The Mining Certificates
April 28, 2024
I found my Uncle Harve’s stock certificates tucked away in a shoe box last week. He was part of a mining syndicate back in the fifties. They owned the Little Lonesome Gold Mine, or as locals called it, “The Getter Done Quick Mine.”
The syndicate found some gold on surface and blasted a trench in a big quartz vein. There was some “colour,” so they kept blasting and going deeper. The old timers claim there was about four spruce poles propping the walls up to keep them from falling inwards. The men were anxious to find a thick seam of gold and were down about forty feet when the mining inspector showed up.
He had questions. Something to do with a mining permit, claim staking fees and safety regulations. Uncle Harve was the mine boss and did his best. He offered fourteen dollars and a bottle of good moonshine, brewed on site. Apparently, the inspector didn’t understand the degree of latitude available for the interpretation of mining regulations and the critical role such ventures played in the national economy.
As it turned out, the inspector was a hard, hard man. He looked at the seam of gold they had been following and picked up a piece from the gold pile. Next, he scratched the chunk of gold with a pocket knife. The syndicate watched.
He pointed out the black streak made by the knife tip. “Gold streaks yellow, boys. This here is fool’s gold, chalcopyrite to the sophisticated, which I don’t suppose live around here.” Like I said, a hard, hard man. It broke the syndicate.
The men were defeated. One began drinking more than a medicinal amount, another moved to Saskatoon. Harve put away his rock hammer and magnifying glass, and the fourth, saddest of all, moved to Toronto, attended university and became a mining engineer.
I am going to hold onto those certificates. They’re a piece of family history. And who knows when the price of chalcopyrite might go up.
Ricky
PS
I have done a bit of prospecting myself over the years. It just seems to run in the family.
In case anyone is wondering, chalcopyrite is the main source of copper in the world. But it is not generally mined from quartz veins, unless they are very abundant and closely spaced together. Gold is more frequently found associated with quartz veins, often accompanied by chalcopyrite and regular ion pyrite.
Iron pyrite, or simply pyrite, is composed of iron and sulfur and often occurs as tiny cubes scattered throughout some rock types. On a piece of broken rock, the pyrite cubes catches the light resulting in a metallic sparkle. It fires up our imagination and makes us dream of riches. For that reason, it is often called fool’s gold.
Incidentally, for the molecular chemist among us, chalcopyrite is composed of one copper, one iron and two sulfur atoms. It takes a steady hand, good vision and a sharp knife to cleave the copper away from the rest of the molecule.
Thanks to the invention of electric knife sharpeners, bug zappers and popcorn cookers, the demand for homes supplied with copper wiring just keeps increasing. It makes a body wonder what they will come up with next.
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