The Booms and Busts of a Mining Town Where the Ore Could Kill You
Adventure of living in Elliot Lake, Ontario
“Going anywhere next week?” asked Tom, the advertising consultant.
“I’m being sent to Elliot Lake,” I said.
“Great. Can I get you to take my goldfish with you? I’ll use it for a night light.”
It was fashionable in my place of employment to joke about the town of Elliot Lake, Ontario.
They mined uranium in Elliot Lake.
I was an editorial consultant with a national newspaper chain which happened to own a weekly in that town.
I discovered that the fortunes of towns like Elliot Lake rose and fell with uranium — or, rather, who wanted the stuff. I sincerely believe my employer had conveniently forgotten that they owned a newspaper there because the town had evolved from “boom to bust” since the bean counters had last checked.
The “bust” was dramatic. Perfectly liveable, modern houses had been sold for pennies on the dollar, some had been sold for the taxes owed and the rest were eventually given away. Most businesses had closed and most neighborhoods were empty.
So, why was I being sent to Elliot Lake?
It was boom time again. A change in government policy in the province of Ontario suddenly reactivated nuclear energy generating stations. Uranium mining companies went back to Elliot Lake, the mines reopened, houses began selling for $60,000 and up. Hotels reopened and filled to capacity. And, a tiny weekly newspaper pretty much operating on amateur talent had to be nudged into the 20th Century.
In addition to uranium, another notorious element could be found in the waters surrounding the town: Mercury.
“If you catch a fish, you can hang it in your carport and use it as a thermometer,” Tom quipped.
Seriously, folks, if the natural perils of living above a stockpile of radioactive material wasn’t enough of a challenge, there always seemed to be someone or something pushing the envelope. My hotel room was booked weeks in advance but there was guaranteed to be a bidding war at the front desk where lineups of latecomers clamored for accommodation. There were two other hotels in town, also fully booked; otherwise, you could start the one-hour drive back to the highway hoping Diamond Jim’s Cabins was open.
Driving around the town, one was treated to a panorama of scrub brush and spruce dotted with tents and little travel trailers, campers on the back of pickup trucks, wood fires, tarps and clothes lines. If you’ve ever read the history of gold rush days in the Cariboo or Yukon, you could gain an appreciation of those days by what you saw in Elliot Lake.
Permanent residents had their own challenges.
While interviewing a local writer to hire her as a columnist, I kept hearing what I thought was a furnace kicking in. A familiar sound to most Canadians, but since this was the middle of summer, I asked her about the sound.
“Oh,”, she said, “that’s not the furnace. It’s our radon gas expulsion unit.”
Radon gas, a by-product of uranium, apparently seeps out of the ground and enters the basement despite concrete floors. For quite some time, residents were required (okay, encouraged) to take a simple test to determine their vulnerability.
Another eye-opener: I wrote a feature article on a flamboyant town councillor who could get wound up enough to pound the table while making his point at a council meeting.
He told me his greatest accomplishment was halting what he called “winter drilling” on the lake.
It was getting late the night of this interview, or maybe I was being ultra-dense, because I said:
“So what’s the big deal? A mining company gets permission to drill through the ice for some extra ore?”
“Have you forgotten what we mine here? And I’m talking about the town’s water supply.”
A little humility is good for the soul. The realization that a mining company would dredge uranium ore through the residents’ drinking water seemed to be beyond my range of experience. We can thank democracy for town councillors who will pound a table in anger when citizen rights are being flagrantly trampled.
On one of my last trips to Elliot Lake, I was on a flight to the city of Sudbury where I would rent a car for the final 90 minutes of the trip. I happened to be seated next to two young women who informed me that they were dancers.
When it clicked that they meant “strippers”, I asked: “Are you staying in Sudbury or going on to Elliot Lake?”
“How did you know we’d be going to Elliot Lake?” one asked.
My feeble answer was: “I think most of the passengers on this plane are probably going to Elliot Lake.”
The truth was that the three hotels in Elliot Lake were in fierce competition and the average uranium miner would be an unlikely fan of ballet or opera. Strippers were in demand.
Not long after that, the provincial government cancelled its uranium contracts. Elliot Lake went bust again. But somebody was smart enough to promote it as a retirement community — cheap, good quality housing, community spirit, fishing and hunting. That’s what it is today.
I don’t know if strippers are still the main source of entertainment; my guess would be bingo.