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Up the Gatineau! Article

This article was first published in Up the Gatineau! Volume 25.

West Hull’s Phosphate Pits: Mines, Miners and Motives

Donald D. Hogarth

Thanks to Andrew Geggie (National Air Photo Library), Duncan Marshall (Marshall-Maruska Aerial Images) and other affable residents of the Gatineau region, whose information led to the pinpointing of several elusive mines.

The diggings and their problems

The surface of Hull Township is literally pocked with hundreds of shallow surface pits. In the southern part of Gatineau Park alone, an area of about 6000 acres, summer field mapping in the 1990s located 215 sites — either single pits or groups of pits. Questions loomed: Who dug these holes? When? For what purpose? How much material was taken out? Why were particular localities selected?

A small amount of reading showed me that the earliest pits were excavated in 1878 for apatite, a natural calcium phosphate used as an ingredient in fertilizer. Most of these mines operated for only a year or two, although some were reworked later for mica in the 1890s. This led to other questions: Why the magic year 18787 Why did preduction dwindle so quickly afterwards? This paper examines solutions to these various mysteries.

Anyone studying the history of Hull Township faces a major obstacle: the old registry records perished suddenly in the disastrous Hull-Ottawa fire of 1900. For this article, supplementary data from Chelsea municipal records, Geological Survey of Canada field books and other sources held by the National Archives of Canada in Ottawa and the Archives nationales du Québec in Hull have indicated general trends, but many details remain approximate or can only be inferred.

Table 1. Pioneer phosphate mines and miners in West Hull

1 L. Carman
& heirs of
W. Baldwin
A. Cates


H. Robinson
Farm Point


Ottawa
Civil servant
& farmer

Lumber merchant
R


O
1878


1878
Small


90
2 M. Daly,
G. Dunlop &
J. Mulvihill
C. W. Lord Hull Sawmill agent R 1878 18
3 A. Lacharité A. Lacharté Kirks Ferry Farmer O 1878 6
4 H. Irish
W. B. Snow
J. A. Cooper
H. Irish
W. B. Snow
J. A. Gemmill
Aylmer
Ottawa
Ottawa
Innkeeper
Civil engineer
Lawyer
O
O
L
1878
ca 1880-90
ca 1890-92
20
60
200
5 J. Kirk J. Kirk Kirk's Ferry Farmer &
Innkeeper
O ca 1878 small
6 J. ChildsJ. Childs Kirk's Ferry Farmer O ca 1880 small
7 Heirs of
J. Maxwell
E. J. Griffin
& W. Scott
Sydenham,
Ont. & Ottawa
MinersO ca 1883-85 small
8 A. Blackburn E. B. Haycock Ottawa Mining engineer L 1878 100
9 A. Blackburn E. B. Haycock Ottawa Mining engineer L 1878 25
10 T. Childs E. B. Haycock Ottawa Mining engineer L 1878 10
11 J. Allan,
A. Corrigan,
J. Bradley
Boyd &
McQuarrie
Ottawa Builders &
contractors
L 1878 40
12 M. Scott W. H. Boyd
& Sons
Ottawa Builders &
contractors
L 1878 ca l0
13 J. McSweeneyJ. McSweeney Old Chelsea Farmer &
hotel owner
O 1878 small
14 M. Berigan W. A. Allan Ottawa Mining executive L 1878 small

Abbreviations (deed type of mines and mineral proprietorship):
L property lease, O ownership, R royalty on minerals taken away.

What follows is a brief description of fourteen mines, and those who operated them, within the boundaries of today’s municipality of Chelsea, a part of Hull Township which after 1875 became a separate municipality then known as West Hull. Their history is summarized in Table 1 and their locations are shown in Figure 1. In the text, property numbers are keyed to reference numbers 1-14 used in both the table and figure, and cadastral units refer to 4Hull Township of the period. The mines described here begin at Range 16, the northern edge of Chelsea, and extend as far south as Range 8.

