When the silver rush erupted in the boreal forest of northern Ontario, there was no holding back. Every scrap of land was gouged and trenched and blasted in the pursuit of silver. One of the most notorious forms of prospecting and mining was hydraulic mining, blasting the surface - the soil, grasses and native plants, trees - with high pressure water hoses to expose the rock below. Some lakes, like Kerr Lake mentioned in the excerpt below, suffered from this kind of mining, as well as draining, just in case those rich silver veins were snaking along the lake bottom. In 1908, Kerr Lake was dropped by eight feet.
Excerpt
“Shitty stopped listening to Coffin’s cussing, of the bear, the road, the horses. He was too busy counting the number of men they were passing, men heading back towards town. Must be least a dozen or so, some were riding, others hauling wagons, some even walking, but all loaded down with supplies, keeping to a crisp pace, not slowing to make time for any gossip. Shitty, wanting to know where everyone was going, yelled over to a prospector he recognized, “Hey Mac, packing ‘er in?”
Mac slowed, but didn’t stop. “Veins pinched out, we’re headed north up to the Porcupine, heard there’s gold, lots of it.”
“But that slab of silver!” Shitty said, ‘You were working ground close to it!”
Mac shook his head, “Another body out by Kerr Lake. Just ain’t worth it.”
“Another body?” Shitty asked, “A drowning?”
“No, this fella wasn’t drowned, he was torn apart.”
“You seen it for yourself?” asked Coffin, combative.
“No, Fred Levers and John Shannon heard it from the young Clem fella that’d been working ground out by Moberly. Said two fellas came across the body on the other side of the lake.”
“Rumours, nothing but fucking clothesline gossip,” spat Coffin.
“Not sure what you know of this country, Coffin,” Mac said, stopping and turning around to face him, “and if you want to think they’re rumours, go right ahead. But I know there’s something bad out there, liked the land itself has been woken up and is angry. And I’ve heard that thing, whatever it is, heard it screaming, and I’ve heard it thrashing through the woods at night. It’s enough to make a man rethink everything. Hell, I might even head back down south, give up this prospecting business altogether, go back to teaching.”
-from Chapter Forty-Two, The Haunting of Modesto O’Brien
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