Prospecting in Wekusko, Part 1

My prospecting partner, Einar Sanden, and I made our first canoe trip across Wekusko Lake, in north-central Manitoba, in 1955. We had made it across and up to our camp on the narrows, above Crowduck Bay, and we were there for a while. We had discovered and staked a lithium deposit.

“Wekusko” is a term for certain native spirits of the waters, and Wekusko had a reputation as a “spirit” lake. We were told that at least one person had drowned on the lake every year since 1914. After we had left for Crowduck Bay, the weather turned bad, and some clothing and a canoe had washed up on shore. The local Royal Canadian Mounted Police assumed we were the source of the debris and started dragging the lake and searching the shoreline.

Upon staking our claim, we traveled by canoe down to the south end of Wekusko Lake, caught a ride to the town of Wekusko, and boarded a train to Le Pas to record our claims.

As I got on the coach, I came face-to-face with the local RCMP officer. His face turned white. I think he thought we were ghosts. (They later identified two other missing persons, and a body was recovered.)

On every subsequent trip I made across Wekusko Lake, the lake made every effort to drown me. It was a close match on more than one occasion. I later adopted the Indian ritual of pouring some tea for the gods every morning, and that seemed to help.

Wekusko Lake was sometimes called Herb Lake, and on the east side, toward the northern end, several gold showings had been discovered. One was known as the Rex property, which would later become the Rex gold mine; another was the Bingo mine, the site of an infamous salting operation in the early 1920s.

Through mine development, prospecting, trapping and fishing, the village of Herb Lake grew up on the east side of Wekusko Lake, at a point where the village landing was protected from winds and high waves by nearby islands.

Transportation to Herb Lake from either Snow Lake (west of Wekusko Lake) or the town of Weskusko (the station on the Hudson Bay railway to the south) was by canoe or boat in the summer and by dogteam or snowmobile in the winter. The only phoneline was a single wire strung on spruce trees from the railway. The only public accommodation was a 2-storey rooming house. There was no running water, no indoor toilets and no electicity.

Another prospector, Roy Leslie, had shot a moose at the north end of Crowduck Bay while Sanden and I were camped there. In a kind gesture, he stopped at our camp on his way back to Herb Lake and offered us the moose heart — a welcome piece of meat for two men living on canned goods. We had just made our lithium discovery and were staking claims a short distance back from the shore. Leslie pulled up his boat and sat around camp for a spell. Meanwhile, I was a few hundred feet away, cutting posts for staking the following day. Sanden and I remained secretive about our discovery despite persistent questioning from Leslie, who finally left.

Sanden and I staked our claims, cut a base line, and performed some trenching and sampling, all the while keeping the project under wraps. After we recorded our claims, I reported our find to the Edmonton-based syndicate and took our samples to Winnipeg for assay.

Without waiting for the results, I went ahead and contacted Mid-West Diamond Drilling in Flin Flon, Man., and signed a 5,000-ft. drill contract. We arranged to have the drill equipment shipped by rail to Wekusko.

On the way back to the property, we took the precaution of not sitting with the drill crew, so as to avoid suspicion. The equipment was unloaded at Wukusko and the drill crew went to the coffee shop. We followed. The village was abuzz with rumours, and we played along.

Peter Durant had a fairly large plank-built boat and was at the coffee shop that day. I asked him to take us to the camp at Crowduck Bay. When we arrived, we showed him our find and he was tickled to be the first outsider to know about it. I had him return to town, pick up the drillers and bring them out to the camp under the cover of darkness.

We unloaded by dawn and set up the rig. Later that day, when Durant returned home, the news was all about town. By this time, it was late in the season and a large, well-financed company had taken an option on lithium showings some miles east of our camp. Within two or three days, the company had a drill rig brought in. It used Durant’s barge and managed to get set up before the lake iced over, but Durant’s barge would be frozen there for the entire winter.

Meanwhile, we drilled till Christmas.

— The author is a retired prospector living in Vancouver, B.C.