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Moose River Gold Mines is a Canadian
rural In general, a rural area or a countryside is a geographic area that is located outside towns and cities. Typical rural areas have a low population density and small settlements. Agricultural areas and areas with forestry are typically desc ...
community located in
Nova Scotia Nova Scotia is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada, located on its east coast. It is one of the three Maritime Canada, Maritime provinces and Population of Canada by province and territory, most populous province in Atlan ...
's
Halifax Regional Municipality Halifax is the capital and most populous municipality of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Nova Scotia, and the most populous municipality in Atlantic Canada. As of 2024, it is estimated that the population of the H ...
. It is at the junction of Moose River Road and Mooseland Road. No numbered highways run through Moose River Gold Mines. Gold was discovered in the area in 1866 and mining started in the 1870s. Interest waned around 1900 but rose in the 1930s. The community gained international attention in 1936 when three men were trapped in the mine.


History

Gold was first discovered in the area in 1866, but no mining took place until the 1870s when the area became known as the Moose River Gold District. Interest waned in the early 1900s but resumed in the 1930s and the mine was brought back into production in 1935. These historic workings produced some of gold, which was largely taken from quartz veins, but some also from open slate quarries.


1936 disaster

On April 12, 1936, the roof of the mine collapsed, trapping three men, Herman Magill, David Robertson, and Alfred Scadding, down for 11 days. The men were reached by drilling a
borehole A borehole is a narrow shaft bored in the ground, either vertically or horizontally. A borehole may be constructed for many different purposes, including the extraction of water ( drilled water well and tube well), other liquids (such as petr ...
on the sixth day to bring food, water and a telephone until the rescue was completed. Robertson and Scadding survived and Magill died on the seventh day. The event was broadcast by J. Frank Willis of the
Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission The Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission (CRBC/CCR; ), also referred to as the Canadian Radio Commission (CRC), was Canada's first public broadcaster and the immediate precursor to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Origins The CRBC was est ...
(CRBC) to more than 650
radio station Radio broadcasting is the broadcasting of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based rad ...
s throughout
North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...
over the course of fifty-six hours, and was picked up by the
BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...
and broadcast to
Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...
. It was the first live 24-hour radio coverage of a breaking news story in Canada.


Movie ''Draegerman Courage''

The following year a Hollywood movie, ''
Draegerman Courage ''Draegerman Courage'' is a 1937 American drama film directed by Louis King and written by Anthony Coldeway. The film stars Jean Muir, Barton MacLane, Henry O'Neill, Robert Barrat, Addison Richards and Helen MacKellar. The film was released by W ...
'', was made about the events in Moose River and cave-in at the mine, trapping three men. The 'Draegerman' that the title refers to is a man whose job it is to clean up cave-ins in mines and rescue the survivors.


Museum and park

Today, there is a
provincial park Ischigualasto Provincial Park A provincial park (or territorial park) is a park administered by one of the provinces of a country, as opposed to a national park. They are similar to state parks in other countries. They are typically open to the ...
with a
cairn A cairn is a human-made pile (or stack) of stones raised for a purpose, usually as a marker or as a burial mound. The word ''cairn'' comes from the (plural ). Cairns have been and are used for a broad variety of purposes. In prehistory, t ...
and there was a plaque where the borehole was drilled, and there is a museum portraying the history of the gold mine. The plaque was stolen sometime before June 28, 2006. It has yet to be recovered.


Mining in the 21st century

In the 1980s, drilling exploration in the area of the earlier slate workings found significant gold deposits in what became known as the Touquoy zone, after a former mine owned by Damas Touquoy. DDV Gold Ltd. applied to operate an
open pit Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique that extracts rock or minerals from the earth. Open-pit mines are used when deposits of commercially useful ore or ...
gold mine in 2007. Deposits at the project named Touquoy hold an estimated of gold, worth $700 million in 2012. The surface operation will involve drilling, blasting, and
gold cyanidation Gold cyanidation (also known as the cyanide process or the MacArthur–Forrest process) is a hydrometallurgical technique for extracting gold from low-grade ore through conversion to a water-soluble coordination complex. It is the most commonly ...
to process the ore. The Moose River Gold Mines site will also process ore from the company's mine at its Beaver Dam deposit, 37 km away, which has an estimated yield of . This will save the construction of a second
tailings In mining, tailings or tails are the materials left over after the process of separating the valuable fraction from the uneconomic fraction (gangue) of an ore. Tailings are different from overburden, which is the waste rock or other material ...
pond, and an old bush road will be upgraded to facilitate transport. The Moose River mine will have a life of five years and Beaver Dam just three. There are more deposits at Cochrane Hill and Fifteen Mile Stream, 57 km away. Despite the controversy of land expropriation, production is expected to begin in 2015 or 2016.


References


External links


Virtual Museum Moose River DisasterMoose River Provincial ParkExplore HRM
{{Authority control Communities in Halifax, Nova Scotia Mining communities in Nova Scotia Surface mines in Canada Mining rescues Ghost towns in Nova Scotia