Book traces Ottawa mines

At the turn of the last century, Canada’s capital region was one of the country’s leading mining centres, boasting major industrial-mineral operations, as well as a handful of precious and base metal mines.

In The Mines of Ottawa, mining engineer John Udd has brought together, for the first time in a single volume, information on more than 3,000 old mines and mineral deposits found within a 200-km radius of Ottawa.

Udd was certainly qualified for the task at hand: he wrote the book during his off-hours, away from his roles as a research scientist at the Canada Centre for Mineral and Energy Technology (CANMET) in Ottawa and as an adjunct professor at McGill and Laurentian universities.

To compile this exhaustive work, Udd consulted thousands of pages of reports prepared over the past century. For most entries, he provides detailed information on the deposit’s name, location, geology, mining and ownership history, as well as historical footnotes on aspects such as railroad access.

Entries are arranged alphabetically by commodity, and there are extensive references plus an index. Listings include such notable operations as: the Lacey mine in Frontenac, which was the largest mica mine in the world in the early 1900s; the Richardson gold mine near Madoc, which, in 1866, was the site of the first gold deposit discovered in the Canadian Shield; and various apatite operations, which made the region the country’s top phosphate producer in the late 19th century.

Any mining professional, rockhound or local history buff interested in Ottawa’s mineral deposits is well-advised to pick up this definitive, well-prepared and inexpensive volume.