Qualla: Silver Centre: The Ghost Town That Rivaled Cobalt

Silver Centre: The Ghost Town That Rivaled Cobalt: Introduction

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1874, a lumberman named Pat Manion blazed a discovery mark on a tree stump in the forests of South Lorrain Township and carried a rock sample back to his bunkhouse. His fellow workers passed it around, agreed it was common lead, and forgot about it. A decade later, a young geologist told Manion the truth: the sample was nearly pure silver. Manion rushed back to the Ryan Timber Limit to find his original discovery post, but the forest had swallowed it whole. The story of Manion's lost silver mine became legend throughout the Gatineau-Ottawa region, a tale whispered in lumber camps and saloons for the next twenty years. When silver was finally struck near the railway bed at Long Lake in August 1903, triggering the great Cobalt silver rush, prospectors remembered Manion's story. The race was on to find what the lumberman had lost.

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Silver Centre: The Ghost Town That Rivaled Cobalt: Three Men and a Lost Mine

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Robert Jowsey had grown up hearing the legend of Manion's lost silver. In 1907, armed with a crude map obtained from another lumberman who had worked alongside Manion in the Ryan Timber Limit, Jowsey arrived in Haileybury and partnered with two seasoned prospectors: James Wood an...

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Silver Centre: The Ghost Town That Rivaled Cobalt: A Town That Kept Moving

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Silver Centre never stayed in one place. The Ontario government laid out the first town site on the shores of Lake Timiskaming at Sullivan's Landing, building a wharf and a tote road to the mines. A dozen businesses sprang up: a general store, a school, a hardware store, steamshi...

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Silver Centre: The Ghost Town That Rivaled Cobalt: The Roaring Twenties Underground

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The second boom arrived when geologist James MacItosh Bell's theory proved correct: the real silver lay deep within the rock. New ore reserves disclosed at the Keeley Mine in 1918 led to full operations by 1922. The Frontier Mine, purchased by the Mining Corporation of Canada for...

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Silver Centre: The Ghost Town That Rivaled Cobalt: Silence in the Shield

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The prosperity ended as quickly as it began. By 1928, ore reserves were thinning. The 1929 stock market crash drove silver prices to $0.38 an ounce, making mining nearly unprofitable. The Keeley shut down permanently in 1931. The Lorrain Trout Lake Mine followed the same year. Th...

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