RADIUM CITY

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 92, 10 February 1947, Page 3

RADIUM CITY

A tiny, ugly collection of frame bunkhouses and mills squats forlornly on the shore of remote Great Bear Lake, in Canada’s Northwest Territories. It is 1,400 miles north of the nearest railhead (at Waterways, Alberta), and 26 miles south of the Arctic Circle, in a part of the continent bleak with long, cold winter nights. The village has no official name, but it is sometimes called Radium City. Last September it suddenly found itself part of an all but incredible world drama, for under its fir-bearded slopes lies the stuff of which atomic bombs are made.

Gilbert La Bine, a sturdy, blueeyed, weather-toughened French Canadian, found the site of Radium City 15 years ago, while looking principally for gold. He had grown up in the mining town of Haileybury, Ont., at 15 had gone prospecting on his own. He made one good strike in Manitoba, but it petered out in the late ’2os.

Gilbert La Bine knew that cobalt stains on rocks are a pretty good indication of hidden, precious minerals. In 1930, remembering that he had read or heard somewhere that there were cobalt stains on the east shore of Great Bear Lake, he set out to see. He made part of the trip by dog sled, arived at Great Bear Lake where the thermometer registered 70 degrees below zero. Said La Bine: “As I looked over the shore, I noticed a great wall there was stained with cobalt bloom . . . Following along, I found tiny dark pieces of ore, probably the size of plums. Looking more closely, I found the vein.