners in June to sink a shaft on the Tarefare vein, the largest vein then known to exist on the Hookey claims.⁽²⁴⁾ Late in the summer of 1937, however, prospectors Philip Molly and Louis Kelly returned to St. Lawrence with the news that they had discovered a large outcrop of fluorspar in the woods and had marked it with a lobster claw. The outcrop proved to be part of a huge vein, later known as the Director.

The discovery of the Director vein coincided with the finding that a main shoot of the Tarefare vein pinched out just below the bottom of the shaft. Wallace shifted operations to the Director vein in June 1938. In the ensuing winter men hauled the Tarefare buildings and machinery over snow to the new mine site and began to work the Director mine.