La Ronge and the Anglo-Rouyn Mine

In the early fifties, La Ronge was a quiet, lakeshore settlement of Indians and Whites, almost isolated from the rest of the world. Harry Houghton, the perennial Overseer of the Village, recalls some of the "horrific" trips to Prince Albert, 185 miles to the south and he said . . . .

In the early fifties, it was nothing at all to spend 11 hours on the road between La Ronge and Prince Albert and sometimes longer. No, not walking - driving your car, or truck, you could almost do it as fast on horseback. In the spring, I have seen as many as 8 or 10 bridges built across washouts on the highway, it was something.

The road was completed in the late forties, we came in on the old road when it was being built by R. D. Brooks. Before the war, he had built the first half of the road. Following the war, he completed it. When I moved into the hotel it took a full 24 hours to bring up a load of lumber.

Communications are the most necessary thing in opening any part of the country. It was that road that brought the prospectors, and mining, into the country.

While the road was a necessary link to "the outside", it certainly could not provide either rapid transit or carry urgent messages. Rapid transit was supplied by airplane and messages went by radio. In those early days, Jack McGunigal was the radio operator and he recalled . . . .

In 1953, when we first hit La Ronge it was a very small community. Everyone knew everyone else. One street, a couple of very short side streets, no hospital, no drug store, no doctor. Indian Health maintained a nursing station, with a nurse who had been trained in delivering babies. For the white people, unless it was an absolute emergency, everybody had to go to Prince Albert.

There were four stores - Kitsaki, The Bay, Government Trading [now Co-op Trading - BR], and La Ronge Grocery [owned by Peter Peterson and his wife]. There was one hotel, run by Harry Houghton, very small. People found the smallest part of it was the beer parlour. It had a capacity of 47. I stuck my head through the door one day and I think there were 147. You couldn't get in, it was so crowded. It has been enlarged twice since I came here, plus another big hotel - the Northland, and now Gene's Restaurant, and several motels. In one way, it is disappointing to see the town change so much. You don't know the people anymore.

Angus McKay was Chief Factor of the Hudson's Bay Company and the father of Annie McKay who accompanied by Christina Bateman, travelled from Saskatoon to La Ronge via Prince Albert and returned via Stanley Mission, and the Churchill River, across Frog Portage, down the Sturgeon-Weir River to the Saskatchewan River and downstream to The Pas, returning from there by railroad to Saskatoon.

The Anglo-Rouyn people came twice to La Ronge. The first time was in 1952, after acquiring a copper property from E. F. Partridge & Associates. During this first period, drilling and some shaft sinking were done. The second period led to the mine going into production in January 1966, at the rate of 725 tons per day. Eric Partridge fills in some of the history . . . .

Another interesting discovery was the Anglo-Rouyn copper prospect, at Moose Point, just northeast of La Ronge. It is commonly thought that the Hall brothers, Gordon and Dick, had discovered it. That is not true, I should note, because I prospected east and northeast out of La Ronge and became acquainted with a few of the oldtimers in the Sucker River settlement, and they told me it was a Native who trapped on Moose Point who made the discovery and showed it to Gordon Hall, who subsequently built a cabin there, and dug a lot of trenches.

The year my son Allan was born - 1945 - I examined the trenches the Hall brothers had dug. They had optioned it, as you may recall, to Cominco on a long-term basis - 25 years, a very foolish option. They'd drilled a few holes with the old steam drill. The cordwood is still piled up that they used to feed the drill. And the casings are still in. I spent some time on it. I was alone that fall. For two winters running - in 1948 and '49 - I was the agent on the Saskatchewan Government Airways.

Anyway, this one fall when I was finished prospecting in the field, I spent some time at Moose Point, being interested in the occurrences. I came to the conclusion they'd drilled the wrong way. The reports said the deposit didn't go to any depth.

I then made enquiries in Regina. The claims were supposed to lapse in 1952. It turned out they lapsed a year earlier. A government attorney, Morris Schumiatcher, got rights to the property. His stenographer, Jacquie Katz, got the title to the property. She and he subsequently married.

