Timmins
Timmins is a city in northeastern Ontario, Canada, located on the Mattagami River. The city is the fourth-largest city in the Northeastern Ontario region with a population of 41,145 at the 2021 Canadian census and an estimated population of 44,819 in 2023. The city's economy is based on natural resource extraction. It is supported by industries related to lumbering, and to the mining of gold, zinc, copper, nickel, and silver. Timmins serves as a regional service and distribution centre.
The city has a large Francophone community, with more than 50% of the residents bilingual in French and English.
History
Early history
Archaeological evidence indicates that the area has been inhabited for at least 6,500 years. The first inhabitants were nomadic peoples of the Shield Archaic culture. At the time of European contact, the area was inhabited primarily by the Cree and Ojibwe peoples.The first Europeans to make contact with the local Indigenous peoples were French explorers in the late 1600s.
The first attempt at a permanent European presence in the area did not come until 1785, nearly two decades after Great Britain defeated France in the Seven Years' War and took over its territory in North America east of the Mississippi River. Philip Turnor, a surveyor and cartographer for the Hudson's Bay Company, established a trading outpost at Fredrick House Lake, about north-east of present-day downtown Timmins.
Although beaver fur was plentiful and still in demand in Europe, the trading post was not successful. Nearby competition, and the difficulty of navigating the Abitibi and Fredrick House rivers by canoe, often resulted in the post being unsupplied.
Frederick House Post was functionally abandoned in 1812, when a man named Capascoos killed all 12 of the trading post's staff, as well as looted and damaged the building. Capascoos was never caught, and the building was never rebuilt. However, temporary log shelters were put in place nearby to facilitate fur trading until 1821, when the post was officially declared closed by the Hudson's Bay Company.
More than a century later, in 1906, Treaty 9 was signed between Anishinaabe, Omushkegowuk Cree communities, and the Canadian Crown. It required the Mattagami First Nation to move to the north of Mattagami Lake and to cede territory.
Porcupine Gold Rush
The presence of gold in the area was long known to the local indigenous people, and the few Europeans who had settled nearby. Outcroppings of gold-bearing quartz were a familiar sight in the region, but there was little commercial interest due to the area's inaccessibility.The extension of the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway to Cochrane in 1907, allowed prospectors to more easily access the area. This sparked an interest in the region's natural resources, leading to the Porcupine Gold Rush. The first known prospectors were a team led by Reuben D'Aigle. They set out for Porcupine Lake in 1907 and dug several test pits in the surrounding area, but none of them had near the amount of gold which D'Aigle's team was seeking. They eventually abandoned their tools in the last pit they dug, approximately 8 km west of Porcupine Lake, and returned home.
Two years later in 1909, a prospector duo consisting of Benny Hollinger and Alex Gillies arrived in the Porcupine region. They met up with another group, led by Jack Wilson. Earlier in the season he had found a "dome" of quartz that contained large veins of gold stretching several hundred feet in length and in width. This section was later exploited and developed as the Dome Mine.
Wilson advised Hollinger & Gillies that all the good sites in a radius had been claimed, so the duo went slightly further west. There they stumbled upon D'Aigle's abandoned test pits and tools. While Gilles was inspecting the abandoned pits, Hollinger pulled a bit of moss from a nearby quartz outcropping and revealed a large vein of gold. Gillies later noted that he had found a boot print pressed into some moss covering the gold vein. This print was believed left by one of D'Aigle's team two years before. They had departed unaware of the large vein under their feet.
Two Mattawa shopkeeper brothers, named Noah Timmins and Henry Timmins, arrived in the area in 1910. They began purchasing shares of local mines, and bought Benny Hollinger's share from him.
Around the same time, Scottish businessman Sandy McIntyre discovered the McIntyre Mine near Pearl Lake, four miles away. Hollinger Mines was incorporated later that year with five equal partners consisting of Noah and Henry Timmins; Duncan and John McMartin ; and Mattawa attorney David Dunlap.
"Moss slip" story
A popular founding myth of Timmins and the Porcupine area states that a man named Harry Preston slipped on moss and uncovered gold. In some versions of the story, he is responsible for triggering the Porcupine Gold Rush. However, historical records contradict both claims.Harry Preston arrived in the Porcupine area as a part of a team led by Jack Wilson in June 1909, where they discovered a large "dome shaped quartz outcrop". Wilson was said to have been the first to notice gold as the Sun struck the quartz.