Location of the 14 phosphate properties
Location of the 14 phosphate properties. Roads and lakes and river taken from the municipal plan (1877) and H.G. Vennor's privately published map (1878). Trails are spotted from personal observations and interpretations of the author.

The mines and miners

No. 1. Range 16; lots 26b, 27b, 28b; 350 acres. This property was prospected and developed in a small way by Adonisam Cates, a young farmer from Wakefield Township who doubled as employee of the Dominion Census Department. Adonisam was the eldest son of Seth Cates, proprietor of the Wakefield Temperance Hotel. Possibly the junior Cates worked for Hiram Robinson, who soon became involved with these properties, but this is by no means sure. Cates was certainly busy amassing phosphate on all three halflots when Henry Vennor, of the Geological Survey of Canada and expert on local phosphate, visited on May 22, 1878.1 Vennor reported “massive” ore (homogeneous or solid material lacking distinct erystals) below the phosphate zone, a zone that angled southeasterly through the lots. Within the phosphate zone, apatite was found in irregular deposits as scattered crystals badly mixed with mica, and was therefore less valuable.

From notarial records we learn that Hiram Robinson (1831-1919) acquired mining and mineral rights on the three half-lots in April and May of 1878. Before the summer was out, his crew had mined, sorted and shipped 90 tons of high-grade phosphate. Although Robinson did not begin to dispose of his mining rights until 1907, we hear no more of his phosphate but De Schmid, of the Mines Branch, reports that Robinson and Osborne Carman reworked these properties for mica from about 1900 to 1910. Among Robinson's earlier (pre- 1878) mining ventures were the opening of valuable phosphate mines near Perth, Ontario and Wakefield, but these and the less productive West Hull mine were really brief digressions in an unusually busy and productive life. Robinson was for a period mayor of Hawkesbury, Ontario, a long-time senior employee of the Hawkesbury Lumber Company (president 1888-1919), and a part-time resident of Ottawa where he had numerous public and business attachments.

No. 2. Range 15 lots 26a (part), 26b, 27; 350 acres. This property was examined by Frank Dawson Adams, who was a student assistant to Henry Vennor during the summer of 1878 and later became one of Canada’s leading geologists. Adams reported in mid-August that two apatite veins, each a foot wide, had been exposed which produced, individually, 5% and 12 tons of high-grade phosphate, under supervision of Charles W. and John M. Lord of Hull. Charles was a partner in the firm Sherman, Lord and Company, lumber shippers and sawmill operators, and a proprietor of Union Flour and Grist Mills, both near the suspension bridge linking Hull and Ottawa at the Chaudiére. At the mine, their moveable property was valued at a modest $100 in the assessment, which suggests they had only “cobbing” (or trimming) and tool sheds, along with tools such as sledges, crowbars, shovels, picks and wedges.

After this brief flurry, these lots remained inactive until 1905 when the mining rights were purchased by Henry Flynn, a hotel keeper in Maniwaki, and William Troy. a medical doctor of Ottawa, and the property was reworked for mica. Their main pit was a cut into the side of a steep hill. De Schmid reports a gash 120 feet long and up to 50 feet deep, but the working seems to have been enlarged in more recent times with a large undercut proceeding eastward as a gigantic cavern, projecting downward into water and darkness. Only a little apatite is found in this working, and the phosphate was apparently derived from other deposits on the lots.

No. 3. Range 12; lots 14b, 15a; 93 acres. These small deposits were worked by the landowner Augustin Lacharité. In August 1878 he took eighteen days off farming to mine 6 tons of rather pure phosphate, which was locally mixed with mica and other impurities. His small workings near the river were flooded during the raising of the Gatineau River in 1926 for hydro-electric development and are no longer visible, but fortunately Frank Adams’ field notes are still available.

No. 4. Range 12; lots 14c, 15b, 16b; 166 acres. This property, like many others in the Gatineau-Liévre region, had a series of owners. In 1877 the land was owned by John Capples Jr. He farmed his 78-acre river lot, but the lands behind were “bush lots” used for timber and firewood. The property was then sold to Henry Irish, who had a tavern off Main Street in Aylmer. Irish had title in “fee simple” to both land and mineral rights. He worked his phosphate mine during periods when the hotel trade was slack, but this extra activity was time-consuming, and he sold the property within the year.

