Chapter VII: Buchans: Company Town in Transition  (continued)

Matty Mitchell, discoverer of the original Buchans orebody. (VII/1.) (18Kb)

One of the rare documented references to Matty Mitchell tells that he held the hereditary chieftancy of the Montagnais-Micmac Indian tribe.⁽⁵⁾ Like many of his people, he knew that ore minerals existed along the waterways of central Newfoundland.⁽⁶⁾ It is uncertain whether or not Mitchell, when hired in 1905 to guide William Canning, had already seen mineral deposits near Red Indian Lake. The Montagnais-Micmac legends of ore in the district suggest that he could have had prior knowledge; the rapidity with which he and Canning located-or relocated-ore, once they commenced their prospecting trip, implies that he might well have simply led Canning to a previously discovered ore showing.

Matty Mitchell and William Canning left Grand Falls on 15 September 1905 and began to explore the north shore of Red Indian Lake. Within days they found three outcrops of lead and copper ore along the Buchans River⁽⁷⁾ (known then as the Sandy River), which flows into the lake. They went on to investigate other streams, but, at the company's insistence, returned in mid-October to look again at the Buchans River deposits.⁽⁸⁾ The more they uncovered the ore the better it looked; and the more the A.N.D. Co. directors read of Canning's report the more feasible it seemed to them to develop the deposits. In the spring of 1906, they decided to mine the Buchans River orebody.

The Buchans River mining operation came to be regarded in later years as a classic of mining technology; world-famous scientists contributed to its development, and the most sophisticated equipment filled its premises. Yet in the beginning, from 1906 to 1911, the mine possessed the staff and atmosphere of a Notre Dame Bay copper mine. The original mine captains were Little Bay's John R. Stewart, discoverer of the Mings Bight gold deposits; and Pilleys Island's One-Armed Daniel McCuish. The miners that swung the first picks into the Buchans River orebody were from the Little Bay, Pilleys Island and Betts Cove mines. How many of those men realized then that they represented the human link between the old and the new in Newfoundland mining: between the nineteenth-century Notre Dame Bay copper mines and the twentieth-century Buchans mines?

William Scott, chief engineer of the A.N.D. Co., took advantage of his experienced crew by sending out men to prospect the adjacent areas in the summer of 1907. That fall they staked an iron and copper showing along the Victoria River south of Red Indian Lake. Daniel McCuish and six miners went directly to Victoria River and, on November 1, started to explore the property with two shafts. A careful examination of the site today sometimes reveals pieces of the miners' picks and iron tools that belonged to the blacksmith, Larry Furlong.

John Stewart, meanwhile, had left Buchans River and had been replaced as mine captain by Dennis Glavine of Fortune Harbour, Notre Dame Bay. Beginning in 1907, Glavine and the miners sank a shaft on the Buchans River orebody. Their labours continued for about three years, and by 1910 geologists were able to delineate a lens of ore containing 100,000 tons of fine-grained zinc, lead and copper sulphides.

The A.N.D. Co. exported a 1000-ton sample cargo of the ore to Sweden in 1910 and promptly became embroiled in a dispute with the Newfoundland government as to whether or not the company owed royalties on the ore.⁽⁹⁾ Its reluctance to pay the tax was understandable, for the ore's test results confirmed what some company officials already suspected: the ore was too fine-grained and complex a mixture for the component metals to be separated by known scientific means. Even had the ore been treatable, its combined volume and grade-100,000 tons of 18 per cent zinc, 10 per cent lead and 1.5 per cent copper⁽¹⁰⁾-was not worth the expense of establishing a mine in the Newfoundland interior.

Discovery of the ore's unsuitability quenched the A.N.D. Co.'s mining ambitions and rendered temporarily redundant its Terra Nova Properties Limited, a subsidiary firm which on 1 October 1908 had been assigned the mineral rights to all A.N.D. Co. land holdings. Additional work failed to increase the ore tonnage assessment, and in 1911 the A.N.D. Co. discontinued both the Buchans River and Victoria River mines to concentrate on its growing pulp and paper mill at Grand Falls.

It is impossible to know what might have befallen the Buchans River orebody after 1911 had not two unrelated incidents merged. In 1915 or 1916, Harold A. Guess, vice-president of the American Smelting and Refining Company Limited (ASARCO), noticed a short journal article outlining the history and failure of the Buchans River mine. He read with interest of the ore's complex composition, particularly as his company was in constant search of new metallic orebodies.

About this time, a small ore shipment from Newfoundland's Crow Head or Sleepy Cove mine arrived in New York and was unloaded on the city docks a short distance from ASARCO's New York offices. One can only speculate upon what happened. Guess apparently learned that the Newfoundland ore sat by, unclaimed, and bought it in the hope that it might be from Buchans River. Although he would quickly have realized the ore's true origin, it whetted his appetite, and on 13 July 1916 he wrote a letter to William Scott of the A.N.D. Co.:

"Some friends of mine, familiar with Newfoundland, were telling me that your company, the Terra Nova Properties Limited, had a large body of good grade, though complex, ore opened up, but now idle, as I recall at Buchans River mine, and I was wondering whether it might be of a sort which we could take a long term lease on terms that would be mutually satisfactory."⁽¹¹⁾

The A.N.D. Co. responded to the letter by sending Guess 25 pounds of ore samples. It is no exaggeration to say that those samples were perhaps the most significant mineral specimens ever to leave Newfoundland; through them, ASARCO came to the Island and created the mining town of Buchans with all its associated joys and sorrows.