Fred La Rose the Pioneer Tells How it was Done

Originally published in The Globe 1908

“I go up the Montreal River: I go to find a gold mine. Bye-and-bye you will hear: ‘La Rose have found a gold mine; he has a lucky pick.’”

The Pullman special stood in the switch at Cobalt Station and a hatchet-faced New York broker was taking up a silver collection for the Salvation Army band playing on Cobalt Square. A darkey was slowly throwing empty bottles out of the end of the dining car and the crowd of New York brokers, journalists, and their guests were waiting for the dinner that would begin with oysters and run its may courses to ice cream and Havanas. The stout little man in a brown suit puffed at a fat cigar and looked on. It was not just this Cobalt he had seen from his blacksmith shop. There was a hole in the brown suit where a hot cigar ash had struck on its way to the ground; for good dinners and no steel to sharpen have developed for Fred La Rose a rotund figure. Beyond that he is quite unspoiled. The squat, broad figure and the muscular shoulders that made him one of the best drillers in McMartin’s gang would soon sweat into condition again, and as soon as his American hosts would allow him to go, he was off to his brother and his old mates in the French-Canadian quarter.

“There are two years,” he said, “since I was in Cobalt. Before then I had been in the camp all the time almost. Five years ago I was here first about this time. I was the blacksmith of the McMartin gang, grading the railroad. They say I knew nothing of mining; you say ‘no’ to that. Since I was was water boy in Buckingham mine I have worked at the rock; I am a good rock man. So when I came up to Cobalt I go out whenever I have spare time and prospect. I was sharpening steel and shoeing the horses and mending the skips when they broke. There was not much spare time. It was all bush, all bush then, and there is a fine house where my little shack was. One evening I found a ‘float’ a piece as big as my hand, very heavy and with little sharp points all over it. I say nothing but come back, and the next night a take a pick and look for the vein. The second evening I found it: you can see it on the side of the hill now. Then I go to the boss, Duncan McMartin, and I say, ‘Boss, I have a good thing: come with me.’ I say, ‘I give you good show. Pull a gun on me if I don’t.’ Then I show him the vein and we stake out two claims, one in his name the other in mine. We had a half share in each. I used to work away at the vein in my spare time.

“When I had a hole down I would put in a shot and the cobalt bloom and silver would fly. Then Professor Miller he came and said it was silver. I sold my half claims for $25,000. Henry Timmins, he hear of the find at Mattawa and he come to me one night in Hull and we make the deal. I came back to camp and work on the La Rose extension prospecting. Then I go back to Hull. I am not idle. I do the housework at Hull. My two sons they go to school, and my wife I help her. I go back to see that they build my new house all right; it cost me $5,000. Then I came back to prospec’ p the Montreal River.”

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