ROMANCE OF NICKEL

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 125, 24 November 1930, Page 3

ROMANCE OF NICKEL

CANADIAN DISCOVERIES

A "VALUELESS" HILL

(From "The Post's" Representative.) VxYNCOUVEK, 29th October. The discovery of nickel, called afterl "Old Nick" on account of its hardness, is one of Canada's modern 10* nianees. The time of its discovery and the circumstances surrounding it bay* a peculiar resemblance to the event! associated with the discovery of-silver at Broken Hill. In ISB4, a prospector named Tout Frood heard from a trapper of a showing of mineral near his trapline. Frood and another prospector named A. J. Cockburn set out to locate it. They; found the vein, and having quarrelled, settled their dispute by partitioning it. Frood's share afterwards became the Mond Nickel-Company,• Cockburn's the International Nickel Company, both, famous all over the world. In Broken Hill, one of the three discoverers of. silver, a boundary rider, sold his shara to his mates for £200—-a. sharo that afterwards was worth £2,000,000. Nothing was done with the nickel discovery for fifteen years. In the next three years, 110,000 tons were mined.. Then there was another lapse of eleven, years. Doubt existed about the ore reserves at Frood, and the mine ceased working, the houses and buildings being moved away.. Years afterwards, in 1925, drills were again set. up on the Frood, which, as the work proceeded, revealed the huge masses-.of .-rich copper ore that have made this mine one of the wonders of the mining world. The two companies pooled their interests, and were amalgamated under th« name, of the International Nickel_ Company. . '. ■■ THE SUDBURY FIELD. There is - romance also in the first discovery of nickel, iv the Sudbury field. Searching for a man that was lost, Dr. Howcy found him sitting on a small hill. The doctor saw copper; nearby, and took samples to the geological surveyor in the neighbourhood. They were pronounced valueless. When the Canadian Pacific railway was taken through this hill, the . construction gangs exposed a bed of copper nickel ore. On Dr; Howey's hill, pronounced valueless, was developed the famoua Murray mine, which later passed into the control of the British Government as an independent source of aiekel for purposes of the Great War. John'Flanagan, a blacksmith on the construction gang, made the discovery. Aroused by the appearance of "red, mud" on a road alongside the right-of-way, Flanagan dug deeper, and disclosed solid copper ore. ■ ; The great steel and armament makers of England and Europe quickly realised the importance of the new nickel deposits. Supplies had previously come from New Caledonia, and there was at one time a complete dearth of« the metal. Sir John A. Mac Donald and Sir Charles Tupper, two of Canada's Prime Ministers, joined in bailing the impetus nickel was destined to impart to Canada's prosperity. The latter foresaw the manufacture of nickel steel —a vision which has not yet been fulfilled.