Not Your Grandfathers Mining Industry, Nova Scotia, Canada

Discovery of Gold at Dufferin

We tell the story of the discovery of gold in Port Dufferin in our history of the district. However, the January 1899 edition of the Canadian Mining Review told the story with such fantastic details, that we just have to share them:

Gold was first discovered in Port Dufferin (originally called Salmon River), Halifax County, in 1868 but it was not until 1880 that a significant find triggered serious mining interest.

That year, George Stuart, a highly successful gold miner and then-mayor of Truro, had men prospecting in the dense forests around the lakes that feed Salmon River. They found rich drift (small pieces of gold in gravel) but wet weather forced them to temporarily cease work.

Stuart told Kent Archibald of the positive indications that had been found and the two agreed to work together on additional prospecting later in the season.

According to the Canadian Mining Review, “Mr. Archibald one day heard that an Indian, ‘Dandy Peter’ by name, had some specimens of gold quartz and upon interviewing the Indian, ascertained that the specimens had been obtained upon the tract which he and Mr. Stuart had arranged to prospect.”

(Please note that the word “Indian” is not considered appropriate today but we use it here to be true to the original text. The Mi'kmaq referred to was Peter Paul according to most records. He is said to have discovered a gold-bearing boulder while looking for a missing ox.)

The Canadian Mining Review continued: “As the specimens the Indian had were very fine, showing coarse gold, and many persons saw them, Mr. Archibald became alive to the fact that soon there would be a brisk competition for the acquisition of the ground, and that immediate action was necessary. Having just ‘blowed his bottom dollar’ into another mining venture, Archibald was ‘strapped’ as miners usually are; furthermore, his friend Stuart was away, and as good as inaccessible so far as time was of value. So he borrowed twenty dollars, and with it hired ‘Dandy Peter’ to go with him and show him the spot where the specimens came from. Other people were watching Peter, hoping to get the desired information without paying for it, so it was necessary to be cautious in starting out. Under cover of darkness Archibald and Peter started off at midnight taking with them a lantern, which they took good care not to light until well in the woods. Peter’s memory and woodcraft served them well, and long before the day dawned he announced his whereabouts by saying ‘Sit down now, smoke pipe; daylight me show plenty quartz, plenty gold,’ and he kept his word.”

Archibald paid Peter Paul the promised $20 and staked the ground. (In English, “staking a claim” to something means you have a right to it or that it should belong to you. The expression comes from literally driving wooden stakes into the ground to mark a mineral claim – a specific area where a person/company has the right to explore and mine.)

Archibald then “returned to Salmon River settlement, got a horse and waggon [sic] and started for Halifax, some ninety miles away, to secure rights from the Mines Office. Just after starting he learned that the mail coach, which had preceded him, had on board a man [Captain Brown] bound on the same errand. Now the mail coach stopped for the night at Tangier, but Archibald, after eating his supper and having a quiet smoke, slipped out of the inn, hitched up his horse, and driving all night, arrived in Halifax early in the morning and many hours ahead of Her Majesty's Mail. But here he met the same difficulty as in dealing with ‘Dandy Peter.’ Stuart, who had funds, and whom Archibald felt in honour bound to associate with himself, was absent in a distant part of the Province There was no time, however, to be lost, so Archibald went to Charles F. Mott, of Halifax, and stated the facts. Mott refused to recognize Stuart in any way, but hastened to the Mines Office with Archibald, and a large block of areas was taken out. Shortly thereafter the Iode itself was found and work begun.”

According to the Review, “As soon as the lode [gold-bearing quartz vein] was found, suits were begun by other parties, claiming the ground on one pretext or another, and for nine years this valuable mining property could not show a clear title. At one time suits were so numerous and claimants so vigorous that Archibald and the other owners erected a tight board fence, sixteen feet high, enclosing their works and openings, and had sentinels posted all around the stockade and at various points along the road to Salmon River village, a distance of five miles.”

After nine years, the legal wrangling finally came to an end in 1889 when a Captain Archibald, one of the owners of the Dufferin property and presumably a relative of Kent Archibald’s, passed away without having made a will. As a result, the Dufferin property was sold at auction on March 4 to settle his estate.

The auction winners were mostly the same Nova Scotians who had been successfully mining in Dufferin throughout the years of lawsuits. Kent Archibald and two other men from Truro, Gardiner Clish and Silas Tupper, and John McNab of Halifax, paid $141,000 at the auction and established the Dufferin Gold Mining Company. Archibald was the managing partner.

Interestingly, they excluded Charles F. Mott from the new company even though he had been their partner throughout the previous nine years. Perhaps Archibald had lingering resentment over Mott back-stabbing George Stuart in 1880 when the claims were first staked.

According to a letter George Stuart wrote in 1892 to Gardiner Clish, the owners had spent over $50,000 on legal expenses during the nine-year period. Despite that extraordinary cost, and spending another $100,000 or so in mining-related costs, the owners had made over $300,000 in profits during the 1880s, testament to how rich in gold the Dufferin mine was.

With the litigation settled and the company now clearly in charge of the mine, it looked like smooth sailing ahead. Unfortunately, that was not entirely the case.

According to the Canadian Mining Review, “Work was discontinued in the summer of 1894, chiefly owing to incompetent management and disagreement among the owners. Several

experts who visited the mine at various times reported, without exception, that there was an absolute lack of system in every branch of the management, and that it could not be called mining at all. As an example of this it may be stated that at one time there were a number of men working who were paid by the day, and at the same time some parties were mining quartz at so much per ton. The quartz rock produced by both gangs came up by the same shaft, and the contractor was paid his price per ton for aIl that was raised, although a substantial proportion was produced by the men under daily pay.” In other words, the company paid twice for the mining of much of the gold.

There was more: “There was also a great lack of discipline amongst the workmen. No books were ever kept beyond the men's time, and no one connected with the property ever knew what it cost to run it. There was also a lack of proper machinery, and a total absence of provision for the future necessities of the property, the total output being distributed without any allowance for maintenance of plant, repairs, [etc.] In this way the company gradually fell into debt and was unable to continue its operations.”

One of the experts who visited the mine was George Stuart. His 1892 letter to Clish devoted several pages to detailing its poor management and concluded, “I consider the loss of gold and waste of money in the management and operation of the ‘Dufferin’ mine as little short of criminal, yet you seem to have been content with the results without seeking advice for remedies of these evils, some of which you must have long ago known to exist.”

The Dufferin mine shut down in 1894 and remained closed for several years until the Montreal-London Gold and Silver Development Company took over in 1897.

As with many historical Nova Scotia gold districts, mining did not stall in Dufferin because the resource was depleted. Other factors were often the cause of gold mines shutting down, including poor business decisions, inefficient historical mining and milling techniques, lack of capital, lack of access to inexpensive electricity, challenges associated with transporting equipment and supplies through the wilderness, and lack of labour.

Historical gold districts like Dufferin are therefore seen as having potential to be returned to production in the modern era since all of the above challenges are now easily addressed. In fact, almost all the activity in Nova Scotia’s gold sector is at historical mines where deposits were proven during our early gold rushes but modern science and technology make it possible to mine profitably while, of course, taking proper care of the environment.

Today, technology makes disputes over claim staking extremely rare. In Nova Scotia and many other jurisdictions, staking claims is now done using online, digital mapping systems, so there are no races through the night to file paperwork at the mine department offices in Halifax (https://novaroc.novascotia.ca/novaroc/).

Digital staking is just one of many examples of how technology makes modern mining completely different from historical mining.

See the story of the Dufferin gold district at https://notyourgrandfathersmining.ca/dufferin