An oblique air photograph
An oblique air photograph taken in November 1926, during inundation by the Gatineau River after completion of the Chelsea dam. Gemmill's phosphate mine (No. 4 in text), here outlined in white, is to the right of the Sherrin cottage. The former CPR line (near foreground) and old Gatineau highway (just behind) are also shown. Photo: National Air Photo Library, HA 136-29.

Although details of the sale are not clear, it appears that ownership now fell to two new tenants: young John Cooper who revamped Capples’ farm, and William Barclay Snow, who reopened Irish’s mine. Snow was an Ontario land surveyor and civil engineer who lived first in Ottawa and later in Toronto.

The phosphate deposit was last worked about 1890 under John Gemmill and Archie May (Gemmill & May, barristers of Ottawa), a partnership more interested in mica than phosphate, although they did take out and sell considerable apatite. In their words, they “finished” the phosphate mine.

Vertical air photographs taken in October 1926 were helpful in pinpointing the exact location of this mine. It was in Kirk's Ferry. just west of the old “Chelsea and Wakefield macadamized road” and nearly midway between the previous (now flooded) rail route and the present CPR tracks. It lay immediately downhill from a house built about 1922 for Philip Sherrin, now owned by Richard Adrian, at the end of Sherrin Road. The bulk of the apatite was won from a single opening on the river lot. The photos also give some idea of the size of the working and even the disposition of the ore body. It was oval-shaped, trended north-northeast, was 90 feet long and 30 feet wide and was partially flooded (see photo, page 37). The “stereo pair” photographs provide a threedimensional impression which suggests that the ore body dipped steeply westnorthwest and plunged northward. Spence reported that the pit was down 35 feet. From this small lens nearly 300 tons of high-grade ore was taken. This was West Hull's largest phosphate mine, though not in the same class as the Emerald, Little Rapids and other large phosphate deposits north of Buckingham, Quebec.

The trench opens as a furrow just below the former Sherrin residence. This furrow can be followed north-northeasterly to a dock 40 feet away where the main pit, known as “the deep fishing hole,” lies below the surface of the Gatineau and begins just beyond the dock. The east bank of the furrow is made up with pieces of discarded rock from the mine, containing green pyroxenite, the host rock, and brown apatite.2 Little mica was present in this lens, and amber mica extracted by Gemmill and company and later operators came from veins in the bush lots behind.

No. 5. Range 11; lot 15a; 100 acres. This property was probably first prospected by John Kirk, farmer, ferry owner, innkeeper and vendor of farm machinery. Details of the deed are not available but mineral rights appear to have been sold in the 1890s to James Henry Connor, who was then a carpenter in Ottawa. From about 1900, Connor worked the property for mica and later leased it to Messrs. Fortin & Gravelle and then to O'Brien & Fowler. In the meantime Connor became famous for developing “superior washing and wringing machines” which were sold from his Sussex Street office in Ottawa.

The main mica trench on this property is situated off present-day Ojai Road. It measures 150 feet long and up to 10 feet deep but is now partly filled with debris. It is described, with a cross-section illustration, by de Schmid but its location is given, in error, one lot to the west of its true site.

No. 6. Range 11: lot 16b; 100 acres. In 1878-79 this half-lot was the property of James Childs. On it were excavated, possibly by Childs, five small pits, up to 10 feet deep, near the north end of the property (present-day Southridge Road). Traces of an old apatite stockpile (fragments of large green crystals) remain at the edge of one of the pits. The broken rock nearby contains very little mica and the pits, which are now nearly filled with brush, appear to have been dug for phosphate only.

This property, a bush lot, seems to have then lain idle for several years, but in 1906 the Laurentide Mica Co. of Ottawa purchased it for $500, and in 1910 they reinvestigated it for mica.

