Mica Jorgenson, The Weight of Gold: Mining and the Environment in Ontario, Canada, 1909-1929. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2023. 268 pgs. ISBN 9781647791049.
Reviewed by Michel S. Beaulieu
The Weight of Gold: Mining and the Environment in Ontario, Canada, 1909-1929 is heavily rooted in author Mica Jorgenson’s personal history. As Jorgenson comments in the preface, during a search to “understand how the past had unfolded to the present, I realized time could not be laid out in an orderly line that started with a nugget in a prospector’s palm and ended with a toxic tailings pile” (ix). Influenced in part by Jorgenson’s own lived experience and reflection on living in the mining town of Wells, British Columbia, the book’s examination of gold mining in Porcupine, Ontario, provides a surrogate in the author’s desire to “peel back the layers of history that had settled on my hometown as heavy and thick as ice-age sediment” (ix).
Rooting this study in personal experience offers a vivid, humanized perspective that makes the experiences of those who lived in Porcupine seem immediate and emotionally resonant. When paired with a search to understand how the past unfolded into the present, it reveals deeper connections between individual lives and broader historical forces.While The Weight of Gold is ostensibly a detailed study of gold mining in Porcupine, it is also something more. It is about navigating versions (or assumptions) of the past (be it corporate, historical, lived, etc.) that have become dogma both within resource-dependent communities and in terms of how those not living in the region view them. It is a study that in every respect is connected to the present in meaningful and often personal ways. It is an international and cautionary story, establishing and connecting what for many Canadians is a small community they have never heard of to larger global patterns of mining exploitation and their histories.
While The Weight of Gold does retread well-known ground by historians of mining and other areas of resource development, Jorgenson’s analysis successfully questions “grand historical theories” and argues that the story of Porcupine is at the crux of “a wider industrial transition in mining in the early twentieth century” (6) and that its history “was not a passive one-way flow” (7). Jorgenson demonstrates this through two main arguments: 1) “northern Ontario participated in an international exchange of extractive knowledge, technology, and culture between 1909 and 1920” (9); and 2) “that environmental crisis and their solutions show how Canadian mining’s continued profitability depended on the ability of mining companies to redistribute the burdens of mining onto the land and onto marginalized peoples” (9-10). However, while previous studies have generally been structured around political and economic narratives, each chapter of Jorgenson’s analysis revolves around environmental crises and how the industry navigated them.
Chapters One and Two establish that there was nothing “inevitable or prophetic” about the onset of the Porcupine region (16). Rather, both local and external forces – and not always what was originally intended – shaped the nature and characteristic of how the region evolved. Chapter One begins with the thoughts and actions of those who first led various Bureau of Mines expeditions in the Porcupine region during the early twentieth century. The similar conclusions reached by William Arthur Park, James McMillan, and George Kay, H.L. Kerr, that the “North would make good farmland,” (26) and their less-than-enthusiastic belief in the possibility for mineral exploitation in the region, would not begin to seriously change until 1903 with the discovery of a significant vein of silver by those building the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway. What is now known as the Cobalt silver rush would ultimately lead to the arrival of the mining industry to Porcupine in 1909. As Jorgenson writes, this event “marked a moment of human and environmental change at Porcupine related closely to existing mining regimes elsewhere in the world” (49).
The connection between the fire of 1911, outlined in Chapter Two, and the subsequent turn towards international connectivity is particularly interesting. Jorgenson begins the chapter by establishing the fire ecology of the area, concluding that “Insect kill, windfall, hot and dry weather, settlement, railway construction, and fire suppression combined to create perfect conditions for a destructive wildfire at Porcupine” (55). The fire’s impact on the lives of individuals and families was geographically and internationally dispersed and it profoundly influenced collective memory—a moment in the town’s history that continues to be both a cautionary tale and a demonstration of community resilience (78). The event also had a profound effect on how mining restarted and was structured as it set the stage for large-scale industrial extraction. As Jorgenson writes, “in the long run the fire did little to alter the trajectory of extraction toward large-scale, capital intensive forms, or the ‘rich man’s venture.’ It may have even expedited the process by clearing the land and by financially destroying small operations” (64). The consolidation and rise of big mines owned by companies that operated in a much more international scope would dramatically shape mining processes and strategies, and provide a level of resilience against environmental and human disasters (66-67).
Chapters Three and Four trace this history from shortly before the First World War through post-war consolidation and the side effects of the, at times, unchecked expansion that resource extraction had on the environment and people. While Jorgenson does discuss in Chapter Three the well-trodden territory of labour, the influence of the war, immigration, and the consolidation of industry (i.e. Dome, Hollinger, and McIntyre), these aspects are part of an analysis of the period that is centred around the burgeoning industry’s power source – specifically, water. As Jorgenson argues, “the industry’s new power source came at a social and economic price to Mattagami people who were inadequately compensated for serious losses to land and resources” (102). Similarly, Chapter Four establishes both how technological advances – often international in scope – influenced the nature and shape of the industry, and how these obscured and even contributed to the growing issue of waste and its environmental impact. “Canadian miners, managers, and officials,” Jorgenson argues, “found themselves at the center of new conversations about mining and environmental health – above and below ground” (124).
Chapter Five’s focus on silicosis builds on the previous chapters’ ominous establishment of the consequences of industrialization and provides a direct human connection. This chapter brings the analysis back to the individual, family, and community level. It traces the causes of, the responses to, the shifting blame for, and ultimately, the Canadian-based solution to this disease. Jorgenson establishes early in this chapter that concern over mine dust had existed for nearly thirty years, and as early as 1891 government and workers were pushing for better ventilation. However, although alarms were being raised in other parts of the world, “the idea that Canadians were immune from the problems of other global mining giants” (126) persisted until silicosis had become an endemic crisis because of the industry’s expansion. As a result, the country initially lagged behind in both research and treatment. While this would change with efforts to find treatment into the 1930s, the solution – “McIntyre Powder” (i.e., aluminum powder) – and the work of the McIntyre Foundation in the end merely continued to serve corporate interests that would ultimately be discredited. Importantly, the chapter concludes that the health effects surrounding both silicosis and the use of “McIntyre Powder” remain unresolved.
The Weight of Gold ends, perhaps not unexpectedly, by connecting the past to the present. Its conclusion and personal epilogue nicely establish why such a study and approach has relevance today. The focus on Porcupine once again is established as an important counterpoint to national- (and even international-) based history. It both reinforces the importance of local and regional studies as well as the role of “place-based history.” I found The Weight of Gold readable, scholarly rigorous, and relatable. It is a work that will have wide appeal to both academics and the general public, in particular those who are interested in the history of Ontario, resource development, environmental history, and mining.
Feature image: McIntyre Porcupine Mines, Porcupine Gold Camp [n.d.]. Licensed under Creative Commons via Wikimedia Commons.
Michel Beaulieu
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- Review of Jorgenson, The Weight of Gold - July 29, 2025