Canada at War: NORTHWEST TERRITORIES: Radium City

NORTHWEST TERRITORIESRadium City

A tiny, ugly collection of frame bunkhouses and mills squats forlornly on the shore of remote Great Bear Lake, in Canada’s Northwest Territories. It is 1,400 miles north of the nearest railhead (at Waterways, Alberta), and 26 miles south of the Arctic Circle, in a part of the continent bleak with long, cold winter nights. The village has no official name, but it is sometimes called Radium City. Last week it suddenly found itself part of an all but incredible world drama, for under its fir-bearded slopes lies the stuff of which atomic bombs are made.

Stains on Rocks. Gilbert La Bine, a sturdy, blue-eyed, weather-toughened French Canadian, found the site of Radium City 15 years ago, while looking principally for gold. He had grown up in the mining town of Haileybury, Ont., at 15 had gone prospecting on his own.

He made one good strike in Manitoba, but it petered out in the late ’20s.

Gilbert La Bine knew that cobalt stains on rocks are a pretty good indication of hidden, precious minerals. In 1930, remembering that he had read or heard somewhere that there were cobalt stains on the east shore of Great Bear Lake, he set out to see. He made part of the trip by dog sled, arrived at Great Bear Lake where the thermometer registered 70° below zero.

Said La Bine: “As I looked over the shore, I noticed a great wall there was stained with cobalt bloom. . . . Following along, I found tiny dark pieces of ore probably the size of plums. Looking more closely, I found the vein. I chipped it with my hammer, and here it was pitch blende.” At that time, pitchblende was famed as a source of radium. Neither La Bine nor anyone else could then guess the greater significance of his find.

Borrowing from U.S. financiers, Pros pector La Bine and his prospector-brother Charles built a refinery at Port Hope, Ont., hired scientists to do the technical work, and began producing radium (sale price: $25,000 a gram). It meant little to them that one of the by-products was uranium oxide. Had it not been for World War II, their prosperous Eldorado Mining & Refining Co., Ltd., which netted $280,000 in 1942, might still be producing dividends for shareholders scattered all over the U.S. and Canada.

Cries from Stockholders. On Jan. 28, 1944, Eldorado was expropriated by the Canadian Government — in perpetuity. La Bine and his associates were kept on as hired hands, but the company’s share holders, irked and mystified, were paid off — $1.35 per share (total cost to the Government: more than $5,000,000).

When the shareholders complained of highhanded treatment, they were told bluntly not to ask questions. Not until last week did the Government offer an explanation.

In Ottawa and Washington it was an nounced that Canada had made great contributions, in both facilities and brain power, to the development of the awesome atomic bomb. Half of the scientists working at the National Research Council’s big laboratories in Montreal were Canadians. Near Petawawa, Ont., 120 miles north and west of Ottawa, a 10,000-acre tract had been expropriated, and for more than a year 1,300 men had been working behind barbed wire and under armed guard, clearing land and building an atomic bomb “pilot plant.” As for the Government’s Eldorado seizure: in Great Bear Lake’s deposits of pitchblende, Canada possesses one of the world’s greatest stores of uranium-bearing ore — the ore from which the atomic energy is derived. Said the Government: it was necessary to seize it “to guarantee a Government supply. . . .”