NORTH-WEST CANADA

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 135, 9 June 1937, Page 13

NORTH-WEST CANADA

ITS VALUE .IN TRADE

LITTLE SETTLEMENT YET

It is not generally realised, perhaps, that two-fifths of the area of Canada is outside the nine provinces, says a writer in the "Daily Express." It is contained in the North-west Territories which stretch., from Hudson Bay on the east to Alaska on the west, and north to the Pole from the provincial boundaries of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia. This great area of 1,500,000 square miles contains only about 15,000 inhabitants, including Indians and Eskimos, so theoretically each resident has to himself one hundred square miles of territory. In spite, of the northern latitude, the Territories are not a region of perpetual ice and snow, as many believe. Although the winters are long and cold, the temperatures are. quite high in summer. The long days of sunlight promote rapid growth of vegetation, so that in some places grains and vegetables are gr6wn for local consumption even as far north as the Arctic Circle. The so-called barren lands yield a profusion of wild flowers and mosses. The northern limit of, timber growth runs in a sweeping diagonal line from the mouth of the MackeMie' River to Churchill on Hudson Bay, and timber suitable for mining purposes is cut on the shores of Great Bear Lake. • Since the seventeenth century the North-west Territories have been an important producer of furs and since 1922 have yielded a fur harvest valued at more than £5,000,000. Notwithstanding the importance of the fur industry to the economic life of the Territories, recent events have shown that the future of this great northern area lies in'the development of . its mineral resources. Attention was first drawn to the mineral resources of the Canadian north by the gold "strike on the Klondike River in the Yukon in 1896, and since then the Yukon has produced gold to the value of more than £20,000,000.

In the North-west Territories the most important' mineral development prior to. 1930 was the bringing into production of two oil wells on the Mackenzie River 42 miles below Norman; and about 875 miles north from Edmonton. The discovery attracted considerable attention, but the wells remained capped until 1932, when a mai'ket for the oil was found in the Great Bear Lake mining field, where pitchblende deposits, from which radium is obtained, were discovered in 1930. The Great Bear Lake development has been of importance not only because of the radium silver deposits, but because of the inspiration it has given to prospecting and mining in the Territories by calling attention to the fact that large-scale operations are possible in a region that, prior to 1930 was doubtfully regarded as a profitable mineral country because of problems of distance and communication.

Following the discovery of the Great Bear mining field, free gold was found near the mouth of the Yellowknife River in 1934. A number of other promising discoveries have been made, including those at Outpost Islands, in Great Bear Lake, in 1896.