Not Your Grandfathers Mining Industry, Nova Scotia, Canada

Joe Howe Dimock

Joe Howe Dimock was the first prospector in Nova Scotia’s Dufferin gold district, but his dreams of striking it rich did not work out.

According to an August 30, 1883, article in the Halifax Herald, “Forty years ago there was a family of Dimock’s living at Billtown, Cornwallis. In that year, an election took place in Kings. [Former Nova Scotia premier] Joe Howe took an active part in the canvass and stayed at Dimock’s house. A child was born to the Dimock’s just about that time and the parents promised that if Howe’s candidate won, he would name his new born son in Howe’s honour.”

The Liberal candidate won and that is how Joseph Howe Dimock got his name.

As a young man, Dimock travelled from Billtown to Tangier, Halifax County, on what he said was the first boat there after Tangier’s gold rush started in 1861.

He did considerable prospecting and, he claimed, had been within one foot of discovering what would become known as the Leary gold-bearing quartz vein (aka lead), one of the richest ever found in Tangier.

The Halifax Herald article said, “Had he dug twelve inches deeper he would have discovered that valuable lead. He now frequently meditates on ‘What might have been!’ Disgusted with his want of success in gold mining, he took to stage driving, and has stuck to it for twenty years like a brick. Anything going on along the coast that Joe Howe Dimock doesn’t know, isn’t worth knowing.”

Dimock drove a stagecoach between Tangier and Marie Joseph, Guysborough County, for decades. He also delivered mail and was widely liked and respected.

After his unsuccessful efforts in Tangier, he prospected in the Dufferin area, which was known as Salmon River at the time.

Dimock told the Herald, “Eighteen years ago I prospected along the Salmon River. I had the honor of being the first prospector in that region. I always believed that a rich lead was to be found near that river. But my prospecting was more of a past time than a business. I neither had the money nor the time to work at it in earnest. But from what I saw I was satisfied that a bonanza existed there somewhere. Ten years ago I gave my opinion to an old miner named Woodman. He went up the river and panned out some twelve ounces of gold out from sand in the bed of the river. Three years or more ago when Torrance and Scaithe first came down here I told them about that district and strongly recommended them to prospect. Torrance said he’d see about it bye and bye, and devoted himself to the Tangier district. That’s where he made a big mistake. He knows it now. Only a few weeks before Kent Archibald found the Salmon River bonanza lead, I said to Mike McDonald, an old miner at Tangier: ‘Mike, if I had $10,000 in cash, I’d spend every cent of it prospecting up Salmon River.’ Time has fully proved how correct my opinions were.”

Dimock believed the Salmon River district “is the richest gold region in Nova Scotia. But who’s going to spend their money and time prospecting under the existing regime in the mines office? Nobody but a lunatic would do so! Why, there hasn’t been a man prospecting down there this season. And I have never known a season for the last 20 years during which there were not dozens, if not scores of prospectors at work all along the coast.”

Dimock went on to explain his complaint with the provincial government’s mining laws: “I might spend several thousand dollars prospecting, make my boundaries, take up the areas, and spend $10,000 in developing the mine, when some unknown man might come in and say, ‘I prospected at that spot a year ago, saw gold, and made a mark.’ And on the strength of that assertion he might get the property, on which I may have invested $10,000 or $15,000. The present state of affairs is preposterous. A blow has been struck at the gold mining industry from which, in my opinion, it will not recover for many years. Still, as I told you, I believe that to be a very rich district and when once prospectors and miners can feel an ordinary degree of security, and know that they will be protected by a paternal government, instead of having their rights trampled on and their property confiscated, they will go to work and you will find that the Salmon river district will astonish the gold mining world.”

Today, the disputes over claim staking that Dimock refers are extremely rare thanks to technology. In Nova Scotia and many other jurisdictions, staking claims is now done using online, digital mapping systems. Digital claim staking replaced the previous method of literally driving stakes into the ground to stake a claim, and the Department of Mines’ map of claims which was updated daily by hand.