ODDS’N’SODS — Sandy’s Red Lake secret

Prospector Sandy McIntyre, who discovered and staked the McIntyre Porcupine mine in Timmins, Ont., in 1909, joined the Red Lake gold rush in 1926.

He came with the McIntyre mine crew to work claims that were discovered and staked at the same time as Lorne Howey’s discovery of the Howey gold mines. Sandy liked the excitement of seeing hundreds of men and dog teams on the trail and he also liked sleeping in the open.

After he got to camp at the McIntyre claims in Red Lake, Sandy worked in the assay office as a helper until spring. He then built himself a log cabin just outside the McIntyre and Howey claim line.

He sometimes came to work with a “glow-on.” No one ever found out how or where Sandy was getting his joy juice until one day he met an old friend and, taking him to his cabin, showed him his secret still.

It was made from a 15-gallon steel gasoline drum, the lid of which he had carefully cut off. He boiled the drum clean and placed a porcelain, glazed bowl inside along with an inverted, enamelled dish pan.

The mash was made out of raw potatoes, beans, three cups of sugar, two yeast cakes and two gallons of water. The ingredients were allowed to ferment for two days; then it was placed on the iron wood stove and slowly boiled for two hours. It was then taken off the stove and the steel barrel lid along with the inverted dish pan was removed. The porcelain bowl, containing about two quarts of clear liquid, remained. This was poured into bottles; about a half a glass of liquid mixed with warm water and sugar made an enjoyable drink. The spent mash was dumped outside behind the cabin and soon disappeared after being gobbled up by hungry stray dogs.

The old friend of Sandy’s told me this story 50 years ago and, until now, the secret of how Sandy made his own joy juice in Red Lake has never been disclosed.

Sandy left Red Lake in late 1929 and returned to work in the drill steel shop of the McIntyre mine in Schumacher, Ont. He retired at age 70 to live alone in a log cabin at Swastika. He died in the veteran’s ward of the Christie Street Military Hospital in Toronto on July 8, 1943, at age 75. — A regular contributor, Donald Parrott is a retired operating engineer living in Thunder Bay, Ont.