Mining 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 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 […]

Prospecting in the Rouyn Township

Interviewer: Mr. Hambry arrived in Rouyn in 1923. He said that there was close to 100 prospectors on the site. Even today at the age of 75 he […]

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 […]

First Campsite of the Horne Mine

This camp was located close to the future location of Noranda city up until it was destroyed in 1930. It consisted of two dorms—one for miners and another […]

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 […]

Several Police Officers Near the Fences of the Horne Mine

A contingent of police officers assembled to control the strike of June 1934. Sergeant Turnbull, the Provincial Police Chief, hurriedly returned from his trip to Québec City to […]

A Crowd Gathered Outside the Horne Mine Entrance

On June 12, 1934, at the beginning of the strike, several hundred strikers and sympathizers joined in a picket line in front of the Horne mine gates. They […]