The Choiceland Iron Deposit

Although Saskatchewan has never been a producer of iron, there are iron deposits in the Province. One of them, discovered in 1955, is in the Choiceland district, some 50 miles northeast of Prince Albert. It was an unusual discovery. Vern Hogg, then Deputy Minister of Mineral Resources, tells about the background . . . .

We started the Prospectors' School at La Ronge in the old Smoke Jumpers' building. And it was quite valuable. There were two discoveries by men from information gained at the school. There was a pilot, who had his own plane, who attended the school at La Ronge. The first time, I guess, he'd learned about magnetometers and magnetics. Later, after school, at the training camp, he was getting his plane checked out. Some of the people flying out of there mentioned that if you flew close to the ground near Choiceland your compass flipped. He clicked on that, and he found the Choiceland iron deposit. His name was Milt MacDougall.

Geologist Lew Parres, was closely involved in the discovery and attempts to develop it and said this about it. . . .

Originally, at Prince Albert, they had the Commonwealth Air Training Plan. On night flights the pilots were getting lost. Dr. Duncan Derry, who is a well-known geologist internationally, was working in Prince Albert at the time with the Commonwealth Air Training Plan, along with Milt MacDougall, an instructor. They both went out looking for the iron deposit after the war, along with myself.

Some of their test flights would go out from Prince Albert, fly in a circle, and return. It was on these routes they were getting lost. Duncan Derry, being a geologist, and very conscious of magnetic attractions, suspected what was distracting the compasses in the planes and causing the pilots to go off course.

Subsequently, after the war, Dr. Derry organized an airborne expedition. I believe that the expenditure was somewhere in the neighbourhood of $250,000. He came very close to finding it but didn't.

At the same time Milt MacDougall, in Fort McMurray, got himself a Piper Super Cub and taught his wife to fly. They came into this country at the same time I had ground crews from Waskesiu to Nipawin, and I would visit them each night. At the odd time, I would play a little golf at Waskesiu.

We weren't successful in finding anything of any size.

I had just returned from that expedition when I saw in the paper that someone was staking near Nipawin and Choiceland. So I picked up a bushman, filled up the station wagon with equipment and rushed back down there. I went to the station to find out who this was, but the agent told me it was worth his job if he told me who was in the area, and who was sending wires.

Fortunately, there was some mix-up with some claims, and the claims inspector, Ray Williams, was there to examine the mix-ups. I didn't follow him, but I suggested he might need a little help. Ray and I proceeded to the area where the mix-up was in claims. Of course, I had my magnetometer with me (by coincidence, of course) and within one day it was obvious to see whose name was on the claim posts, and by checking through the recording office I was able to trace Milt MacDougall. I sent him a wire and invited him to come to Prince Albert at my expense.

I had visualized, after taking the readings, that this was a big iron deposit. Incidentally, Ray Williams took the notes for me on that expedition, which was rather interesting. Don't say the government doesn't help you out!

Milt flew down from Fort MacMurray to Prince Albert and I promised him $100 a day until we made a deal, as I felt certain we would. The people I was working for were from Cyprus, and the Mudd family rushed from Los Angeles to New York to have a meeting. They decided it was not their policy to get into iron. So they made me a free agent. My partner in Toronto, Cy Stewart, a famous mining engineer, raised $10,000 which we paid to Milt MacDougall and his associates. He had some partners - the Demairs brothers from Fort MacMurray. Then the rest of the deal, in general, was that ultimately he was to receive $200,000 and, I believe, 300,000 shares in a company. It was an option agreement.

We completed a detailed magnetometer survey. This was in legal subdivision areas. The iron pegs were there, and you could set up more expertly than you possibly could do in the bush. You have the guidelines to go by.

The magnetometer survey is done with a magnetometer, an instrument that is affected by magnetic material. The Choiceland iron deposit is a magnetic iron known as magnetite. After having established a grid on these legal subdivision lines, we did a detailed magnetometer survey, and subsequently a gravity survey.

When the people in the East sent the people up to do the survey, one of the helpers was an Englishman. One day he came out of the Choiceland Hotel with running shoes on and it was forty below zero. He was on his way out to survey, so I explained what possibly could happen to his feet.

We put down seven drill holes. Unfortunately, there is a fault throughout the whole area, and the first hole went right into this fault. No, it was the first hole of the second program I'm thinking about. The first hole we got down was in 1955, and the second was in the fall of '58.

