The Development of the Canadian Uranium Industry: An Experiment in Public Enterprise

• Published in: Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science
• Main Author: Hunter, W. D. G.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 1962
• Subjects: General Earth and Planetary Sciences; General Environmental Science; Canada; Eldorado; Great Bear Lake; Northwest Territories
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/139666; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0315489000004217

The history of uranium mining in Canada can be divided into four phases or periods, each marked by distinctive policies and by events and activities resulting therefrom. The initial phase is marked by the development of a mining and refining operation and the establishment of a market by a private enterprise. It begins with the discovery in 1930 by Gilbert Labine and E. C. St. Paul of a radio-active occurrence at Great Bear Lake, Northwest Territories, which they staked for Eldorado Gold Mining Company. It ends with the entry in 1942 of the Dominion government as the dominant body in the production and marketing of radio-active minerals. By 1932 the Port Radium mine had commenced operations, and in the following year a refinery for producing radium had been completed at Port Hope, Ontario. The mine was essentially a silver-radium mine, but the complex ore-body also contained uranium, copper, and cobalt. It was the first commercial body of ore found in Canada from which radium could be extracted. It kept alive a certain interest in radio-active minerals among prospectors and successfully challenged the Belgian monopoly in the world radium market. Although it remained a small and unprofitable undertaking throughout this phase, its existence accounted for Canada's emergence as the main supplier of the raw material, in the form of uranium, for the development of the atomic bomb.