The Montreal River Site
By Ontario Power Generation
Late in the summer of 1971, two young archaeologists were walking along a newly formed beach near the construction site of the Lower Notch station. Suddenly one of them stopped. His trained eyes had spotted a number of fire-cracked rocks exposed when the level of the Montreal River was lowered during the building of the generating plant.
They realized they had tumbled upon an ancient campsite for they had uncovered the remains of an old trading post and Indian campsite. The site, called the Montreal River site, contained three distinctive stratifications each containing a different civilization. The upper layer called "historic" contained artifacts from a trading site dating to 1830. The second layer classified as "woodland component" contained such artifacts as pottery and arrowheads left by pottery bearing Indians between the years 200 and 500 A.D. The third layer called "archaic" contained such objects as scrapers made of rock and clippings from crude stone tools which were estimated to date back to between 2000 BC and 5000 BC.
Some of the first recorded history of the river involves the Company of the North, absorbed by the Hudson's Bay Company in 1821 which in 1679 built a trading post known as the House of the North, on an island between the mouths of the Montreal and Matabitchewan Rivers. In the early years of its existence the House of the North which suffered continual raids by the Iroquois Indians, was abandoned and reopened several times, and ownership of its trading licence changed hands regularly. Later in the 1880's after the House of the North was washed away by rushing waters of the river, farms were developed in the vicinity of the mouth of the river along its shores.
The Montreal River has played an important part in the lumber industry for close to 100 years by serving as a transportation medium for timber.
An outburst of mining activity in the Cobalt area in the early 1900's created a demand for power. By 1904, Cobalt was the scene of the wildest mining boom in Ontario's history. Every northbound train was crowded with fortune hunters, claim jumpers, promoters and adventurers.
Cobalt was named in 1904 by a Provincial Geologist, Dr. W.G. Miller. The word Cobalt is derived from the German Kabalt meaning goblin or demon of the mines. In English, it signified the greyish, brittle ore found in the region from which large and rich quantities of silver were refined.
In those days liquor could not be sold in a mining town, and some fortunes were made not from mining but from satisfying the thirsty. The Ontario government established its first northern provincial police detachment at Cobalt to maintain law and order.
Silver was stockpiled like cordwood at the Cobalt station, and when the OPP investigated their first highgrading case they recovered more silver than was reported stolen.
There were 104 mines operating or being developed by 1908, and in 1911 the camp shipped 893 246 kg (31,507,971 oz) of silver. The Cobalt area has produced more than 14 million kg (500 million oz) of silver in its life. From 1960 - 1970 alone, it averaged 141 750 kg (5 million oz) annually.
In the early days, the miners ripped the silver away from the surface and the surrounding area was slashed and scarred with massive rock cuts.
The town of Cobalt sprang up haphazardly. Houses were perched on rocky bluffs and the streets wound their way between them in glorious confusion. Many of the original flat-topped houses and false-fronted stores still stand, preserving the atmosphere of an early mining settlement.
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