George “Gus” McManus was responsible for staking many of the gold deposits in the Red Lake area of Ontario during the early years of mining development in that district.
McManus was prospecting for silver at Cobalt in 1908 when he met William Tretheway, an English mining engineer working in a nearby silver camp. The men became friends, though Tretheway eventually relocated to Manitoba and opened an office in Winnipeg. It was here, in 1922, that the Englishman caught wind of a silver discovery made by a team of local prospectors exploring in Red Lake.
McManus, upon learning from Tretheway that more silver had been found in Ontario, organized an expedition to investigate the discovery. He and three other men outfitted two canoes with supplies and camping gear, and took the train west to Hudson Station. The expedition then paddled 185 miles up a nearby river to Red Lake.
After investigating the silver discovery, the party did a little prospecting of its own and found silver in Bateman Twp., near East Bay. The deposit was small and shallow, however, and the party decided to head to the Chukuni River. There, McManus found fine, visible gold in quartz stringer veinlets, and his party staked 16 claims on each side of the river’s mouth. The men staked 28 claims in all (covering Dome, Heyson, Balmer and Byshe twps.) before travelling to Kenora to record them.
McManus and his party returned to Red Lake in June 1923 to conduct stripping, trenching and sampling on their original 16 claims, but, as a result of disappointing test results, the claims were left open.
McManus’s fortune changed, however, when, in 1925, he was told of the Howey gold discovery near Red Lake — six months before the find was made public.
He was told to restake the Chukuni River claims, which were near the newly discovered gold deposit.
After nearly three weeks of travelling on an old Hudson Bay Co. trail through soft, wet snow, McManus and his partner, Jack St. Paul, reached Red Lake and restaked the claims — and not a moment too soon, for just as they erected the last claim post on the river bank, three dog teams with prospectors and their supplies rounded the bend. McManus and St. Paul had staked their claims in the nick of time.
— The author, a retired operating engineer and frequent contributor to this column, resides in Thunder Bay, Ont.
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