No. 7. Range 11: lot 15b; 100 acres. This bush lot may have been tested originally for phosphate by the farmer Albert Edward Maxwell. The deed, assigning mines and minerals to Edwin John Griffin of Sydenham, Ontario (near Kingston) and Walter Scott of Ottawa, was made out in April 1884, According to custom of the day the property was probably tested for phosphate only (this was before amber mica was a viable product), with token production, before the deed was signed. The new proprietors paid $600, a top-of-the-line price for their 100 acres. Later on, in 1900, Scott relinquished his share and Griffin worked the land for mica, which was split and trimmed on the property. Access was through Haycock's lot to the east (No. 8).

There are about 10 pits, the deepest about five feet to water, just north of a large swamp off Southridge Road. Little apatite is associated with the darkbrown, highly contorted mica.

No. 8. Range 11; lot 13f; 100 acres. Edward Burton Haycock (1838-1916) purchased mineral rights here in 1878 from the farmer Andrew Blackburn. Haycock's father, Edward Sr., was the contractor who built the East and West Blocks of the original federal government buildings in Ottawa and had attempted to open an iron mine on the Hull-Templeton boundary (see Up the Gatineau!, 10 [1994], 16-20). By late 1876, Edward Jr. owned promising phosphate properties on the east side of the Gatineau River.

There are two mines on property No. 8. Frank Adams visited one in mid- August 1878 and reported a phosphate lens up to 12 feet wide exposed in a pit which was then partially water-filled. Haycock had already removed considerable green apatite, which was associated with large “books” of dark mica. Some amethyst (no longer evident) had been taken from the bottom of the pit and lay on the waste dump nearby. Production for 1878 had already reached 70 tons of high-grade phosphate, while the other mine on the property had given 30 tons. The two mines then lay idle for nearly 30 years, but Haycock returned about 1905 to rework these veins for mica.

The valuation rolls of 1878 assess Haycock's moveable equipment here at $250. This suggests a sizeable operation and compares with $250 at the Nellie and Blanche mines in Cantley where Haycock had a derrick, a short tramway, cobbing and tool sheds, shovels, picks, sledges, crowbars, wedges and chisels.

Today, a 75-foot-long trench off Forest Hill Road (Haycock’s main mine) is fenced off, partially filled, bridged in the middle, and neatly decorated with flowers on the edges. Traces of a small stockpile, containing pieces of massive pinkish-white apatite, are still discernible at one end.3

No. 9. Range 11; lot 12c; 50 acres. This is another Andrew Blackburn property worked for phosphate by Edward Haycock. Henry Vennor visited here in May 1878 and reported, “Haycock is now working below Kirk's Ferry and on the river side of the road. Crystals of mica abound. Many of these last are very perfect.” By the end of the summer, Vennor estimated production at 25 tons.

Today the small pits are partially filled and badly overgrown. Little can be seen of the “pay zone” or old workings.

No. 10. Range 10; lot 17: 200 acres. This property was owned by Thomas Childs, a farmer, and seems to have been worked under a lease by Edward Haycock in 1878. Its exalted title was Haycock Phosphate Mine, although only 10 tons were produced from here.

The zone favourable for phosphate (metasedimentary with rocks, like gneiss and quartzite) lies along the eastern edge of the lot, but the bulk of the property is on unfavourable rock (igneous, with syenite and granite) not normally associated with phosphate, Three pits were noted in metasediments; the largest is 23 feet deep and undercut (“stoped”) on one side. A sizeable waste dump is nearby. The upper six feet carries crystalline apatite, but below are large books of black mica, and phosphate has all but disappeared. There is no evidence that this property was reworked after 1878.

In this early prospecting and testing Haycock was grubstaked by a group of prominent British merchants from London, including Levinson Bennett, R. S. Archbold and Charles de Mancha. This group had incorporated (in England) in November 1877 as the Canadian Phosphate Co. Ltd., but Haycock was in control with 32% of the shares. By late summer of 1878 the company had decided not to pursue their options on the west side of the Gatineau River, but instead concentrated on properties with larger phosphate potential to the east of the Gatineau. Canadian Phosphate was liquidated in January 1883.

