Mattie Mitchell Read online

  Mattie trapped all the way around the magnificent fjord the French had named Bonne Bay. He followed the fur-bearing animals as far as the upper reaches of the Humber River and beyond. He was especially adept at trapping the elusive pine marten, or, as he called it, marten cat. The mammal’s rich, lustrous fur always fetched top dollar.

  He found the best prices for his furs with the furriers and chandlers who had settled along the shores of Bay St. George. Mattie made his way for many springs over the crusted snow, with his winter’s cache of pelts secured to a sled of his own making, down out of the mountains and dark green valleys with the lush, cured furs. The acquired first-hand wisdom of forest life and his intimate knowledge of a largely unknown and very difficult land would serve him in good stead among his own people. As well, they spread his renown beyond his beloved shores to lands that he would never see.

  Mattie was a spiritual man, probably without realizing it. Most men who spend long times alone in the wonder of the forest have a spiritual bent, but few will admit to it. There is something about sitting alone under a star-shot sky with the sheen of a full moon casting mysterious shadows everywhere, and the crackle of a small, flickering campfire—the only sound in the world— that causes a man to wonder where he came from, and especially where it is he is going.

  CHAPTER 12

  MATTIE MITCHELL WAS HUNTER, TRAPPER, lumberjack, and woodsman extraordinaire, as well as an experienced guide and all-seeing prospector. He employed most of his abilities at the same time. His employ of one trade involved and sometimes demanded the skill of the others. Two of his most remarkable skills would put his name on the lips of miners and prospectors and the general population around the Newfoundland island nation. His discovery would become known worldwide. His name would not.

  White trappers and explorers, who spent much time along the rivers and many tributaries of the Exploits River in central Newfoundland, marvelled at the immense stands of virgin timber growing on the island. Untouched mature tracts of black spruce and balsam fir, majestic groves of towering pine trees, fields full of glistening, sky-high white birch, and billowing aspens ran the entire length of Newfoundland’s long inland valleys.

  The timber stands were endless. All of it was untouched, all of it theirs for the taking. Always searching for new opportunities, the industrious trappers and hunters weren’t long in talking about the fortunes of timber available all along the Exploits, which was ever ready to transport the waiting wealth to market. News of this bounty soon reached the ears of entrepreneurs and the governing body of the day. The Exploits River would never be serene again.

  On a snowy, blustery January 7, 1905, the government of Newfoundland, in partnership with the Anglo-Newfoundland Development Company—or the A. N. D. Company, as it would become known island-wide for the next one hundred years— entered into an agreement. Five months of heated discussion led to its approval, and it passed in the Newfoundland government’s legislature on June 13 of the same year. The agreement gave the A. N. D. Company an ironclad lease for ninety-nine years, with a further right for renewal, of an area of 3,000 square miles of land in the forested heart of the Newfoundland island colony. The lease included inland water rights, full mineral as well as quarry rights—an added bonus—falling anywhere within the boundaries of the document. Of course, it included total timber rights.

  The modern pulp and paper mill was built on the site of the Grand Falls, twenty miles or so upstream from the fledgling town of Botwood. The deepwater port on the ocean side of the Exploits estuary was needed for the transport of white paper from the mill to world markets. The broad, wooded banks of the Exploits River above the Grand Falls, and the growing town which would bear their name, would yield from its seemingly inexhaustible supply of wood fibre for years to come. Opposition members, who had been against the government’s deal in the first place, would never know that it would take nearly one hundred years of pulp and paper production before their fears about signing away all rights to the heartland of the island would become a reality.

  ONE OF THE INGREDIENTS REQUIRED FOR the manufacture of pulp into newsprint is sulphur. This non-metallic solid is the thirteenth most common element in the earth’s crust. From sulphur comes sodium bisulphate, a derivative essential in the papermaking process.

