Lessons from a former boom town

Mining proponents have lately been at pains to tell us that today’s industry bears no resemblance to the mining that occurred in previous generations. This is greatly reassuring. But for those who subscribe to the old-fashioned notion that we should scrutinize the past pretty carefully before drilling into the future, Charlie Angus’s new book may provide some useful insight.

Cobalt: Cradle of the Demon Metals, Birth of a Mining Superpower (House of Anansi Press, 2022) tells the story of a small Ontario town named after a mineral that is currently in high demand for the production of lithium-ion batteries. To supply the proliferation of laptops and smartphones, most of the world’s cobalt has come from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Angus notes that this metal has become known as “the blood mineral of the 21st century,” due to the steep environmental and human costs incurred in that country – which remains one of Africa’s poorest, despite its vast natural resources. As demand for cobalt increases even more rapidly, for manufacturing gigantic batteries to power a global fleet of electric vehicles, there is now a move to find sources that are more reliable and less blood-soaked. Thus, attention has turned to Cobalt, a couple hours’ drive northeast of Sudbury.

“This is not just some old mining town looking for one more chance to flourish,” says the author. “The events that took place here more than a century ago set Canada on its path to becoming the world’s preeminent resource extraction superpower…. The maple leaf flies over international zones of resource exploitation ranging from uranium mines in the former states of the Soviet Union to gold projects in the Amazon to the metal deposits of Africa, where horrific human rights abuses are accepted as part of the cost of doing business.”

It bears mentioning here that Angus is a pretty interesting cat. He was born in Timmins, the grandson of a miner, but grew up in Toronto. In the mid-’80s he and some friends formed the alt-country band Grievous Angels (named after the Gram Parsons album released posthumously in 1974), which continues to record and perform intermittently. In the ’90s he and his wife moved to Cobalt and established HighGrader, a magazine devoted to life in Northern Ontario. Since 2004 he has been the MP for Timmins-James Bay. (Cobalt is actually just across the boundary into Nipissing-Timiskaming, the riding to the south.) He clearly has a deep attachment to the region, and a profound respect for those who work in its resource industries. Suffice it to say, in this part of Canada you do not get re-elected six times by being anti-mining.

But in his book, Angus examines the history of Cobalt as a means to better understand the cultural and economic underpinnings of resource exploitation. The mining lobby talks a lot about “wealth creation,” but what has occurred more commonly is a pattern of wealth being extracted from the hinterland or the colony, and transferred to centres of power elsewhere. With non-renewables, it is almost inevitable that one place will be sacrificed or diminished, so that benefits may accrue to people in some other place. In Angus’s account, this is precisely what happened during Cobalt’s 1903-1921 silver boom.

“Long gone is the local stock exchange that presaged and helped launch the Toronto and Vancouver financial exchanges. The once-extensive streetcar system is relegated to the stuff of lore,” he writes. “Cobalt was all about the money, and not a dime was left behind when all was said and done.”

This hollowing-out has been allowed to happen again and again, in so many places, partly because of the mythology of prospecting – the ideal of the rugged, self-reliant adventurer pressing into a new frontier to strike it rich. Angus traces it back to the California Gold Rush that started in the mid-1900s, and the Klondike Gold Rush that followed at the end of the century. Unlike with farm-based settlement, a new culture arose that was fundamentally extractive, and antithetical to community values or civic life. Once the Ontario government pushed a railroad into the northern muskeg (to establish an Anglo-Protestant presence as a hedge against the spread of Quebecois settlement), getting a piece of the action no longer required physical exertion, and many of those who arrived on the train understood that wealth could more readily be created on paper.

“Cobalt elevated a new financial elite, who quickly learned that the real riches of the northern mines were not to be found with a pick and shovel but by mastering the financial alchemy of hustling mining plays and manipulating the stock market,” writes Angus. “A distinct economic model based on resource exploitation was established there, and it is one that has defined Canada’s relationship to the environment ever since.”

The book describes the rampant water pollution that accompanied Cobalt’s silver boom, and the failure to invest in sanitation, health care, emergency services, or proper housing. Following a 1919 fire in the town’s “Foreign Quarter,” some 2,000 residents, mostly immigrants, were left homeless. There was looting, racist scapegoating, and eventually a typhoid outbreak – which led the Mine Managers Association to seize control of the hospital, treating only their workers while turning away women, children, and those employed in other industries. Town officials, and the local newspaper, downplayed the crisis to avoid scaring away investment.

Angus explores many other tangents, including the mining industry’s effects on Indigenous people, who – contrary to prospector mythology – had been using and trading Cobalt silver for more than a thousand years.

Not surprisingly, union-busting was part of Cobalt’s corporate culture. A strike in 1907 lasted two months – bringing hardship, and also technological change. “More than 1,500 men left the camp, including 1,000 skilled Nova Scotian miners who didn’t return,” writes Angus. “The mine managers opted to replace these expert miners with immigrant workers who had less training. This move was undertaken as part of a transition to a more industrial form of production, with pneumatic drills replacing the specialized crews who knew how to pound drill holes with sledgehammers and handheld drill bits.”

The Cobalt Miners’ Union won a victory in 1914 when it helped to force passage of the Ontario Workmen’s Compensation Act – providing benefits for those who suffered on-the-job injuries or occupational diseases. But during the First World War, the government suppressed labour activity. “The need for silver coin to pay the soldiers was as real for the British government as it had been for the Roman Empire,” writes Angus. And after the war, a new wave of xenophobia hobbled miners’ capacity to fight for their common interests.

The book includes some great anecdotes, including several related to hockey. Considerable space is devoted to the rivalry between the Cobalt Silver Kings and the Haileybury Comets – both teams well-funded by wealthy mine owners. These games were wild and often violent, packing as many as 3,500 spectators into the town’s arena. Eventually, a new team entered the league – bankrolled by the mining barons to attract Francophone fans, but destined to outlast the silver economy. “In their first pro game on January 5, 1910, the Montreal Canadiens beat Cobalt, 7–6, in overtime,” writes Angus.

The Cobalt of this era was larger than life – in the lived experience of its residents, and also in the public imagination. The Dollar Mark, a 1909 stage play about the town, had a 48-show run on Broadway, and spawned a movie adaptation in 1914. Angus draws parallels between the culture of the mining town and the culture of vaudeville – citing the combination of glamour and shabbiness, the reliance on poorly-paid workers with little job security or mobility, and the rapid decline toward obsolescence. He points out that the town played a role in the ascendance of cinema, including the “silver screen,” which was “named for the presence of silver halides that allowed for a more reflective surface for showing films in theatres.”

By the mid-1920s, Cobalt’s glory days were over. The lasting legacy of the silver boom, says Angus, was successive governments’ general policy of being friendly to mining companies, with lax financial regulation, low taxes, and a lack of transparency regarding royalties. This fostered the business culture of Canadian mining, which repeated the colonial approach to resource extraction in poor countries around the world.

On silver mining operations in the early 20th century, cobalt was discarded as worthless, but in the 1950s this mineral played an important role in new radiation treatments for cancer patients, and now it is widely seen as a necessary ingredient in our society’s shift to renewable energy. In Cobalt, Ont., some processing of this metal is now occurring, and there is speculation about renewed mining, where none has occurred for decades. Angus says the people are keen but wary. While the industry now offers good wages and benefits, rural dwellers want more; there is interest in a new model for building sustainable communities and sharing the wealth derived from public resources. The author expresses cautious optimism that partnerships with Indigenous peoples will be the key. A reader might wish for more detail about how this fits into our “just transition” to a low-carbon economy – but perhaps that is the topic for another book. DL