No. 11. Range 10; lots 14, 15, 16; 600 acres. Hugh Boyd and Laughlin McQuarry of Ottawa leased mineral and mining rights from the local owners of these lots. Boyd had been inspector of the city water works and McQuarry was a butter dealer in the Byward Market, but by 1878 they had turned their hand to construction and allied as Boyd & McQuarrie, building contractors. Under this partnership they investigated land between present-day Dunlop’s Loop, on the Gatineau Parkway, and Autoroute 5. Access to the property was via the Chelsea-Wakefield Road.

In early June of that year three veins were being opened by 11 men, and by early July a blacksmith's shop, for repairing tools and shoeing horses, was installed on the property. Soon 40 tons of high-grade phosphate were ready for shipment. But friction had developed in the partnership and on July 11 the Ottawa Free Press reported that Boyd had sold his share to McQuarry for $900.

This property, the McQuarry Mine, was later known as the Bradley Mine after the farmer James Bradley who controlled the westernmost 200 acres. He reworked his lot for mica between 1906 and 1908.

About 40 pits are still evident, the deepest down 25 feet and most containing appreciable amounts of apatite. However, on the southeast side of the parcel the rock is mixed with powdery hematite, resulting in brick-red ore which lowered the value of the product because it was difficult to treat chemically.

No. 12. Range 11; lots 14a, 15a (part); 100 acres. Early in 1878 Hugh Boyd leased for himself and his heirs a parcel of land from the farmer Michael Scott. In the summer, during slack periods in the construction industry, Hugh and his sons Nathaniel and William prospected, and by the end of July they had exposed two veins 20 and 24 inches wide, which were apparently broadening with depth. Their main opening became known as the “Boyd Mine.” The Free Press reported that in mid-July four tons of phosphate had been taken out in one week. However, when the summer ended the family decided to sell.

Henry Cole of Ironside, formerly with the Canada Iron Mining and Manufacturing Co. (Forsyth Mine) but now a dealer in mining real estate, facilitated the transaction. The new owners were Jacob and Hyman Ascher (Ascher & Co.) of Montreal, dealers in imported watches, jewellery, silver plate and other “fancy goods.” They paid $600 for the property. But the Aschers, who had availed themselves of substantial discounts on loans and overdrafts (81,172,000 in 3% years) and were heavily indebted to the Consoclidated Bank of Canada ($530,000 in April 1879), had mortgaged their mines (the Boyd and two others). By then the Bank was in serious financial trouble. They seized the mines and closed their doors on July 31, 1879, amid disenchanted shareholders’ cries of gross mismanagement of funds. The bank's former directors and erstwhile general manager, John Baxter Renny, were arraigned in court and charged with falsifying accounts. All but one of the directors appeared on October 8 at the Court of the Queen's Bench, Montreal, before Judge Samuel Monk. Absent, however, was Renny, who had fled to Minnesota with $10,500 in misappropriated funds, and title to the Boyd Mine!

Sir Francis Hincks, former president of the Consolidated Bank of Canada, took the brunt of the legal action. He was tried by jury and, on October 30, pronounced guilty (of mismanagement rather than dishonesty). In spite of this verdict Renny held on to his mining rights, but in 1899, and still in Minnesota, he relinquished them to Thomas Wilson and Hilton Green (Wilson & Green) of Montreal, dealers in apatite and other minerals.

No reference was found to mines worked by tenants after the Boyds. and 1998 field examination of the site with traverses at 300-foot intervals did not reveal any phosphate workings in this half-lot. The most likely location of the Boyd Mine is in the north end of the property, behind Ecole du Grand-Boisé, off Scott Road east of Autoroute 5.

No. 13. Range 9; lot 15b; 120 acres. John McSweeney (1851-1929), an Old Chelsea farmer and innkeeper, worked his own property for phosphate. It became known as the McSweeney (also Sweeny) Mine but was soon taken up by Ascher & Co., and then (1879) acquired by John Renny during the collapse of the Consolidated Bank of Canada and sold to Wilson & Green in 1899. Wilson & Green appear to have worked primarily for mica.