  In 1905, the A. N. D. Company hired Mattie Mitchell to search for sulphur deposits. A significant find of this element would reduce the costs of importing the material to the island. Now Mattie’s famous powers of observation would really be put to the test. The company gave him a brief description of what to look for, and after he made preparations for an extended journey, he set off from Grand Falls into the wilderness of central Newfoundland with two fellow A. N. D. Company employees, William F. Canning and Michael S. Sullivan. Mattie Mitchell, who was now in his fifties, was about to start just one of the many chapters of his legend that, sadly, would only be read long after the man was dead.

  They headed upstream, keeping to the shorelines of the Exploits River. They searched the many ponds and lakes that flowed into the big river valley on their way. The men knew their best chance at finding a sulphur deposit lay where the water had caused erosion. Mattie was their leader. He just seemed to have a sixth sense for direction. The men would talk by their night fire and decide on the next day’s traverse, and in the morning Mattie would lead off toward the agreed-upon site without compass or map.

  Mattie seldom followed his people’s rule of travel these days. Though he knew very well the “Red Indian this way, Mi’kmaq this way” mantra, and still harboured some misgivings, he went into the forbidden areas anyway when he crossed the invisible divide. However, he always paused before entering valleys or before crossing rivers where he knew the Red Indians had been. Canning and Sullivan simply thought Mattie was studying the lay of the land and choosing the best route. He appeared to tread lightly as they approached the eastern end of Red Indian Lake. Mattie called it “the Red Pond.” Mattie didn’t voice his concerns aloud to his companions, nor did he mention the great sadness that always shuddered through his body when he knew they had crossed an old trace of the Beothuk’s passing. The signs were never fresh, only faded and weathered, until only their spirit remained, felt only by those who believed in such things.

  When the three men reached the place where the wide mouth of the Exploits sucked great volumes of water away from Red Indian Lake, they crossed over the narrow inlet at the lake’s east end by boat and journeyed west along its northern shore. As they searched all along that shore and walked upstream a fair distance to explore every one of the brooks and streams that poured into the lake, Mattie’s companions always felt as though their Indian guide was impatient to continue travelling.

  When they reached the mouth of Sandy River, later to be named the Buchans River, Mattie seemed to be content and led his small party steadily upstream. His step seemed to be more earnest than usual as they journeyed upriver.

  The British had left their mark at Red Pond in 1811, nearly one hundred years before. The Buchans River got its name from a Royal Navy lieutenant, David Buchan, who was one of the few Englishmen who had shown some concern for the plight of the few remaining native Beothuk Indians. In a vain effort to communicate and establish relations with the elusive Beothuk, he had headed an expedition to the frozen shores of this Red Indian Lake.

  In the winter of 1811, the ambitious lieutenant indeed made contact with the Indians, and was so confident he would be accepted into their trust that he left two of his men to spend the night in the Beothuk camp. Before noon the following day, they saw red blotches on the white snow long before they reached the site. His two men had been beheaded, but not before a brutal fight for their lives. The campground, and even the frozen lake nearby, was spattered with the blood of his two soldiers. The Beothuk had long since disappeared into the silent forest. Buchan was devastated, as much for his failed contact with the Indians as for the loss of his men.

  Buchan returned to the frozen Red Indian La
ke again in 1820. This time he brought with him the body of a Beothuk woman her people called Demasduit. The whites called her Mary March, after the Blessed Virgin, Mary, and for the month in which she was captured by the whites. Demasduit had died in captivity, from the white man’s terrible lung disease, tuberculosis. Buchan left Demasduit’s body in a hastily built teepee near the river that would eventually bear his name and retreated back to his schooner in the Bay of Exploits.

  MATTIE LOVED HIS “CUPPA TEA.” He was always the one who chose the spot for their mug-up. The place he chose to boil the kettle on the banks of Sandy River on this expedition would change the history of Newfoundland forever.

  On this day he decided to lunch and boil up on a large outcrop that jutted out of the riverbank and which disappeared into the rushing water. He usually looked around some before deciding on a place for their meals. This time he didn’t take any time making that decision. He simply walked below the overhanging rock, removed his pack, and announced that this was where they would rest and make tea.

