Jón Bjarnason Academy - 01.05.1936, Page 38

fishing industry prospered greatly until today Manitoba whitefish,
Lake Winnipegosis pickerel, and the delicate and delicious Manitoba
goldeyes appear on the menus of the finest hotels as far east as the
cities of the Atlantic seaboard.
But in the summer of 1917 the Province of Manitoba shipped its
first gold and with that shipment turned the attention of the world
from its relatively small agricultural area to its great, largely un-
explored and wholly undeveloped, Northland where a hundred and
fifty thousand square miles of Pre-Cambrian mineral bearing rock
had been trodden unnoticed by hundreds of feet for a hundred years.
With this ten thousand dollar shipment of gold bullion the mining
era in the economic development of the province began.
It has been said that whenever a new country is ripe for develop-
ment Nature beckons with a finger dipped in gold. How then can
progress in mining development in this new country be better meas-
ured than in terms of the same precious metal. The following figures
tell the golden story:
Manitoba Gold Production, 1917 to 1935
1917
1925
1923
1931
1934
1935
440 fine ounces, valued at
4,689 fine ounces, valued at
19,813 fine ounces, valued at
102,969 fine ounces, valued at
132,321 fine ounces, valued at
145,469 fine ounces, valued at
$ 9,095.00
96,930.00
409,571.00
2,128,558.00
4,565,075.00
5,119,054.00
NOTE—During the past two years the premium on gold unduly affects the price
comparison.
Manitoba produces a wide range of metallic mineral chief among
which and the value of the annual production of each in 1935 was
as follows:
(1930 values are included to mark progress)
Gold ...................$479,400.00 $ 5,119,054.00
Silver .................. 34,114.00 811,754.00
Copper ................. 215,018.00 2,921,490.00
Zinc ................... 139,757.00 1,627,326.00
Selenium ................. 7,353.00 129,502.00
Total .................$875,642.00 $10,609,126.00
NOTE—The Selenium figure quoted for 1930 is actually the 1931 production of that
metal as it was first produced in that year.
Metallic production in the province has, therefore, increased ten
times in the past five years and those five years marking a period of
the greatest economic depression our country and possibly the world
has ever known.
In 1934 fifty-one active mining organizations were working in
Manitoba fields and that number has considerably increased during
the year just closed. About a round dozen of these are actually pro-
ducing metal and the balance are in the various stages of development
36