History of Copper Mining in Northern Ontario
- Sylvia Kay Rose
- Aug 7
- 6 min read
Updated: Aug 20
Copper mining is historically important to the economy of North Ontario, especially in the Sudbury to Lake Superior region. Copper was the first of the precious metals to gain attention, with nickel at first considered an unwanted corruption.
Copper Mining in Northern Ontario
Copper is first mined in Ontario nearly 5,000 years ago by Indigenous people. They use native copper from areas like the eastern shore of Lake Superior for tools and ornaments.
In 1845, outcrops of copper ore are shown to John Keating in the area east of Sault Ste. Marie by the Ojibwa people, who have long used the surface copper deposits. The first copper mine in Canada, Bruce Mines, opens there in 1846.
Significant copper discovery in Northern Ontario is linked to construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). As the railway pushes west through rugged terrain in the early 1880s, blasting through rock is a daily task.
In 1883 in the Sudbury Basin, near the site of what would become the Murray Mine and later Copper Cliff, railway workers notice dark-colored stones resistant to breaking. Rich in nickel and copper sulfides, the rocks are first thought to be just copper.
One of the first mines here, directly exploiting these new finds, is the Lochiel Mine near Copper Cliff in late 1886. This marks the true beginning of commercial copper (and later nickel) extraction in the region.
Copper veins are both abundant and accessible, making this a prime area for mining startup operations. The original discovery at Copper Cliff leads to establishment of the Copper Cliff Smelter, built in 1888. Operating for over a century, it's one of the largest copper smelters in North America.
Copper Locations in North Ontario
The epicenter of copper mining in Northern Ontario is the Sudbury Basin. A massive geological structure, this is an ancient meteorite impact crater 1.8 billion years old.
It creates the perfect conditions for the concentration of valuable minerals. The Basin is a geological anomaly, roughly 60 km long, 30 km wide, and 15 km deep. It contains some of the largest nickel-copper ore bodies on Earth.
Most historical and ongoing copper production comes directly from the Sudbury Igneous Complex in the Sudbury Basin. The Sudbury Basin contains nearly 40% of the world’s known copper reserves.
Here, copper occurs in close association with nickel, iron, and other sulfide minerals within massive to disseminated ore bodies. Other prominent copper sites include the Cobalt area, about 500 km north of Toronto.
These locations continue to draw attention from miners and geologists. Smaller, less economically viable copper deposits exist elsewhere in Northern Ontario. These include the Thunder Bay district and Elliot Lake.
Early Miners & Working Conditions
The early copper miners of Northern Ontario are diverse and resilient. As mining operations ramp up in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, copper brings workers from across Canada and around the world.
Indigenous people, immigrants from Sweden, Finland, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, Italy, Great Britain and other parts of Europe, and China, as well as worldwide fortune seekers, make up the main mining workforce. Often young men, they're willing to work hard for economic opportunity and a better life.
Working conditions are harsh and dangerous. Mines are largely unregulated, and safety standards were rudimentary at best.
Physical Hardship: Miners worked long hours, often 10-12 hours a day, six or seven days a week, for low wages. The work was physically brutal, involving heavy lifting, swinging picks and shovels, and pushing ore carts.
Dangerous Environments: They labor in dark, damp and poorly ventilated underground tunnels, constantly facing the threat of rockfalls, cave-ins and gas explosions. Explosives, initially black powder, later dynamite, are handled under hazardous conditions.
Health Hazards: Dust is ubiquitous. Inhaling silica dust causes widespread silicosis or miner's lung, a debilitating and often fatal respiratory disease. Other hazards include exposure to toxic gas, extreme temperatures and poor sanitation.
Company Towns: Many miners live in "company towns". Copper Cliff for instance grows around the Canadian Copper Company. Housing, stores and services are owned and operated by mining companies.
While providing a basic infrastructure, this also concentrates power in the hands of the employers and in some settings miners could become slaves, existing merely to pay the rent and buy groceries.
Strikes and Struggles: Despite dangers of company retribution, miners often organize to demand better wages, safer conditions and shorter hours. Strikes and labor disputes occur throughout the early 20th century.
For example, during the late 1800s, miners work ten to twelve hours a day on average earning a wage of about $2 per day. Accidents are common, with cave-ins and machinery malfunctions leading to injuries. Miners brave the dangers for the allure of copper wealth.
Historical Processes of Copper Mining
Prospecting and Initial Extraction: Surface exposures or shallow diggings lead to the first discoveries. When an ore body is identified, miners might use pickaxes, shovels, and hand-drills to create rudimentary shafts, or vertical tunnels, and adits, or horizontal tunnels.
Drilling and Blasting: This is the primary method for breaking rock. Miners drill holes into the rock face using hand-held drills, later evolving to steam-powered, then compressed-air drills. Explosives are packed into holes to detonate and break up ore.
Mucking and Hauling: The broken ore ("muck") is then manually loaded using shovels onto ore cars. The ore cars are initially pushed by hand, later by horses, then by steam locomotives by the early 19th century, transporting cargo to the main shaft. These are the first trains, soon developed for public travel, changing the world forever. With steam power, miners dig deeper and more efficiently, increasing the yield.
Hoisting: From the underground workings, the ore is hoisted to the surface in large buckets or containers called skips, hauled up by steam-powered winches.
Crushing and Sorting: On the surface, the raw ore undergoes rudimentary crushing to reduce its size. Early sorting is often done by hand, separating higher-grade ore from waste rock.
Smelting: Copper is extracted from ore. Early smelting methods cause stifling pollution. In the "roast beds" of Sudbury workers pile up ore and set it alight, so the sulfur will burn off.
This releases vast quantities of sulfur dioxide, used to make sulfuric acid, and heavy metals directly into the atmosphere, creating the infamous "moonscape" around Sudbury, devastating local vegetation. Later, more controlled blast furnaces and reverberatory furnaces are used. While Sudbury today is a success story of greening the land, environmental impacts were severe for many decades.
Further advancements in the early 20th century introduce the flotation process, for better separation of copper from other minerals. In flotation the desired mineral is made hydrophobic, repelling water, so it attaches to air bubbles and floats to the surface.
Non-valuable minerals stay in the water. Modern flotation techniques have recovery rates of over 90%, a large improvement over historical practices.
Facts About the History of Copper Mining
The "Nickel Problem": When the Sudbury deposits are first mined, focus is on copper. Nickel is initially seen as a contaminant, making the refining process difficult. It takes years, and the development of new metallurgical processes (like the Orford Process), before nickel is recognized as valuable.
The word Nickel comes from the German "Little Nick" referring to a mine Kobold, specifically a malevolent spirit. The word cobalt also derives from Kobold. In early years the corruption of copper by the then-junk metal nickel is thought to be the work of such a spirit.
Company Growth: The earliest major player, the Canadian Copper Company, formed in 1886, later merges to form the International Nickel Company of Canada, Limited (Inco) in 1902. It eventually becomes Vale Limited, one of the world's largest mining companies.
Strategic Importance: During both World Wars, the nickel and copper from Sudbury were of immense strategic importance to the Allied war effort, used in armaments, alloys, and machinery.
Environmental Concerns: Pollution and land degradation have sparked discussions on sustainable practices to protect the natural environment of Northern Ontario.
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