Vermillion

Ever wonder how Vermillion Lake got it's name ?

I did and after some research I discovered that Vermillion was the name behind a mining company that was incorporated in 1890 as Vermillion Mining Company.

That was the easy answer, and to some people that might be enough to satisfy their curiosity about the naming of Vermillion Lake.

There is also a Vermillion River in Ohio that was named much earlier in history. Many of the prospectors associated to the Sudbury area had roots of business in places like Cleveland, Ohio, so it is possible that the naming of the Vermillion Mining Company had some connection to that era. However I found no proof of that so I am sticking with the notion that the Vermillion river in northern Ontario was named after the mining company.

I welcome comments to prove me wrong........

Such simple answers just didn't cut it for me. So, like the mystery and adventure driven people who dared to dig deep below the surface of that part of New Ontario to find the minerals there, I went digging for a bigger answer.

..........and here is what I found -

As you read this Vermillion research article.....

..... don't think conspiracy, think "factor" and the driving forces of capitalism which is best understood by playing the occasional game of Monopoly - some of those factors are land, labor, and industry.

This story goes back a long ways but lets begin at Albert Salter who, in 1856 was surveying a meridian line when his compass failed due to a magnetic anomaly. General history tells us that this event was passed on to a geologist who identified the anomaly as a mineral deposit in the then little understood basin that had been created a few million years earlier when a meteor crashed into the earth ( Sudbury Basin ). The event was then archived and forgotten, again according to general history ( the stuff school teachers; ie, Salter, Ritchie and others, get paid to teach the kiddies ).

When this happened, Salter was standing in an area that would later be rediscovered and mined.

Gold Lot 6, Copper Lot 5 - Henry Ranger

Henry Ranger was a prospector, probably a bachelor living on Cedar Street in Sudbury when he wasn't in the bush.

Stobie and the prospectors
were paddling their canoes
up and down these northern
Ontario waterways
I would bet a dime to a dollar
that Stobie stood on these rocks
( maybe norite rich ) and
meditated on his next move
as he listened to the waters
of the river splash over the falls here.
This river would become
the Vermillion river.

Ranger is mentioned in a 1950 INCO Triangle story titled "Discovery is the Big Thrill for the Prospector " as a pioneering Sudbury prospector along with many others including James Stobie, Samuel Ritchie, and Robert Tough.

What was a prospector like ?

The answer according to that article is this:

"Prospecting in the early stages of the Sudbury field was entirely a matter of searching for outcrops, and the prospectors, many of whom had little or no previous experience in the work, soon mastered such rudiments of geology as they found essential. Their favorite rock was "diorite" - now known in Sudbury parlance as "norite"............................Prospectors quickly established the rule that ore bodies were to be found at or near a "diorite" contact....during the first three or four years (the prospectors) located most of the important deposits that have yet been found."  

However that is but one of the aspects of pioneer prospecting. Another source, (see Royal Commission), shows Henry Ranger claiming that he was a victim of claim jumping, and A. Duncan claiming that companies who came along and bought options on large plots of crown land were detrimental to the success of the prospector and to the country as a whole.

Ranger - " The laws are not altogether fair to the prospector. I think he should be allowed to stake out his claim and be given reasonable time before having to pay for the land. I speak from experience, having had a claim jumped before I could manage to secure it. " ( see Royal Commission )

Yet another prospector named Thomas was in the Sudbury basin where McKim Township came to be. One source claims about him, " Typical of most prospectors, Frood lacked the capital to develop properties and normally he had to settle for finder’s fees. Frood ( 1884 ), another teacher turned prospector, lends his name to the Frood Stobie mine.

Lot 6 is a reference to the Denison Township Concession 4, Lot 6. Lot 5 is also in a concession of that township.

In 1887 Henry Ranger discovered gold on C4L6 of Denison Township. In the same year he discovered copper of L5.


Industrious minds came along after Stobie
and exploited the resources
This photo is taken from the Stobie Falls
..not quite sure what that structure is
but I am almost sure it is part of
the Errington mine
and Little Vermillion mine
projects

Meanwhile other prospectors including Robert Tough and Joseph Riopelle were making their own discoveries in the Denison area.  All of this was happening around the area of modern day Fairbanks Lake Road that runs from the Sudbury to Espanola Highway to the Fairbanks Lake.

Anyone who knows the area understands this to be an historical native American territory ( Whitefish tribes ). These earliest of Canadians had likely been surviving on these grounds for thousands of years and while they had their own names for the lakes and rivers they certainly knew how to get from what became Fairbanks Lake. They also knew how to trail across what became Vermillion Bay of Fairbanks Lake to reach Cameron Lake. The Whitefish Native Americans also know about the creek that runs from Cameron to Vermillion Lake and they knew about the Vermillion River, both the branch above the lake that runs upstream to Larchwood, and the branch below the lake where Stobie Falls. The Indians knew how to get to LaCloche where they could trade at the Hudson Bay Trading post with the Europeans.

These same Whitefish tribes buried their dead  and one such burial mound location is said to have existed somewhere down the Cameron creek.

The Vermillion Lake and river was only the Vermillion Lake and river after the prospectors came along.

I can't help but feel compassion for the natives who met up with the Europeans. These foreigners did to them what the Romans had done to the barbarian tribes of Northern Europe way back when Rome was building it's empire. Native indian and barbarian are similar titles. They were seen as untamed or undomesticated tribes. The Romans dealt with the barbarians in their own way. The Europeans dealt with the natives in theirs. The Europeans were Christians, some Catholic, some Protestant, and they were wealth seekers. Anyone one who conformed was in a word, "domesticated". Anyone who didn't or doesn't is in a word a " savage".

Domesticated............get it........dom'd down..........dummed down....made to play by the rules of those who rule the factor - industry, labor, land.

Check out this passage written in 1890 in the Royal Commission sourced below.

On the smelting of ores of economic minerals in Ontario - The parable of the wicked and slothful servant who hid his lord's money in the earth instead of putting it to the bankers seems to find a life-like illustration in the record of the mining and metallurgical industries of Ontario. The preceding sections of this report are replete with evidence of the large and varied mineral wealth or the Province, as also of the unsavory fact that, however much is hidden in the earth, little has been taken out or "put to the bankers"....................

Robert Tough

Tough was a savvy trader and unlike many of the early prospectors he seemed to have a gift for turning his claims into wealthy investments. In 1886 he associated himself to Frood and Campbell, another prospector, and they managed to sell some of their mining assets to Samuel Ritchie of Canadian Copper Company.

In 1887 Tough was in business with Henry Ranger. Tough patented claims for Ranger's copper and gold finds. Then he looked to James Stobie to dig a shaft some 40 feet deep. Soon after the Vermillion Mining Company was incorporated but and operated for several years under that name until it was sold to Canadian Copper Company in 1898. CCC was then merged with a few other mining companies in 1902 and International Nickel was born.






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The sources of this madness include :

Geology Ontario
Henry Honnore Ranger - was this bachelor and prospector living on Cedar Street in St Anne des Pins, aka Sudbury the same guy ????
Royal Commission