Some eight shallow pits are evident south of the Meech Lake Road, one obtaining a depth of 15 feet exposing a 1-foot wide vein of apatite. Nearby, concrete foundations of what was probably a mine building are still visible. A few small pits are also evident on a hill that rises steeply just north of the Old Chelsea- Kingsmere Road. However, the ore in all these pits is impure, and it is doubtful whether more than five tons of apatite were ever removed.

No. 14. Range 8; lot 14b; 100 acres. William Anderson Allan (1847-1921) leased or paid royalty on phosphate from the half-lot of Martin Berrigan, near Old Chelsea. In 1878, the valuation rolls noted Allan’s phosphate mine here and assessed his moveable property at $100, suggesting trimming and tool sheds and a small amount of mining equipment such as picks, crowbars, shovels and sledges. Field examination disclosed two small pits on the east side of a steep hill, 330 feet high, one showing considerable apatite and a small dump of discarded waste rock.

In 1878, William Allan owned phosphate mines in Bedford, Ontario and Wakefield, Quebec, townships. Later he was to acquire the Emerald and Little Rapids Mines near Buckingham, two of the country’s largest phosphate deposits. For a short time he was proprietor and editor of Ontario’s first mining paper, The Canadian Mining Review. By the turn of the century he was one of Ottawa's most successful businessmen.

Remarks and conclusions

Apatite in West Hull was hardly a new discovery in the 1870s. Thirty years had passed since Dr. T. Sterry Hunt, mineralogist with the Geological Survey of Canada, was sent to examine rock along the new timber slide at Blasdell's Mill between Chelsea and Ironside. In the Geological Survey of Canada Report of Progress for 1847-48 he had noted large crystals of yellowish-green apatite in an excavated block. The Chelsea occurrence was mentioned in Sir William Logan's epic, Geology of Canada-1863, with apatite present "in some abundance” and was noted as a select mineral locality in the 1868 edition of Professor J. D. Dana's System of Mineralogy, the standard mineralogy reference in North America. Phosphate production from the Perth, Ontario region began about 1865 and new exposures near the Gatineau River were reported in the press from 1872 on. The very first shipment of apatite in the Gatineau region (to England), was from Wilson's Corner in 1873, and by 1878 apatite was wellknown in our area.

It took only a favourable commodity price to stimulate land speculation, prospecting and mining activity. Whereas 1877 and 1878 were profit years and boom times, 1879 and 1880 were depression years and “bust.” Canada followed the economic precedent set by England. The phosphate prices at Montreal were $16.75 per ton in 1877 and $19.50 in 1878, but dropped to $14.50 per ton in 1879 and 1880. The cost of mining and transportation was probably $15 or $16 a ton, so that mining here, never very lucrative, was carried on at a loss in 1879 and 1880. Many operators simply gave up at that time.

apatite pocket
Long and cross sections of an idealized apatite pocket, Gatineau district, showing the typical irregular shape of a phosphate lens. Drawing: unpublished woodcut by Dr. Edward Chapman, Prof. of Mineralogy, University College, Toronto, 1878.

The miners and would-be miners in West Hull were drawn from a variety of professions: hotel owners, contractors, lawyers, civil engineers, lumber merchants. office clerks, bankers, jewellers and farmers. Most were not skilled miners and were interested only in turning over a quick profit. As a result, they failed to install equipment such as steam drills and steam pumps, which had been available in Ottawa since the early 1870s. They manually dug shallow pits, and when the sinking became too arduous they simply moved to another location nearby. This explains the multitude of small holes scattered along the countryside. It is true that Haycock and Allan were professional mining men, and later became very successful in this occupation, but their interest in West Hull phosphate was short-lived, and they soon turned their attention eastward to more promising phosphate deposits in Buckingham.

The only mining company that showed any interest (albeit peripherally) was Canadian Phosphate, of London, England, but that was difficult to operate from overseas and soon went under during a series of petty squabbles.

