Silver Islet, Ontario
Encyclopedia
Sibley Peninsula
The Sibley Peninsula is a long and wide peninsula in Ontario, Canada on Lake Superior. It projects into the lake from its north shore, and separates Thunder Bay to the west from Black Bay to the east....
in northwestern Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
. It was the first silver
Silver
Silver is a metallic chemical element with the chemical symbol Ag and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal...
mine in Ontario.
A rich vein of pure silver was discovered on this small island in 1868 by the Montreal Mining Company. At that time, the island was approximately [50 m²] in size and only 2.5 metres above the waters of Lake Superior
Lake Superior
Lake Superior is the largest of the five traditionally-demarcated Great Lakes of North America. It is bounded to the north by the Canadian province of Ontario and the U.S. state of Minnesota, and to the south by the U.S. states of Wisconsin and Michigan. It is the largest freshwater lake in the...
. In 1870, the site was developed by Alexander H. Sibley
Alexander H. Sibley
Alexander Hamilton Sibley was the president of the Silver Islet Mining Company which operated a silver mine in Ontario.He was born in Detroit in 1817, the son of the first mayor of Detroit, Solomon Sibley...
's Silver Islet Mining Company which built wooden breakwaters around the island to hold back the lake's waves and increased the island's area substantially with crushed rock. The islet was expanded to over 10 times its original size and a small mining town was built up on the shore nearby.
After most of the purest ore from the original site had been removed, a second vein was discovered in 1878. By 1883, most of the highest quality silver had been extracted and the price of silver had declined. The final straw came when a shipment of coal
Coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...
did not arrive before the end of the shipping season. The pumps holding back the waters of the lake stopped and in early 1884 the islet's mine shafts, which had reached a depth of 384 metres, were flooded. They would never be de-watered, and the mine's underground operations would never be reopened.
Over the 16 years that the mine was in operation, $3.25 million worth of silver was extracted.
The houses originally built to house miners are now used as private summer cottages. The general store has been restored, and serves light meals in its tea-room, in addition to selling a variety of knicknacks and basic foodstuffs.
This is an article written by Syd Hancock, January 21, 1972 on the occasion of Julian Cross's death.
As recounted by Syd Hancock, Silver Islet is the home of Julian (Jules) Cross, founder of Steep Rock Irom Mine in Atikokan, Ontario. Outside the Atikokan Library & museum is a bronze plaque erected by the Ontario Department of Public Records and Archives to mark the historical significance of the Steep Rock Iron Range. On December 29, 1971, the man who unveiled this plaque, and made possible the Steep Rock story, Julian Gifford Cross, died at the age of 83. Born at Silver Islet on July 25, 1888, only four years after the closing of that historic silver mine, his destiny and the future of many others was inevitably associated with mining.
Sleeping Giant Provincial Park
Sleeping Giant Provincial Park
Sleeping Giant Provincial Park, established in 1944 as Sibley Provincial Park and renamed in 1988, is a park located on the Sibley Peninsula in Northwestern Ontario, east of Thunder Bay. The nearest communities are Pass Lake, located at the northern entrance to the park, and Dorion, located NW,...
has an excellent exhibit in its visitor centre, detailing the structure and history of the mine.
There is speculation that much silver remains to be recovered at this location, but attempts to reopen the mine in 1919 and the 1970s (reprocessing mine tailings) were not successful.
The Silver Islet Mine was also where "Vanners" were first used commercially to extract metal from low-grade ore. Known as the "Frue Vanner" as it was named for W. B. Frue, Superintendent of the Silver Islet Mine, who developed the system, it was first installed at the "Stamp Mill" beside "Frue's Brook" on the mainland. Modern versions of the Frue Vanner are still in use today.
In popular culture
Silver Islet, specifically the missing coal shipment in 1883, is the subject of the TanglefootTanglefoot (band)
Tanglefoot was a folk band from Ontario, Canada. Formed in the early 1980s by schoolteachers Joe Grant, Bob Wagar, and Tim Rowat to play traditional music, they became a five-piece band playing largely original music...
song "One More Night". Silver Islet is featured as the hometown of Sarah, a waitress, in Jane Urquhart
Jane Urquhart
Jane Urquhart, OC is a Canadian novelist and poet.-Biography:Born 200 miles north of Thunder Bay, Ontario in Little Longlac , Ontario, Jane Urquhart is the third of three children and the only daughter of Marian and Walter Carter, a prospector and mining engineer...
's novel The Underpainter.
Silver Islet is featured in the song My Hometown
My Hometown
"My Hometown" is a single by Bruce Springsteen off his Born in the U.S.A. album, that was the record-tying seventh and last top 10 single to come from it, peaking at #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. It also topped the U.S. adult contemporary chart, making the song Springsteen's only #1...
by Burnz n Hell. The song is a tribute to Thunder Bay, and a huge part of the town's internet glory.