“A Grey Wee Town”: An Environmental History of Early Silver Mining at Cobalt, Ontario

Abstract

Cobalt was Ontario's first mining-boom town and at its height was the world's fourth-largest producer of silver. The initial discovery of silver in 1903 led to a rush that saw the town grow to several thousand inhabitants within a decade. In this period, land values rose to astronomical heights, thousands of claims were laid, and the town was hemmed in by mining operations. Initially the mines were relatively small-scale and used simple technology, but soon major mining interests impinged on the town geographically and severely affected it politically and economically. The mining-boom story of Cobalt takes the form of a conflict between the town council on the one hand and powerful mining concerns on the other. The former struggled to provide a reasonable standard of living for Cobalt's inhabitants, while the latter attempted to extract as much silver as quickly as possible from the surrounding land, from beneath neighbouring lakes, and even from within the townsite itself. In this struggle both the urban and natural environments suffered: financial constraints and near-unrestricted mining production resulted in a thoroughly inadequate urban infrastructure, especially in the provision of water for the town's inhabitants, while unhindered mining systematically deforested and denuded the land around the town and even drained the town's original main source of water, Cobalt Lake. Today, almost a century after the silver industry began to decline, the Cobalt region still displays the environmental impact of the mining activities of those early, rush years.

Reluctant rural regionalists

“…Cobalt, which is an administrative island carved out of Coleman Township, was from the start an urban centre with shops, restaurants, banks, a stock exchange, a YMCA, churches, dance halls, theatres, hotels, and an electric streetcar. And from the outset, this small town existed in tension with the surrounding rural township (Baldwin and Duke, 2005). Coleman Township contained many more mining properties than Cobalt, and the mining companies successfully fought efforts to include Coleman in any service provision that might create tax obligations for the mines.…”

The Ghosts of Mining Past: A Settler Colonial Story

“…At the same time, residents suffered considerable environmental disorder, much of which is still evident. Houses and commercial buildings were erected immediately next to and above the silver mines, and early residents put up with substantial blasting noise and disruption (Baldwin and Duke ). The environmental legacy of mining includes tailings laced with heavy metals, unfenced mine entrances, a partially drained lake, bedrock stripped bare of trees and soil, and a town so underlain with tunnels that subsidence is a common occurrence.…”

The impacts of century-old, arsenic-rich, mine tailings on multitrophic level biological assemblages in lakes from the Cobalt, Ontario, Canada region

“…Occurring at around the same time as the Klondike goldrush in the Yukon Territory, the discovery at Cobalt has been argued to be more historically important for Canada. This is due to how the mining activities in the Cobalt region continued to influence and solidify Canada's reputation as a mining powerhouse, even after the final mines were shut down in the 1980s (Baldwin & Duke 2005;Kelly et al 2007). Named Ontario's "Most Historic Town" in 2001, and declared a National Historic Site in 2002, Cobalt has been recognized as the birthplace of hard-rock mining in Canada, and the activities which took place in the region helped to pave the way for future exploration, mining, and settlement in both northern Ontario and Québec, as well as globally (Dumaresq 2009).…”

“…While mining activities in the region produced a lot of wealth it also left behind a legacy of environmental damage. Upon the initial discovery of silver in the region, the town of Cobalt grew to several thousand inhabitants within a single decade (Baldwin & Duke 2005). This rapid population growth resulted in significant environmental degradation due to poor urban planning, unrestricted mining activities and the draining of Cobalt Lake -the town's original source of drinking water (Baldwin & Duke 2005).…”

“…Upon the initial discovery of silver in the region, the town of Cobalt grew to several thousand inhabitants within a single decade (Baldwin & Duke 2005). This rapid population growth resulted in significant environmental degradation due to poor urban planning, unrestricted mining activities and the draining of Cobalt Lake -the town's original source of drinking water (Baldwin & Duke 2005). However, the most insidious form of mining-related contamination is the waste arsenic produced alongside the extraction of silver-containing ore from the region.…”