  The outcrop upon which he had started a fire close to the river had a reddish brown stain running through it. In some places it was grey, and in other places a yellowish green stain ran out of the cliff. All three men recognized that this geological formation contained some kind of unusual rock. As it turned out, the discovery didn’t contain sulphur, but sulphides. Mattie led the others to two more outcrops of the same material in the same area.

  They spent two days carefully choosing the best rock samples to take back with them. During all this time Mattie didn’t appear surprised or even excited. It was as if he had known where to find this strange rock. The samples they took back were a thousand times more valuable than sulphur. What Mattie Mitchell had led the men to was the biggest sulphide-based metal deposit in the world. It contained copper, lead, zinc, gold, and silver.

  It would take five more years before the first motor-driven boat would take 1,000 tons of samples of the ore across Red Indian Lake to the railhead. From the railcar it was loaded on board a ship at the new port of Botwood, and from there shipped to Sweden for testing. The A. N. D. Company learned that Mattie’s find was extremely valuable. However, the technology to separate the various minerals was not known.

  The flotation process needed to separate them was not perfected until 1925, when the American Smelting and Refining Company (ASARCO), at its metallurgical lab in Flat River, Missouri, finally solved the problem. Two years more passed, and on May 19, 1927, ten men arrived at the site that would bear the name Buchans and started the groundwork for a world-class mine.

  Over its lifespan the Buchans mine would yield out of its depths 16.2 million tons of some of the richest high-grade ore on the planet, with a combined value of US $3.6 billion. In 1905, in thanks for his discovery, Mattie Mitchell received his wage of $18 per month, plus a bonus of one barrel of flour for his discovery. The barrel of flour was worth $2.50.

  CHAPTER 13

  THREE YEARS LATER, NOW SIXTY-FOUR years old and still working for the A. N. D. Company, Mattie Mitchell started out on yet another adventure that would again make an amazing first for Canada, and of course for the island of Newfoundland.

  This part of Mattie’s story really begins with yet another European’s influence on the island as well as Labrador. It started with his direct involvement with a northern race of native people, the Innu—formally called Montagnais—as well as the Inuit, or Eskimo people. Unlike many on the long list of Europeans who had exploited the native population all around the coasts, Grenfell’s mission was one of mercy.

  Dr. Wilfred Thomason Grenfell was an Englishman born on February 28, 1865, in Parkgate, a small town in the north of England. He attended medical school in London, where he received his degree. Grenfell was a very spiritual man, a devout Christian who would live and practice his beliefs his whole life. He became a member of the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, an organization involved in the welfare of fishermen not only in Britain, but throughout the British Commonwealth and its colonies.

  As a member of this group, Dr. Grenfell was sent to Newfoundland in 1892. His charge was to find out the living conditions of the fishermen and their families along the northern coast of the island of Newfoundland and on the north coast of Labrador. What the good doctor saw as he travelled astounded him. What affected the man most of all were the terrible living conditions of the native peoples as well as many of the white people struggling for existence, both on the tip of the island and along the coast of Labrador.

  The main, overriding challenge among their many problems was a constant supply of winter food. The huge floes of spring ice moving south along the Labrador coast always brought with them millions of harp seals. It was a bounty from the sea and rich in protein. They caught codfish and stored them from summer until late fall, but it was never enough.

  The long, terrible winters were the bane of Grenfell’s medical skills. The malnourished were the first to succumb to disease. Grenfell saw more than he could deal with. The distance he had to cover in order to bring sound medical advice and attention to these coastal people was considerable. The doctor could hardly believe that the breadth of this land was so sparsely populated yet could swallow whole the land of his birth.

