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