Description
Book SynopsisOn 16 May 1930, Gilbert LaBine discovered pitchblende near the shores of Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories. This is the story of Eldorado and the mine whose discovery marked the beginning of Canada's uranium industry.
Robert Bothwell tells how Gilbert and Charlie LaBine, veteran Canadian prospectors, promoted and developed Eldorado Gold Mins Limited to produce radium. Thought to be the miracle cure for cancer, the rare mineral had a market price at the time of $75,000 per gram. Riches seemed a certainty and the company established a radium refinery at Port Hope, Ontario, in 1933.
But manipulation of the market, the physical challenge of taking men and supplies into Port Radium, NWT, and the difficulties in extracting radium from ore at Port Hope prevented them from realizing that imagined wealth. Along the way, the LaBine brothers had become entangled with international radium interests in Belgium, and at a crucial moment the Belgian cut the price to $25,000