I had made up my mind that when the property did lapse, I would like to spend some effort on proving it. But I was foiled and I had to wait another two years. Since the people in Regina hadn't spent any money on it, they lost most of it. They held a few claims - I think six. They were the originals. They were called the "Ypres."

The point was that the property lapsed and reverted to the Crown, and therefore became available for staking one year before it should have. I had the dates. They staked it the moment it lapsed. They were the only people who knew about it. I came out of the bush that fall to find it staked, exactly one year ahead of time. I wasn't happy.

In any event, the claims were re-staked. They were all named after battles of the Great War when the property was first staked. This gives you an idea of how old the property was - 1917 and '18.

I learned that Jacquie Katz was secretary for Morris Schumiatcher, so I made a deal with him whereby he would transfer the six claims to me which I had to have to make a parcel, for 12 per cent-10 percent for him and 2 percent for the two people who had originally staked for him, the late Len McArthur and Don Hooton.

I did quite a lot of work on it, with the consequence that I sold it to TMC (Technical Mine Consultants). I had been doing quite a bit of business with TMC, which was the engineering arm of Joe Hirshhorn and Frank Joubin.19 I had sold several uranium properties to them. They disposed of it to Anglo-Rouyn Mines which later became controlled by Rio Algom.

That's the only producer I've been fortunate enough to have anything to do with. I like to think that it was my persistence in cleaning out the old trenches that convinced the examining geologist of TMC that the occurrence didn't tail out at a very shallow depth, as was originally thought. I think the production came at a time when a lot of people in Canada thought that, aside from the Uranium City and Flin Flon areas, the Province would never produce another base-metal mine. As a consequence of the Moose Point success, those years - the middle and late fifties and early sixties - we saw a fair amount of activity for base metals in the Province. While it did not lead to any other discovery, I'm sure you will agree that it is always advantageous to have something that can be pointed to. We witness the same thing today in uranium. One discovery leads to another.

Harry Houghton tells of the impact the advent of mining people had on the little village of La Ronge:

The first advent of the Anglo-Rouyn people was when they came to do the first shaft sinking. I was in the hotel business then and was glad to see them come, that was in 1952-53. After sinking a shaft, they decided that; while the orebody was quite good, the price of copper was so low they would wait for a while. They came back in 1965, it was closed down from 1953 to 1965, for 12 or 13 years. During that time there was quite a lull in the village.

The Anglo-Rouyn mining operation had a pronounced impact on the village. It had a payroll of close to $165,000 a month, which all didn't come into the village, but a great percentage did. They built several homes in La Ronge in 1966. These homes were sold again in 1973. Some to the new government, and many to individuals. I worked for Anglo-Rouyn for five years.

When the mine closed in 1973, La Ronge almost died. It received a sort of economic mouth-to-mouth resuscitation when the provincial government made it the administrative centre of the new Department of Northern Saskatchewan. La Ronge thrives again, but, alas, is different . . . .

Anglo-Rouyn Mine has been closed for several years, so it is impossible to get much first-hand information regarding union organization. The employees were represented by Tunnel and Rock Workers, a union with no other representation in production mining. Other base metal mines in northern Saskatchewan and Manitoba were organized by the United Steel Workers. At one time some of the workers at Anglo-Rouyn attempted to get Steel as their union. Terry Stevens, at that time organizer for the United Steel Workers, visited La Ronge, and recalls the experience . . . .

In late November, or early December of 1968, I was up in La Ronge contacting employees of Anglo-Rouyn Mines. I was assisting our staff representative from Flin Flon (our local president there), and Al Plaskitt from the Lynn Lake local of Sherritt Gordon.

We had been requested by a number of the employees because they'd been represented by the Tunnel and Rock Workers, who did not have good representation. They had a president for the local who was on the time card as a shift foreman. His name was Al MacMurray. A lot of the members were disappointed with this and they said the representation was not good. They had a pretty inferior agreement for a hard rock mine, as compared to Flin Flon, Lynn Lake, or Thompson.

So we were attempting to organize. We had just about a majority signed up and were making the application when the company and the union negotiated an early agreement, two months before the expiry date. It was consummated and ratified by the members. That closed the door on us and that is my recollection of the La Ronge thing.