Matachewan is a

township A township is a kind of human settlement or administrative subdivision, with its meaning varying in different countries. Although the term is occasionally associated with an urban area, that tends to be an exception to the rule. In Australia, Ca ...

in Timiskaming,

Northeastern The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each se ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

, located at the end of

Ontario Highway 66 King's Highway 66, commonly referred to as Highway 66, is a provincially-maintained highway in the Canadian province of Ontario. Located in the Timiskaming District, the highway begins at Matachewan near a junction with Highway 65. It exte ...

along the Montreal River. The name is derived from the Cree word for "meeting of the currents". The town's main economy is based on

mineral In geology and mineralogy, a mineral or mineral species is, broadly speaking, a solid chemical compound with a fairly well-defined chemical composition and a specific crystal structure that occurs naturally in pure form.John P. Rafferty, ed. ( ...

mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic via ...

, mainly

gold mining Gold mining is the extraction of gold resources by mining. Historically, mining gold from alluvial deposits used manual separation processes, such as gold panning. However, with the expansion of gold mining to ores that are not on the surface ...

, with some

tourism Tourism is travel for pleasure or business; also the theory and practice of touring (disambiguation), touring, the business of attracting, accommodating, and entertaining tourists, and the business of operating tour (disambiguation), tours. Th ...

History

Matachewan began as a trading post of the

Hudson's Bay Company The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC; french: Compagnie de la Baie d'Hudson) is a Canadian retail business group. A fur trading business for much of its existence, HBC now owns and operates retail stores in Canada. The company's namesake business div ...

, called Fort Matachewan, located about north of the present town site. It consisted only of a large depot and stores, with a church added later on. The local First Nations, who traded their furs here, would camp along the Montreal River but not settle permanently. Jake Davidson discovered gold in 1916 and teamed up with

Weldy Young Weldon "Weldy" Champness Young (October 4, 1871 – October 27, 1944) was a Canadian businessman and athlete. Young was an ice hockey player for the Ottawa Hockey Club, playing in its founding years in the 1880s and in the 1890s. Young later beca ...

in 1930 to start the Young-Davidson mine. Sam Otisse staked a claim next to Davidson in 1917, which became the Matachewan Consolidated Mines. Alex Mosher staked claims which became the Ashley Gold Mine (1932-1936). The impetus to the town's growth came in the 1920s when mineral deposits, such as gold, copper, and molybdenite, were found in the area. From then on it experienced boom and bust cycles of typical mining towns, depending on the swings in commodity prices, but its economy has gradually shifted to forestry and tourism. In January 1976, the Improvement District of Matachewan was formed, and in 1995, it was incorporated as a township. The Otisse Lake overflowed into mine tailings on 17 Oct. 1990, and 170,000 cubic metres of mine slimes entered the Matachewan River. In 2006, a medivac helipad was built to help accommodate the possibility of injuries that may occur at the Young-Davidson mine site. In 2008, an old and worn out wooden bridge over the Montreal River which was built in 1937 was replaced with a new steel-concrete reinforced structure for safety reasons regarding the heavy traffic to/from the mine.

Geology

Matachewan is on the southwest portion of the

Abitibi greenstone belt The Abitibi greenstone belt is a 2,800-to-2,600-million-year-old greenstone belt that spans across the Ontario–Quebec border in Canada. It is mostly made of volcanic rocks, but also includes ultramafic rocks, mafic intrusions, granitoid rocks, ...

and within the

Abitibi gold belt The Abitibi gold belt is a region of Canada that extends from Wawa, Ontario to Val-d'Or, Quebec. Located within the mineral-rich Abitibi greenstone belt, the gold belt is an established gold mining district having produced over 100 mines, and 1 ...

. Between 1933 and 1957, the Young-Davidson Mine and the Matachewan Consolidated Mine produced 9.6 million

tonne The tonne ( or ; symbol: t) is a unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. It is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI. It is also referred to as a metric ton to distinguish it from the non-metric units of the short ton ( United State ...

s of

ore Ore is natural rock or sediment that contains one or more valuable minerals, typically containing metals, that can be mined, treated and sold at a profit.Encyclopædia Britannica. "Ore". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 7 April 2 ...

containing 3.1 grams of gold per ton and 0.93 grams per ton of silver. Between 1979 and 1980, Pamour Porcupine Mines Limited

open-pit mining Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique of extracting rock or minerals from the earth from an open-air pit, sometimes known as a borrow. This form of mining ...

produced 18,000 tonnes of ore containing more than 3.4 grams per ton of gold.

Demographics

In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by

Statistics Canada Statistics Canada (StatCan; french: Statistique Canada), formed in 1971, is the agency of the Government of Canada commissioned with producing statistics to help better understand Canada, its population, resources, economy, society, and cultur ...

, Matachewan had a population of living in of its total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of . With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021. Matachewan ON 2

Culture

Matachewan is known for celebrating local cultures every July during the Matachewan Villages Festival event.

Transportation

Provincial highways: * Highway 65 * Highway 66

References

External links

* {{Timiskaming District Municipalities in Timiskaming District Single-tier municipalities in Ontario Township municipalities in Ontario