Rumours keep flying around...

I caught up with Don and Brian at Bruce's last week. They were pretending to discuss their new books to be published later this year but about the REAL purpose of their meeting they said nothing. They just laughed when I asked them.

Montreal Gazette, 30 August 1978

Click image to enlarge. Third Canyon? 

There was simply no gold in Slumach’s real life story.

Following published in Maple Ridge News December 2nd, 2014. Click here.

“Lost Mine” found at the headwaters of Pitt River in 1933?

In the Annual Report of the Minister of Mines of BC for the year ending 31st December we read the following on page A-245. Click on the image to enlarge it.

Thanks Roger Kennedy who referred us to this.
There are no 1933 or 1934 newspaper articles about prospects in the Upper Pitt River and so we will never know who spread those rumours that seem to be believable enough to be mentioned in the Minister’s report. It could not have been Volcanic Brown. He died in 1930/1931. 

Southgate River: notes from the Glacier Museum

Still we don’t seem to know what was the fate of Jack Mould who in 2007 disappeared without a trace in the waters of the Southgate River.
Looking around for new information about him I came across an undated posting on Judith M. Williams’s Web site that I thought worth sharing. Click here for the link. 
Shown here is the picture of what was recognized by Mould as the tent-shaped rock and the end of Bute Inlet; one of the illustrations shown in the article.
Ms Williams is the author of Dynamite Stories (2003). I quoted from that book on the Slumach Web. Click here.

The Antonson Brothers now hunting for gold themselves!

The Antonson brothers returned from several days out in the wilds hunting for Slumach’s gold and are planning to go out again!  Click here to read the full report in The Province of October 10th.
The picture of the brothers above is from the same article in The Province. Another picture shown with the article is from the Widgeon Creek area at the south end of Pitt Lake. That suggests the brothers are focussing their search on the area where Slumach lived and that he would have known like the palm of his hand.  

Notes on the Golden Mountains

This was the house the Downies built 

Charles Miller mentions an Abraham Downie as the discoverer of the “Prosser” mine. 

In fact his name was not Abraham but William. He owned a quarter section of land near Rolley Lake. where he and his sons built a substantial house. After William died in 1896, 67 years of age, his family settled in the United States. The 1898 BC Directory shows sons William (Jr.), Daniel, and Hugh as loggers for the Ruskin Mill and their oldest brother John Downie as a carpenter. The 1899 Voters list shows William as a logger and Hugh as a “common labourer” for Ruskin Mills.
The Downie house was where "Mr Wilson" lived later and where Charlie Miller’s father built a chimney of rocks with pyrite crystals.