The first hole - that was an exciting experience. Imperial Oil had, that season, completed a very large aerial magnetic survey. They were basing their hopes on having structures analogous to the Texas Gulf domes, above many of which oil occurs, and they hoped to get the same thing in Saskatchewan. They had found this very large magnetic anomaly and had moved a large number of engineers into the area and set up camps.

I think they realized it was iron. They were quite optimistic about it. I think they thought they had found an iron mine because they did offer to pay for the first hole we drilled.

Anyway, Imperial moved in intending to stake for two purposes. One was for oil, and the other was the possibility of iron. What happened was, they set up this big commissariat, bought licenses, set up these camps, and when they went out to stake, here Milt MacDougall had it all staked.

This is a very heavily pined area, so it was possible for the staking to go on while they were setting up their camp, without them knowing it. Milt MacDougall was only a few days ahead of them.

Then they made the offer to drill the first hole. I was negotiating with Imperial Oil and had it all set up, but it was very difficult for the people in the East to understand why Imperial was making this offer. As it happened, that deal fell through and they drilled on their own. They didn't put the hole in the same location where we put our first hole. For obvious reasons ground tenure. They had the oil rights, of course, but to drill down through the sediments and into the Precambrian rocks below would have been a breach of etiquette.

Right from the start we were positive it was in the Precambrian. You and I worked that formula out, based on the magnetic survey results. We were within 50 feet of the correct depth.

The information we obtained from Imperial Oil was very helpful, and subsequently, we put down seven holes and came up with 160 million tons of iron ore grading around 20 percent iron. It's very pure, very consistent. Every hole looked the same as the others.

The activities of Imperial Oil in the Choiceland-Nipawin area that spring was clouded in secrecy. Their pilot was "Lefty" MacLeod, and here is what he had to say about this clandestine operation . . . .

When I was flying for Imperial Oil one spring, probably 1956, they had something going north of Nipawin somewhere. They'd got a lead on some kind of mineral. It was a real cloak-and-dagger operation anyway. They'd hired a bunch of guys and kept them incommunicado in a motel in Regina. We flew them out nine at a time to Nipawin, where they were picked up by a vehicle and hauled out to the North. We generally took off from Regina at about four in the morning, disappeared over the horizon at a low altitude, and altered course after we were out south of the city. No, there was no way anybody could tell where we were going exactly. But we left before the job was completed. After that, they got the guys out by bus, I guess.

Sometime during the operation, they decided that they wanted some aerial pictures in the vicinity of White Fox and Choiceland. Since we had the airplane rigged with a camera mount and with a hatch on the floor, we wired Calgary for the camera. They always sent the operator - they had a professional cameraman, so all we had to do was fly the grid that he laid out on the map. So I was trying to do it by compass and a peculiarity developed as all the lines were dented in a certain area. Since Imperial Oil had a lot of very brainy guys in the office, they sized this all up to mean something else. And I believe, if I'm not mistaken, they discovered some kind of a heavy iron deposit in that area. It was affecting the compass, and consequently affected my lines of flight, making it look like some rube had been doing the flying.

Milt MacDougall and his wife were in the vicinity at that time. Nobody knew what it was all about. How come Milt and Margaret got in on this when everything has been so hush-hush? I think that the MacDougalls were staking at the time, but our guys were working somewhere else entirely, and I'm sure they were not looking specifically for any iron deposit. It was an interesting kind of experience.

Hundreds of claims were staked by dozens of people, both south of Choiceland and at nearby Kelsey Lake. Vicki Nemanishen, who lived at Meath Park, not far away, had her interest aroused in prospecting as a result of the Choiceland discovery. It was her first advent into the business, but not her last and she said . . . .

My first experience was at Kelsey Lake, when MacDougall found the iron at Choiceland in 1955. When I heard about this staking rush close to my home in Meath Park I went to the Mineral Resources Office and got help from them. They gave me maps and the report, and from then on I was gone - prospecting. That was my first prospecting trip.

The Choiceland iron deposit still lies there, untouched, 2000 feet below the surface. There are known to be other deposits in the area, at Kelsey Lake, and to the east. Some day, when a greatly increased population in western Canada and the northwestern United States provides a market, they probably will be developed . . . .