Great Bear Lake, NWT, Canada

Port Radium is the regional name for a mining area on the eastern shore of Great Bear Lake, Northwest Territories, Canada. It included the settlement of Cameron Bay and the Eldorado Mine and Echo Bay Mine. The name Port Radium did not come into use until 1936 and at the time it was in reference to the region as a whole. The Eldorado mine site at LaBine Point adopted the name for its settlement in the 1940s and it has generally stuck. The official name of the settlement itself, however, is now Echo Bay. Great Bear Lake, NWT, Canada Mackenzie River drainage basin showing Great Bear Lakes position in the Western Canadian Arctic Great Bear Lake (Slavey: Sahtu, French: Grand lac de lOurs) is the largest lake in the Northwest Territories of Canada, the fourth largest in North America, and the eight... Motto: None Official languages Dene Suline, Cree, Dogrib, English, French, Gwichʼin, Inuktitut, Slavey Flower Mountain avens Capital Yellowknife Largest city Yellowknife Commissioner Tony Whitford Premier Joe Handley (Consensus government - no party affiliations) Parliamentary representation  - House seat  - Senate seats 1 1 Area Total  - Land  - Water    (% of total)  Ranked 3rd 1... Location Eldorado Mine is located at Port Radium, Northwest Territories, Canada. ...

Location

Port Radium is situated at 66°5′N 118°2′W on the shores of Great Bear Lake, the largest freshwater lake within the boundaries of Canada.

Climate

Port Radium is located near the Arctic Circle, which means that in December the sun almost does not rise and in June it does not set for 24 hours. The average temperature is –7.1°C, the prevailing wind direction is southeast. A sign along the Dalton Highway marking the location of the Arctic Circle The Arctic Circle is one of the five major circles of latitude that mark maps of the Earth. ...

Between 1950 and 1974, this climatic data was collected at Port Radium: Great Bear Lake, NWT, Canada Port Radium (sometimes called Fort Radium), established in 1933 and abandoned in the 1960s , on the eastern shore of Great Bear Lake, Northwest Territories, was the site of the Eldorado Uranium mine. ...

A degree Celsius (°C) is a unit of temperature named after the Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius (1701-1744), who first proposed a similar system in 1742. ... A millimetre (American spelling: millimeter, symbol mm) is an SI unit of length that is equal to one thousandth of a metre. ...

History

During a field trip along the east arm of Great Bear Lake in August 1900, James McIntosh Bell of the Geological Survey of Canada noted evidences of iron, copper, uranium and cobalt in the vicinity of Echo Bay. 30 years later, on May 16, 1930, prospector Gilbert LaBine discovered high-grade pitchblende and silver at this site. His company was Eldorado Mining and Refining Limited, then known as Eldorado Gold Mines Limited. Radium ores were highly valued at the time because the price of radium salts, used in cancer treatment and then monopolized by Belgium, was US$70,000 per gram. 1900 (MCM) was an exceptional common year starting on Monday. ... The Geological Survey of Canada or GSC is part of the Earth Sciences Sector of Natural Resources Canada. ... General Name, Symbol, Number iron, Fe, 26 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 8, 4, d Appearance lustrous metallic with a grayish tinge Atomic mass 55. ... General Name, Symbol, Number copper, Cu, 29 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 11, 4, d Appearance metallic brown Atomic mass 63. ... General Name, Symbol, Number uranium, U, 92 Chemical series actinides Group, Period, Block n/a, 7, f Appearance silvery gray metallic; corrodes to a spalling black oxide coat in air Atomic mass 238. ... General Name, Symbol, Number cobalt, Co, 27 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 9, 4, d Appearance metallic with gray tinge Atomic mass 58. ... May 16 is the 136th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (137th in leap years). ... 1930 (MCMXXX) is a common year starting on Wednesday. ... Uraninite is a uranium-rich mineral with a composition that is largely UO2 (uranium oxide), but which also contains UO3 and oxides of lead, thorium, and rare earths. ... General Name, Symbol, Number silver, Ag, 47 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 11, 5, d Appearance lustrous white metal Atomic mass 107. ... The Eldorado Mining and Refining Limited company was originally organized in 1927 as Eldorado Gold Mines Limited to develop a gold mine in Manitoba. ...

Several settlements popped up in the 1930s in this area. Eldorado Mine became the first producing venture and it had its own private camp for its employees. There were also operations at the Elbonanza silver property, at White Eagle on the Camsell River, and at Contact Lake. In 1932 prospectors and businesses settled down in a protective cove off Echo Bay, known as Cameron Bay. By 1933 the Canadian Government had surveyed a townsite. At its peak the Cameron Bay settlement had 100 permanent residents, and the Port Radium area as a whole probably boasted 200+ residents. But by 1934 all the important deposits had been staked and activity died down. The Eldorado Mine at LaBine Point entered production in 1933 and the Contact Lake silver mine followed in 1936. At Cameron Bay, the government established a post office, a government office, and a wireless radio station. There was also an RCMP post and a Hudson's Bay Company post. In 1936, the government facilities were re-christened Port Radium to glorify the nature of the nearby mining operations. 1932 (MCMXXXII) was a leap year starting on Friday (the link will take you to a full 1932 calendar). ... The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP or Mounties; French, Gendarmerie royale du Canada, GRC) is both the federal police force and the national police of Canada. ... The Hudsons Bay Company (HBC. TSX: HBC) is the oldest commercial corporation in North America and is one of the oldest in the world. ...

With the closure of the Eldorado Mine in June 1940 and the general lack of activity, the government closed up the offices at Cameron Bay and except for a few native families which now occupied the abandoned buildings, Port Radium was empty. When the Eldorado Mine reopened in 1942 to supply uranium ores for the war effort, the mine settlement adopted the name of 'Port Radium'. Cameron Bay remained abandoned, but later in the 1960s Branson's Lodge would build a fishing lodge on the site. 1940 (MCMXL) was a leap year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1940 calendar). ...

Therefore, Port Radium, a name brought to use in 1936 to apply basically to the entire region, was now being used to name the Eldorado Mine site, which was the only operation in the area after 1942. Echo Bay, as we can now call it, was occupied from 1942-1960 when the Eldorado Mine was a uranium producer, then again between 1964 and 1982 when Echo Bay Mines Limited produced silver from the so-named Echo Bay Mine, and the Eldorado Mine. When the mine finally closed in 1982, all the old buildings were burned down, and only an old log cabin remains today.

An early case in the Aboriginal rights movement involved the Eldorado Mine's alleged discrimination against Indian and Inuit workers, such as giving them the last priority when establishing safety services. The Native Sisterhood made it a national political issue in Canada, and sparked the more famous native-rights activism in Alaska during the 1940s. The case faded in Port Radium itself after the closing of the Eldorado Mine, however, and did not return to the forefront until the 1980s, when some former mine workers developed health problems that were said to have been due to radium toxicity, a result of their failure to receive radioactivity protection coats containing lead. The government finally settled the case by providing treatment for the patients, and working with mine policy to ensure that similar injustices were not happening at the present and would not be allowed to happen in the future.