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Tales from the dump
with Walt Humphries
Friday, June 8, 2007
Last November, Violet Martin was out at the salvage area of the dump with some of her kids. She came across a homemade wooden box with rocks in it. She immediately got on the cell phone and gave Patricia Baldwin a call, because Patricia is a neighbour who likes and collects rocks.
They were both quite excited, because this wasn't just any old box and these weren't just any old rocks. The collection is so special that it will go into the NWT Mining Heritage Society's collection and the rocks and the box will eventually be put on display. It will say that Violet and Patricia kindly donated the collection to the Society, but it would also be nice to know who originally collected and owned them. So this is an NWT mystery rock hunt.
Our first clue is that a grey haired gentleman, cleaning out a cabin on the Ingraham Trail, may have been the person who dropped the box off at the dump.
The box itself is made out of shellacked plywood with a hinged lid. It is 17 inches by 24 inches and five inches deep. Inside it has a lift-out tray making two layers, each divided into 24 sections. In each section there is a mineral sample and a little piece of paper with a hand-written note, naming the sample and giving the location where it was collected. I am no expert on age dating things like this, but I am guessing this box was made in the 1950s or 1960s.
The samples themselves are relatively small. Their quality is fair to good and they cover a wide range of minerals. The majority of the samples, appear to come from mines or mining areas in Ontario and Quebec. There are a group of samples from Nova Scotia and a couple from New Brunswick. There is one sample from Saskatchewan and one from British Columbia. The samples from the NWT are gold from Gordon Lake and Hidden Lake, sphalerite from Tibbitt Lake, silver from Great Bear Lake, galena from Waite Island, uranium from Hotta Lake, nickel from Easter Island and copper, I think it says, from the Arctic Coast. The copper is in a small, old Listerine bottle.
This is an aside, but when I first started working in the bush, we would find these old Listerine bottles and at first I was a little surprised. Why would the people working in the bush have small bottles of mouthwash with them? It seemed an unusual choice. Then an old timer explained to me that it was used as an antiseptic way back when.
Now back to the rocks. I think it is safe to assume that this collection belonged to an old time Yellowknifer. Also, that it was their own personal collection of minerals that they had collected up over the years and that they did it as a hobby. The collection probably didn't belong to a geologist, because it is too well organized and all the samples are labeled.
The NWT Mining Heritage Society would like to find out who many have owned the collection, because the providence of an artifact always makes it more interesting and meaningful.
So if you have any insight into this wonderful dump discovery and who originally may have owned it, please let them know. This won't be the first, nor will it be the last, artifact that gets saved from the dump to eventually be put on display.
- Walt Humphries is a well-known Yellowknife artist and prospector