Some of the properties (e.g. 3, 5, 6, 13) were mined by farmers when time permitted. Piecemeal mining, like part-time lumbering, firewood harvesting and land sales, supplemented the meagre farm income. The procedure here was to work “by contract.” Ore was hauled from the pit edge by horse and sled and sold at a predetermined price and place. Another arrangement was forthe miner to work “on royalty” (e.g. 1 and 2). Here the landowner was paid according to the weight of the ore removed from the property. The deeds were probably similar to those in East Hull and Templeton Townships, some of which were abstracted from notarial copies which survived the Hull fire. There a miner paid 50 to 75¢ per ton of phosphate ore, as well as 25¢ per acre (with a 100-acre minimum); otherwise, without the nominal lease, the payment was $1.25 to $1.50 per ton of phosphate. Mineral rights were sold for $3 to $6 an acre.

Broken ore was, by and large, sold to British merchants. The ore was shipped by boat down the Ottawa River from West Hull to Montreal, where it was loaded as ballast on ships bound for England. The raw ore was there treated chemically to produce water-soluble phosphate, and the product, now ready for use in the fertilizer industry. was shipped back to North America, to the United States! It seems that Canada's trade in the last century was, following an established tradition, directed west to east rather than north to south.

The ore that stimulated the development of these West Hull mines was apatite, a mineral which was difficult to identify, and must have caused the miners and prospectors many anxious moments. In West Hull it was compact, granular or crystalline; glass-clear, translucent or opaque; brown-red, pink, grey, yellow or green. Its very name (in 1786) was derived from a Greek noun, transliterated and pronounced “a-pa-tay,” which meant deceit, emphasizing its variable and deceiving properties. Fortunately, in the Gatineau it is associated, to a greater or lesser extent, with amber mica, which remains glittering on the earth’s surface for centuries, long after the accompanying minerals (including apatite) have crumbled away to sand. The close association between apatite and mica must have been a boon to the early prospectors. It was also an aid in locating the old workings as, inevitably, some of the rock spilled off the carts or sleds during transportation and today one needs only to follow a sparkling trail to find a mine. Two constant properties of apatite, brittleness and softness (compared to associated minerals), also made the mineral relatively easy to handle. With a hammer, objectionable impurities could fairly easily be separated from it. “Cobbing” required little skill and this kept labour costs low.

That apatite was found in a peculiar type of dark-green rock, pyroxenite, must have been wellknown to the mine operators. They had Henry Vennor there to tell them. They must have soon discovered that some pyroxenite strata were stuffed with apatite, but others were barren. A long stretch of apatite-free country between occurrences 2 and 3 was due mainly to the predominance of syenite, an unfavourable host rock for apatite, and the prospectors deliberately passed over this sector.

- - -

Why did the Ottawans and Montrealers, the city people with cash incomes, turn their hand to phosphate mining in West Hull? Was it to reap a quick profit? Perhaps. For most, mining turned out to be a digression. None got very rich, but none lost a fortune (except the Aschers, who were caught in a financial tailspin). In this sense it was an escape from the day-to-day routine of dull 1878. And they all must have enjoyed the adventure, the search, the healthy fresh air, and the beautiful Gatineau countryside.

References

For those inquisitive readers who wish to document phosphate pits in their own back yards or to verify possible diggings, two references by Hugh Spence (first styled Hugh de Schmid) are absolutely essential. These are:

- H. S. de Schmid (1912) Mica: its occurrence, exploitation and uses (Canada: Mines Branch, Publication 118);
- H. S. Spence (1920) Phosphate in Canada (Canada: Mines Branch, Publication 396).

These are first-hand accounts and, for many details, all that are available. They form a framework on which to base any study of the mines, However, in places the descriptions are imprecise and the general lack of early (pre-1885) data is disappointing.

Footnotes

  1. This item, and further references to the activities of the Geological Survey (Vennor and Adams) are taken from field books preserved in the National Archives of Canada.
  2. People wishing to visit the property should request permission from Mr. Adrian.
  3. People wishing to visit should request permission from the proprietor, Cal Pritchard.

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