Good Reading
Web Sites and Online Resources
- The Northern Miner, Your Authoritative Source for Mining Information
- Canadian Mining Journal, Canada’s First Mining Publication
- Mining North, Representing the Mineral Industry of NWT and Nunavut
- (NWT & Nunavut Chamber of Mines)
- Up Here Magazine, Life at the Top of the World
- Nunatsiaq News
Books
Great Bear, A Journey Remembered
by Frederick B. Watt
“A gripping account of a race to tap the riches of northern Canada.”
“Great Bear: The name had magic in the early 1930s. It sparked a great mining rush in Canada, sending men North in desperate search of riches. The news of Gilbert LaBine’s strike - pitchblende, the glossy, black mineral that sold for hundreds of dollars an ounce - was a beacon in the bleakest days of the Depression.”
“But Great Bear Lake — 12,000 square miles of dark, cold water, frozen most of the year — was unimaginably cruel to those whose dreams were based on romantic hopes of “Eldorado”. This is the story of one man who went to Great Bear. Ted Watt went in desperation and in hope, like the others. And he made passage through a savage landscape — both of the implacable lake itself, and of the mind and heart. He takes us with him across the frozen, gale-swept face of Great Bear, to the edge of human endurance.”
Author: Frederick B. Watt
Publisher: Outcrop Ltd.
ISBN: 0919315038
Denison’s Ice Road
by Edith Iglauer
“John Denison and his crew waited for the darkest days of winter every year to set out to build a 520km road made of ice and snow, from Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories to a silver mine on Great Bear Lake, above the Arctic Circle.”
“In savage blizzards, blinding whiteouts and 60-below-zero temperatures, steel axles snap like twigs; brakes and streering wheels seize up; bare hands freeze when they touch metal. The lake ice cracks and sometimes gives way, so the roadbuilders drive with one hand on the door, ready to jump out.”
Author: Edith Iglauer
Publisher: Harbour Publishing Company
ISBN: 1550170414
Miners and Moonshiners
by Fred J. Peet
Miners and Moonshiners, A Personal Account of Adventure and Survival in a Difficult Era is an autobiographical account of mining and surviving across most of Northern Canada. Prospectors, bush pilots, charlatans, entrepreneurs, gold, cold and isolation are all a part of Fred Peet’s narrative, as are the stories of pioneers who mined and surveyed some of the richest (and poorest) claims in Canadian history.
Author: Fred J. Peet
Publisher: Sono Nis Press
ISBN: 0919203116