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

Circumstances that transpired between ASARCO's receiving the ore and the company's coming to Newfoundland are repeated in practically every scientific treatise on the Buchans mines. ASARCO metallurgists tested the ore over the years using new methods and chemicals as they came on the market. In 1925, they devised a profitable means of treating lead and zinc concentrates from the ore, using a variation of the selective flotation technique⁽¹²⁾, and informed the A.N.D. Co. of the breakthrough. What scientific reports do not relate is that George Laycock, a mining engineer with the A.N.D. Co., sailed at once to New York upon hearing the good news and there in his hotel room held the first of many meetings with Harold Guess.⁽¹³⁾ Negotiations between the two men expanded into negotiations between their respective directors; and on 18 March 1926 they signed an agreement whereby Terra Nova Properties Limited gave ASARCO the right to prospect for and mine any orebody within a 20-mile radius of (and including) the Buchans River mine in exchange for 50 per cent of the mining profits.

The man that ASARCO chose to manage the Buchans operation was J. Ward Williams. He came from the depths of South America in mid-May 1926, but had to spend eight days waiting for Red Indian Lake to thaw before he and ten miners could proceed to the mine site. Among the miners was Dennis Glavine, who had reappeared in Newfoundland on a visit from the United States and had been persuaded to take on his old job of mine captain. Another man, Billy Tilley, had served as a mechanic in the opening days of the Buchans River mine. Although he had gone to work for the Silver Cliff Mining Company Limited in Placentia Bay in 1922, he, like Glavine, was lured back to Buchans in 1926.⁽¹³⁾

A few weeks after Ward Williams and the crew of miners reached Buchans River, the next boatload of experts arrived. They were Hans Lundberg and others of the Swedish American Electrical Prospecting Company, hired to use their innovative electrical prospecting technique in locating additional orebodies at Buchans. Harold Guess had told Lundberg to test the method on one-and only one-square mile of land around the Buchans River shaft.⁽¹⁴⁾ Few North American companies had yet employed the new technique: hence Guess' stipulated limit.

It is well for ASARCO that Ward Williams disregarded Guess' orders. Hans Lundberg and his assistants began their electrical survey in early June and in a few weeks detected a small anomaly. Diamond drilling on the anomaly site revealed an orebody which, because it sat to the east of the original mine shaft, they called the "Oriental" orebody. Upon transferring their equipment slightly westward in July, the men detected a second stronger anomaly that to Williams' chagrin lay beyond the one-square-mile limit. Guess granted the men permission to move the geophysical survey to a spot three miles west of the old shaft. Williams, however, had his own ideas. He balanced his intuition against Guess' possible ire and then told Lundberg to explore a different locale nearer to the shaft.

This was no easy task. The Swedes were working in boggy terrain swarming with black flies that "made it difficult to see the pickets through the telescope".⁽¹⁵⁾ Equally troublesome were a mother bear and two cubs who showed a disconcerting curiosity in the noisy scientific instruments and their operators. Nevertheless, the men persevered and in mid-July received their reward: while searching for bedrock in the vicinity of the second anomaly, they found:

"...massive lead-zinc mineralisation. Throughout the night my assistant and I kept digging, sometimes with our bare hands, convinced that our indication was going to make mining history... During the night my assistant, Hjortzberg-Nordlund, said in his broken English: 'This is sure a lucky find'. Williams corrected him, 'not a lucky find, but a lucky strike'. The name Lucky Strike has remained with the mine ever since."⁽¹⁶⁾

The Lucky Strike and Oriental orebodies between them contained about 6.6 million tons of ore: more than enough to support a commercial mining operation.

Being armed with the knowledge that it possessed valuable mineral holdings gave ASARCO the weaponry to handle the Newfoundland government and Terra Nova Properties, the A.N.D. Co. subsidiary. First, ASARCO organized its own subsidiary, the Buchans Mining Company Limited, in January 1927. That done, it approached the Terra Nova Company to renegotiate the 1926 agreement. What changes ASARCO originally hoped to extract from the Terra Nova Company are uncertain; but as both firms had equally shrewd directors the new agreement of 12 December 1928 differed substantially from the 1926 version only in that it gave ASARCO the rights to all mines and minerals within a 30 (not 20) mile radius of the Buchans River mine for a period of 50 (not 25) years. Terra Nova Properties still commanded 50 per cent of the profits after allowing for ASARCO's interest and amortization charges.

ASARCO anticipated softer treatment from the Newfoundland government and asked Prime Minister Monroe for 20 years of free importation of mining and other materials. As the company expected, the request was granted, but not without sparking weeks of debate in the House of Assembly. Some members accused the company of using Newfoundland's desperate poverty and unemployment to bluff the government into granting whatever it asked. Others thought the request acceptable, though ASARCO absolutely refused to specify what it wished to import.

Members backing the 'Buchans Mine Bill' referred to the rising fame of the Buchans area. They described how the Buchans ore had influenced advancement of selective flotation technology and how the ore deposits' discovery represented a spectacular example of successful electrical prospecting. They pointed out that the publicity over Buchans had led the Empire Mining and Metallurgical Congress to hold its 1927 meeting in St. John's and to visit the mine site.

In the face of such acclaim the Newfoundland government could not afford to risk losing the prestigious mine by offending ASARCO. It consequently passed the Buchans Mine Bill in September 1927.

ASARCO appeared to be fairly confident of (or indifferent to) the Buchans Mine Bill's passage, for it began full-scale mine development under the Buchans Mining Company in the winter of 1926-27, nearly a year before the bill became law. The bulk of the mining equipment, housing supplies, food and other necessities travelled by train to Millertown and by tractor and sled over the frozen lake to the mine site. Next spring, more material was floated down the lake on scows and then hauled upriver by horse teams along a muddy, six-mile corduroy road.

As supplies and machinery accumulated alongside the Lucky Strike deposit, men from across Newfoundland assembled in Millertown, hoping to find employment with the Buchans Mining Company. For many, a job at Buchans would be the first they had held in months. They came bearing little but the clothes on their backs and, once hired, cheerfully bent those backs toward turning the silent tundra wilderness into an oasis of angular buildings. They erected a crushing plant and concentrating mill, ore storage sheds and a small hydroelectric dam across the Buchans River. They also laid the colourful and controversial Buchans Railway.