Economic History Archives | The birth of Rouyn and Noranda: a mining story

Interview with former Horne smelter foreman Rodolphe Cloutier.

Rodolphe Cloutier: “To heat ores, the smelter previously used coal and oil. They stopped doing that when gas arrived here in town. The smelter then started to be gas-fired. […]

The Itinerary Followed by Edmund Horne to Get to the Rouyn Township

There are 180 kilometres separating Angliers village from Rouyn township. Edmund Horne made the trip by boat on several occasions and with several assistants between 1911 and 1922.

The Wright Mine at the End of the Nineteenth Century

After Mr. Edward Wright sold his deposit to New York’s Mattawa Mining and Smelting in 1889, numerous buildings were built in the vicinity of the Wright mine such as […]

A Wright Mine Headframe

This headframe sat on a 60-foot-deep mine shaft, for which the drilling started at the end of 1880. It was finally destroyed in the winter months between 1977 […]

A Wright Mine Building

It took until the summer of 1889 for a road connecting the Wright mine to the Duhamel and Guigues townships to be built.

Prospectors Setting up Camp

Given that the work of prospectors was most often done far away from any other settlement, they often had to live in the wild for many weeks on […]

Equipment Used by Prospectors

Given that prospectors must live far away from areas of settlement for weeks on out, they needed a lot of material. But because of the remoteness and the […]

A Painting Based on the Legendary Picture of Edmund Horne

This painting demonstrates how the famous prospector still lives in Rouyn-Norandians’ collective memory. The sister-cities named the mine and the smelter after Edmund Horne, as well as an […]

Prospector Edmund Henry Horne

In 1996, Edmund Horne was inducted into the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame.

Key Administrators and Investors of the Noranda Company

In December 1931, the key administrators of Noranda Mines Limited gathered for the 10th anniversary of the Chadbourne-Thomson Syndicate which gave birth to the company. They pose in front […]

The Albert Hotel

Located on Principale Street in Rouyn, Albert Hotel was administered by Albert Coutu and his wife Elisa for a long time. On November 11, 1938, a fire broke […]

A Sauna in Rouyn, 1926

In the middle of the 1920s, people from Nordic countries (Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland) arrived in the Rouyn township. Many worked in mines, but some them owned […]