Sudbury, there was a report of a great find of copper. Expert after
expert examined it, and company after company forfeited options and
refused to bond it. Finally a shipment was sent out to a smelter
across the border. The so-called "copper" was pronounced "nickel"--the
greatest deposit of the metal needed for armor plating known in the
world. In fact, only one other mine could compete against the Sudbury
nickel beds--the French mines of New Caledonia. Here was something,
surely, in this rock-bound iron region of desolation, which passing
travelers had pronounced worthless.

The discovery of silver at Cobalt came by an almost similar chance.
Grading an extension of a North Ontario railroad projected purely for
the sake of prospective settlers, workmen came on surface deposits of
"rose" silver--almost pure metal, some of it; and there resulted such a
mining boom and series of quick fortunes as had made Klondike famous.
And Cobalt and Sudbury are at only the southern edge of the unexplored
hinterland of Ontario. Old records of the French régime, daily
journals of the Hudson's Bay Company fur-traders, repeatedly refer to
well-known mines between Lake Superior and James Bay; but fur-traders
discouraged mining; and this region is less known to-day than when
coureur de bois and voyageur threaded river and lake and leafy
wilderness. Ontario, like Quebec, is only on the outer edge of
realizing her own wealth.


V

We sometimes speak as though Canada had had her boom and it was all
over. She has had her boom, and the boom has exploded, and it is a
good thing. When inflation collapses, a country gets down to reality;