Kirkland Lake is a mining town. That is most all they have
ever done there. If it cannot be mined, it cannot exist
in Kirkland Lake. If it is not made of gold it is not of
much use. KL came into being about 1907 ore thereabouts as
a prospector's camp midway between two other mining camps,
Larder Lake and Swastika.
It's development was driven by mine finders such as Harry
Oakes, Bill Wright, Ed Hargreaves, Sherman Tough, Al Wende,
and Bob Jowsey about ten years after the turn of the century.
Most of these men had been born about 35 years before.
Queen Victoria had died in 1901 and Canada had become a
Dominion enacted by an act of British Parliament about 40
years before.
(It's original name is the Dominion of Canada. Every July 1st for 101 years Canadians celebrated Dominion day. The liberals changed this history in 1968 with the election of a predominantly Quebecois federal government. The name of the country, its flag, anthem and many other traditions permanently changed. No other country in the world have had such profound changes merely by changing its elected party.)
The first gold camp in Canada was probably Nova Scotia. The
first finding of gold in Ontario was about 100 miles north of
Timmins, but the first gold camp was Kenora Ontario. Probably
one of the best gold camps in Canada's history was Kirkland Lake, although the Timmins camp was more prolific of gold overall.
The finding of big mines, such as The Lakeshore, the Wright
Hargreaves, The Sylvanite, and the Teck Hughes took place
at that time. Prospectors found the mines, and did the first
development. Financing of them was done "on the street" and
on credit for the first rounds. The big companies did not
want to get their feet wet without solid proof provided by
round rock with numbers attached. The prospectors ran on
panning, mining, VG and hunches. The prospectors were right
and some of them became fabulously wealthy. ( You can still
find on old claims warped iron pans, from fire heating to
roast the pyrites, remnants of the prospecting techniques of
the men of the 10's 20,s and 30,s )
Harry Oakes, a former yankee medical student and prospector,
just returned from Australia without a sou, became the richest man in the world, with $800 million in wealth, by owning his dream, the Lakeshore mine. It became 8 million ounces of gold 0.50 ounces per ton rich. Bill Wright another ordinary prospecting gent went on to found the Toronto newspaper, the Globe and Mail. Harry, interestingly enough, although US by birth, was a firm and staunch British Empire advocate. His family was still in Great Britain.
When the rest of the world's market's crashed in 1929, the
Lakeshore mine's shares went to $65.00 When men were eating
grass and hitching rides on freight trains from town to town,
a Kirkland Lake miner would go to the local tailor at night
and buy a suit to cash his weekly check.
A miner made more in a week than most well paid men made in
three months. It is no exaggeration that the steady flow of
gold from Kirkland's mines helped Ontario and Canada out of
the depression. In 1932 the p ayroll of the KL mines was
$4 million a year. The population of KL was 13,000 then. It
would swell to 24,000 in its heyday but steadily drift down
over the years. By 1987 it still had some 29 bars.
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