Not Your Grandfathers Mining Industry, Nova Scotia, Canada

Hurricane Island

Residents of Hurricane Island took up arms to prevent gold mining on their tiny island in 1890, but things did not go as they planned.

Gold was discovered in Isaac’s Harbour, Guysborough County, on September 14,1861. In fact, there were two real gold discoveries there that day and one fake one, but that is another story (https://notyourgrandfathersmining.ca/isaacs-harbour).

Gold mining took place intermittently over the next two and a half decades, but activity was modest in the 1880s until interest in the area was rekindled by the discovery of gold on Hurricane Island in 1887.

Three shafts were dug to depths of 37, 70 and 100 feet and the Island Mining Company produced 2000 ounces of gold in 1888, almost entirely from under the ocean’s floor. This was unusual. While coal mining under the sea was common – in fact, most of Cape Breton’s coal has been extracted in submarine mines – gold mining under the sea has been rare in Nova Scotia.

However, Hurricane Island is small and narrow, so mining on it necessarily meant mining under the seabed. The sketch below illustrates that most of the workings were under the ocean.

The Palgrave Gold Mining Company worked on Hurricane Island in 1889, but its work ceased in March 1890 due to a legal dispute with landowners on the island.

At issue was how much the Palgrave Company ought to pay residents for any damage to their land from mining activities, such as digging shafts and erecting buildings.

Under Nova Scotian law at the time, impartial arbitrators representing the company and the residents would agree on a dollar figure.

When they were asked to appoint an arbitrator to represent their interests, the 13 landowners on Hurricane Island declined to do so. As a result, the warden of the municipality appointed one, Hugh Hughes, on their behalf, as the law required. Hughes would work with Hercules Hewitt, the arbitrator appointed by the company.

Hughes and Hewitt issued a notice to the landowners saying they would visit the island on May 19 to inspect it. They invited the landowners to attend.

One of the landowners, John McMillan, did not take kindly to this. When the notice was delivered to him, McMillan told Hughes the arbitrators were not allowed on the island and that McMillan would prevent them stepping foot on it if they tried.

Records of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council describe what happened: “Nevertheless, on the 19th the two arbitrators, accompanied by Mr. Fisher on behalf of the Company, took a boat and rowed over to the island. When they neared the land they were met by the Respondent [McMillan] and 12 other men, some of whom were armed with guns and pistols, and who threatened the party with death if they attempted to land. The arbitrators rowed twice around the island, seeking a spot to put in at, but the Respondent and his men met them everywhere with the same threats. Even when they tried to land upon a wharf below high-water mark belonging to the Company, the 13 men came to the front of the wharf and threatened to shoot if the boat came closer.”

Still, the arbitrators had a job to do so they “proceeded as best they could. One of them is thoroughly acquainted with the island. The other says that he was able by rowing round the island to get a fair view of it, and to judge of its value, and to estimate the damages. The whole island is only 4 ½ acres in extent.”

H. K. Fisher, who managed the Palgrave Company, described the island as flat and narrow, and less than 60 feet wide in places. He said it “can be seen nearly as well from the water as when on its surface, and its value judged of also. It is a piece of land very rocky and barren, and, with the exception of two or three small spots, is unfit for cultivation, and is of very little value except in connection with the gold mining areas owned by the said Company.”

The arbitrators agreed with Fisher’s opinion of the island. They awarded a total of $50 to the landowners, to be divided evenly among them.

McMillan appealed the arbitrators’ decision to the province’s Supreme Court. The other landowners were not involved in the appeal. McMillan won but the Palgrave Company appealed the Supreme Court decision to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.

McMillan’s appeal was based on several arguments, one of which was that the “arbitrators did not enter upon the lands or view the same before making the said award.”

Privy Council records say that argument was “abandoned in Court, and it is very easy to understand why. It is a bold thing for one whose lawless violence has been the sole cause of preventing the ordinary and regular course of proceedings to come forward and complain of injury because the proceedings have not been ordinary and regular.”

The Privy Council committee felt that the arbitrators had behaved appropriately under the circumstances, making their decision as best they could while being prevented, at gunpoint, from inspecting the island more closely.

McMillan’s other arguments were more technical in nature, and while the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia sided with him, the Privy Council did not. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council concluded that the law had been followed appropriately by the company, arbitrators and Warden of Guysborough.

However, McMillan did win what we might call a moral victory. The Palgrave Company did not do any additional work on Hurricane Island after the legal dispute. The company was working another gold mine in Waverley in that period, but the company name disappears from Department of Mines records after 1889.

H. K. Fisher switched his attention to opening the North Star gold mine, half a kilometre west of Hurricane Island, on the mainland.

Hurricane Island was idle for most of the next decade until 1898 when the Hurricane Point Gold Mining Company employed about 36 men at the mine. The company worked on the island until 1900 when the mine was considered to be mined-out.

Hurricane Island has not been mined since.

A causeway was built to connect Hurricane Island to the mainland and the island is sometimes referred to in records as Hurricane Point since the causeway meant it was no longer technically an island. The causeway is shown on an 1893 Geological Survey of Canada map, so it was likely built during the period when mining activity was taking place.

The remains of the causeway can still be seen underwater in aerial images (see below).