Mining from the North shore of Lake Huron in the 19th century
As a Canadian mining engineer with a Cornish father who also worked in the mining industry, I found it interesting when I heard that there were Cornish miners who worked in the environs of the town of Bruce Mines on the North Shore of Lake Huron in Ontario, CANADA. The four mines of Bruce Mines were called Bruce, Taylor, Wellington and Copper Bay.
These mines were worked from 1846 to 1875 by the Montréal Mining Company and the West Canada Mining Company. These four mines extended over a distance of 1830 metres in a Northwesterly direction through the Bruce Mines town. Ten shafts were sunk of which the deepest was 137.2 metres.
Other times these mines were worked and those responsible: 1898 by Lord Douglas of Hawick; 1907 by Copper Mining and Smelting Company of Ontario Limited; 1908 to 1909 by Bruce Mines Limited; & 1915 to 1921 by the Mond Nickel Company
A podcast by Canada Ehx , The Mining Years of Bruce Mines, stirred my interest in the subject. I then found an interesting article written by Sharron Schwartz of the website Cousin Jack’s World entitled The Call of the Copper: The Cornish at Canada’s First Commercial Copper Mine.
This is an interesting subject that I plan to study more. This includes looking for mine plans and any available geomechanical data of the mines. I am also interested in information about the Cornish people who worked at Bruce Mines.