Originally published in Lake of the Woods Area News, Volume 54, Number 2, Spring 2024
If ever there was a season and setting ripe for entertaining stories, surely it would be in a time of claim staking, risk taking, and fortune making.
Gold mining folklore is salted with tales of derring-do, murders, property disputes, unsavoury characters, and fortunes made and lost. During the Lake of the Woods’ gold mining boom, the stories were somewhat less dramatic, but equally entertaining. Think unlikely prospectors, a golden proposal, and a mysteriously missing cache!
These stories, taken from the pages of The Rat Portage Miner, speak not of assaying, test pits and shaft sinking, but of the colloquial tales of the mining industry.
Consider Mrs. McDonald and Mrs. Hall (no given names provided) who in April 1898 made one of the richest finds in Ontario’s gold fields, right here on Lake of the Woods. Their property, located near the Pine Portage Mine and the Triumph Mine, showed positive surface indications. At a mere four-foot depth, they hit a rich vein. Mrs. McDonald walked to Rat Portage (now Kenora) from the mine toting a ham-sized piece of ore that was almost pure gold. Those who got a look at the ore said they had never seen such a find anywhere.
McDonald of Rat Portage and Mrs. Hall of Winnipeg financed, hired miners, purchased supplies and managed the mine to suit themselves. They indicated that “the mine has not been for sale, and is not now, and that no man can have the property, as they propose to demonstrate to the world that women can be miners as well as men.”
At the time, The Miner stated, “These pioneer lady miners appear to be the only ladies on the American continent who are actively engaged in gold mining.”
In May of 1898, The Midland Free Press published this account which was later reported in The Rat Portage Miner:
“A Midland lady took a trip to Orillia one day last week and on her return witnessed a proposal of marriage in a bus and on the train. In the bus was an attractive young lady and a toil-strong young man.
After an admiring look at the young lady, the man said to her, ‘I am just back from Rat Portage, with over $20,000 in my pocket. Will you marry me?’”
The young lady declined. When she boarded the train, he continued his pursuit and again urged her to marry him, “using his wealth from Rat Portage as a strong inducement.” She again refused, which only spurred on his campaign to win her hand. Her detraining in Waubaushene left him to continue his journey alone.
The Miner bemoaned the fact that the young fellow who had struck it rich chose to seek a wife beyond the borders of Rat Portage, for surely, it postulated, “some of the handsome young ladies of Rat Portage [would] undertake his name and spend his cash. In other words, he should patronize home markets and not go chasing after strange women who do not seem to appreciate the fact that any man who hails from Rat Portage is likely to become one of the great gold mining millionaires of the world.”
If the apocryphal stories of millionaires and ham-sized nuggets were the stuff of local mining legend, so too was the rumour of a buried cache of gold on one of the islands somewhere between Sultana Mine and town.
The story goes that representatives from an English syndicate were at the Ophir Mine (adjoining the Sultana) to examine the site. The bottom of the shaft was apparently “glittering with gold under the miners’ candles” and the gold nuggets were the size of men’s fists. Delighted by the richness of the mine, the syndicate had the gold packed into an ironbound whiskey cask, which was loaded on a steamboat bound for Rat Portage, then to be shipped to London, England.
Guards accompanied the cask to safeguard the treasure but one has to wonder at their effectiveness, for the cask disappeared. Some guards said that it was delivered to Rat Portage, others said that it disappeared enroute. Many believed that it was buried on an island and still is!
The tales of gold abound, much like Lake of the Woods gold at the turn of the last century.
