Nelson and equipment operators Roberta and Ronald Kirk staked the first claims on McDame in the fall of 1950. After recording the claims, the four rented a room in the Watson Lake Hotel across the border in the Yukon and waited for the scouts to beat a path to their door. Alec Berry, a Conwest Exploration Company employee in Whitehorse, was the first to hear the news; he phoned company president Fred M. Connell at head office in Toronto. The rest, as the say, was history. Connell quickly dispatched geologist Dr. William Smitheringale to examine the site. The established asbestos companies in Quebec, such as Johns- Manville and Asbestos way of life for the thousands of residents who now live in the vicinity. Although the mine closure will have the most dramatic effect on the residents and workers of Cassiar itself, further implications will ripple throughout the north and into Vancouver. Arrow Transport in Stewart, whose sole occupation was moving bales of asbestos from the mine site to tidewater, is closed, eliminating 30 jobs and 15% of the town’s payroll. Some of the goods and services Corporation, thought the deposit was too remote and delayed bidding on it; Conwest, which already had a stake in the United Keno Mine in Yukon, thought otherwise. Smitheringale took one brief look and recog: nized the enormous potential; he quickly left for Watson Lake with an offer of $100,000 and 300,000 shares in a company to be formed. He arrived at the hotel and showed the four orig- inal stakers a briefcase bulging with $1,000 bills. Conwest got the option. Trails and roads were bulldozed through the swamps and’ by 1952, a tent town hous- ing 250 men had been built, Antone Money’s “isolated corner of wil- derness" had changed in those 28 years. Most people today know the importance of asbestos — in fact, it has been known since 400 B.C., when the Greeks wove it into wicks for their temple lamps because it would not burn and provided an “everlasting light.” No other natural product can withstand high temperatures and heavy pressures, resist weather, corrosion, vermin and fungi as asbestos can. It has saved countless lives and pre- vented billions of dollars in property damage. Cassiar had become more than just a source of asbestos. It led to the birth of a community and a consumed by that company came out of Terrace. Lindsay’s Transport in Terrace will lose a bi-weekly run to Cassiar, and the economics of all its trade north of Meziadin will be affected by Cassiar’s absence. The company’s dock in North Vancouver will be shut down and the property sold, snuffing out longshoring and railway work. In a sense it’s the end of an era, but in another sense it’s a continuing story. The era of one-industry towns on the British Columbia mining map goes on, with dots coming into existence as others vanish. B.C. Mining Week / Terrace Review — February 28, 1992 21