The only comparable mention of moss comes from Hollinger and Gilles, who arrived in the area two months after Wilson's team. According to Gilles's report, while he inspected D'Aigle's abandoned work, Hollinger was looking at some nearby quartz when he peeled back a bit of moss, revealing a large vein of gold.
Additionally, historians generally agree that expansion of the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway, which connected Central Ontario to Northern Ontario, was instrumental in triggering the Porcupine Gold Rush because it made the area accessible. The Canadian Pacific Railway expansion to was also critical, as it enabled travellers from Toronto to go directly north instead of taking a time-consuming detour around Eastern Ontario.
Settlement and company towns
A company town was founded near modern-day Gillies Lake, to house Hollinger Mines employees. Mine manager Alphonse "Al" Paré named the growing mining camp "Timmins", after his uncle, Noah Timmins, who was then the President of Hollinger Mines. Two more settlements were founded by competing mines: The "Porcupine/Dome" camp was situated on Porcupine Lake, and owned by Dome Mines. "Schumacher" camp was situated on Pearl Lake, and owned by McIntyre Mines.Joe Torlone noted in his dissertation that Timmins was never truly a company town. The combined mines behaved more like a "very influential industrial citizen", rather than a single company that dominated all aspects of civilian life. As the worker population grew, these camps started to mesh together as a single town.
Great Porcupine Fire
On July 10, 1911, unusually hot and dry temperatures caused small fires to ignite at the Porcupine settlement. These were initially described as a series of "bushfires", but strong winds spread them into the dry forest and they expanded. Evacuation efforts began on the morning of July 11, with women and children being ferried to the opposite end of Porcupine Lake.The small fires eventually merged, and grew into a single wall of fire, estimated to be at least wide. The fire destroyed the Porcupine mining camp at around 3:30pm, and continued as far north as Cochrane. The total number of deaths remains uncertain, with the lowest estimates being 73 and the highest suggesting there were more than 200 dead. A number of people drowned after fleeing into the lake in an attempt to escape the heat and smoke; others were killed by smoke while still trapped underground in the mine.
The executives of the Dome Mine held meetings about reopening within two days of the fire. The camp was quickly rebuilt with help from various communities around Ontario, and operations soon resumed.
The fire burned the thin layers of moss and soil characteristic of a Canadian Shield landscape. This revealed previously unknown veins of gold and other minerals, which helped facilitate economic recovery efforts.
Incorporation, growth, and World Wars
Given the fire, and the need to replace housing as well as serve newly arrived refugees from the Porcupine camp, Noah Timmins to began planning a townsite at the Timmins camp. The first lots went up for sale on September 4, 1911, ranging in price from $5 to $10 for residential lots, and from $75 to $1,000 for commercial lots. Migrants were attracted to the new lands for sale, and the Timmins camp quickly surpassed the Porcupine and Schumacher camps in population. Timmins was incorporated as a municipality on January 1, 1912.In November 1912, 1,200 members of the Western Federation of Miners Local 145 held a strike at all three mines in response to a proposal to lower their wages. Mine operators hired gun thugs, who fired on the picket line and were ordered out by the provincial government. After months without work, many men chose to leave the settlement; only 500 miners returned to work in July 1913. The strike won the men a nine-hour workday and a pay increase.
In 1917, a dam was built at Kenogamissi Falls, downriver from Mattagami Lake, to provide power to Timmins and the surrounding area, Mattagami Lake was consequently flooded.
A recruitment campaign for soldiers during the First World War was successful in enlisting around 600 men out of the less than 2,000 total residents at the time. The miners were coveted by the Canadian Expeditionary Force for their ability to dig trenches, and experience with handling explosives. News of the war and letters from soldiers abroad were frequently published in the town's local newspaper, The Porcupine Advance. After receiving news of armistice, major celebrations were held all around the Timmins area, as described by a journalist for TPA:
The Great Depression did not adversely affect the economy of the area, and jobs were available in mining and lumber.
During the Second World War, around a third of the city's population were enlisted into the armed forces. Timmins had its own bomber squadron known as "Porcupine Squadron No. 433", a heavy bomber unit of No. 6 group RCAF in Skipton-on-Swale, England. Timmins' economy suffered slightly during this period as women were prohibited from working in mines under the Ontario Mining Act, leaving no one to replace the enlisted miners.