  Always, wherever he travelled, he preached to what he so lovingly called “my people” the need for good hygiene and proper food. He determined the people would benefit immensely from a constant supply of meat, one for which they would not have to continuously hunt over long and insurmountable distances. The mainstay of fresh meat in this area were the huge caribou herds. One of them, the George River herd in Labrador, was the largest migrating caribou herd in the world. The other, smaller herd on the island nation was a species of caribou native to the island of Newfoundland and had the distinction of being the most southerly herd of woodland caribou anywhere in the world. However, they were hunted in excess and the small herds on the Northern Peninsula dwindled.

  Harp seals were readily available along the coast when the huge ice floes brought the breeding mammals along the coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland annually. But this was only a springtime event and far from sustainable. Grenfell thought he had the answer to at least some of the problem. He would bring in reindeer from Scandinavia.

  The deer of Lapland had been domesticated in that part of the world for centuries. The reindeer were a tough northern breed of animal. They were in fact caribou of a different name in northern Europe. Qalipu is their North American Mi’kmaq name, one of the few native names the Europeans kept, although they changed the spelling and pronunciation to “caribou.”

  Grenfell thought about taming the native caribou, but wisely decided that the time needed to bring the animals to a controlled domestic state, as had been done with the reindeer in Europe, would take generations. The reindeer from northern Europe could be free-ranged and corralled here and raised for slaughter, much like the Canadian prairie cattle herds. As an added nutritional bonus, the reindeer could be milked.

  Grenfell knew the Laplanders drank the milk from their herded animals. He also knew the milk from the reindeer contained four times as much butterfat as the milk from dairy cows. Fresh milk was non-existent along these northern shores. Grenfell had brought midwives with him from England who related to him that the only source of milk found in homes where they provided their badly needed services was in the breasts of birthing mothers.

  A constant supply of calcium would also go a long way in controlling the crippling disease of rickets prevalent among Newfoundlanders and Labradorians. Even the sailor’s disease called scurvy was prevalent, as well as anemia, scrofula, and the constant presence of tuberculosis, diseases whose presence owed largely to lack of proper nutrition.

  Dr. Grenfell was sure his idea would work. He knew that reindeer had been “ranched” successfully in Alaska, and he could see no reason why it wouldn’t work here as well.

  Money was raised and the great venture began. Grenfell chose for his experiment the
reindeer from Lapland, that area of northern Europe bordering on the Arctic Ocean that includes parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, as well as the Kola Peninsula of Russia. The climate and the terrain were much the same as those in northern Newfoundland and southern Labrador. Grenfell studied long and hard before making the final decision. The land of the reindeer had forests of black spruce and fir and pine, along with great stands of white birch. The animals fed and grew in abundance on huge expanses of tundra-like land much the same as that of this island colony.

  There would be no need to buy food for the reindeer. It had to work. Grenfell was excited, convinced. “The food for them is inexhaustible, the land unappropriated,” he stated.

  This extraordinary man, whose mind was never at rest and who always acted on his every thought, and who constantly had the welfare of the northern people foremost in all of his endeavours, was about to begin yet another of his many ventures. Without knowing it, his venture would add an amazing, closing chapter to the story of Mattie Mitchell.

  Grenfell would go down in grateful history as one Englishman who had not exploited this “new world” at all, but one who had seen a great void and had willingly devoted his entire life to alleviating that terrible need. He was a missionary and confessor, a doctor, a surgeon; a policeman, magistrate, and judge; a teacher and compassionate healer; a businessman, entrepreneur, adventurer, and scientist. He was an eager pioneer and tireless explorer, sailor, and cartographer; engineer and sawmiller; a builder and craftsman. He was dearly loved and a friend to all.

  News of the unusual proposed import reached the company officials at the pulp and paper mill in Grand Falls. Always looking for a way to cut the high costs of getting logs to their mill, they saw in Grenfell’s project what could very well be a partial solution to some of their wood-hauling costs. The reindeer were used not only as a source of meat in Lapland but also as draft animals. The mill owners did some investigating of their own. They were very pleased with the results.