Deep dive into silver mines

Mining Camp Tales of the Silvery Slocan: A History of British Columbia’s Silver Rush
by Peter Smith

Victoria: Heritage House Publishing, 2025
$34.95 / 9781772035391

Reviewed by Steven Brown

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The area of southeastern British Columbia known as the Slocan was little disturbed by white people of European heritage before 1890. For centuries it had been the locale of the Ktunaxa and Sinixt peoples but with the discovery of rich deposits of galena ore on the eastern slopes above Slocan Lake the isolation of the mountainous and heavily forested region came to an end. For those not in the know, Slocan Lake is west of Kootenay Lake and east of Upper Arrow Lake. The region is generally known as the West Kootenays.

What is galena ore? It’s the natural mineral form of lead and some types contain varying amounts of silver. The ore in the Slocan was appraised as having a very high silver content. Lead had its uses but silver was much more valuable. The discovery led to large influxes of people looking to strike it rich. Some did. Many didn’t. Almost overnight the rush was on. Clive Phillipps-Wolley, an English-born Victoria resident and big game hunter described as an old-school Anglophile, on his trip to the Slocan hunting for bear, dismissed the hoards of prospectors he encountered as, “behaving generally as a lot of demented and erratic rabbits.”  The Slocan came to be considered one of the prime silver mining sites in North America.

Mining and prospecting had been prominent in western North America for decades. The California gold rush had taken place back in 1849, the Fraser Canyon and Cariboo gold rushes in 1858, and Nevada’s silver rich Comstock Lode in 1859. Gold and silver were also discovered near Nelson in 1867. There were mines and prospectors nearby in Washington, Idaho, and Montana. The majority of newcomers to the Slocan were in fact American. This led to friction with Canadians just as it did between Canadians and British. Irish, Swedes, and Italians were fewer in number. Characteristic of the time, Chinese were given short shrift. The native population were little involved. Some worked as ore packers in the early days.

There were so many Americans there was talk of annexation. To some people it just made sense. Surprisingly, E.C. Carpenter, one of the loudest proponents of annexation was a Canadian. Americans had the money, the know-how, and the drive. The principal defender of sovereignty, E.E. Coy, was an American. He loved the Slocan and loved Canadians. In his opinion they were kinder than Americans and much more willing to lend a hand. He felt the law in Canada, on the British model, was “ten to one” better than it was in the States. Ironically, Coy was later the subject of a sensational trial where he was charged with indecent assault of another man’s wife. He was convicted and sentenced to a year of hard labour in the Kamloops prison.

In the Slocan, dozens of mining camps were established. Collections of a few shacks and tents were denoted as cities, some anointed with grandiose names like Eldorado and Bonanza. New Denver on the east shore of Slocan Lake was named after Denver, Colorado because surely before too long it would equal Denver in size and importance. In 1893, Kaslo on the western shore of Kootenay Lake had a population of nearly three thousand. There were twenty-nine saloons. Sandon was the booming-est of the boom towns. In its heyday, the population was as high as five thousand. Sandon’s modern day population hovers around twenty-five. New Denver’s is in the five hundred range. Kaslo’s is a little over a thousand. Wipe-out fires were the fate of many of these new towns. Every structure was made of wood and fire protection was minimal. Flooding was another hazard. Winter “snow slides” or avalanches in this rugged country were another.

A feature of the early rush was a pronounced gender imbalance. The massive inundation of humanity consisted almost entirely of men. They lived very rough and worked very hard. Camps and habitations were literally hacked from the wilderness. What women there were, at least initially, were not of the respectable variety. As townsites built up the civilizing influence of women and families began “trickling in.” The birth of babies was celebrated. The law arrived as did representatives from eastern Canada of the church. Newspapers were established. A subscription to the Slocan Prospector could be had for three dollars a year. It came out every Tuesday.

The coming of railways greatly facilitated the movement of ore from the mines. Horse and mule pack trains had been the initial method which had required the hard work of establishing trails and wagon roads. The advent of steam driven sternwheelers on the local lakes and waterways, built from local timber with boilers and other necessary equipment brought in from the east was also a boon to commerce.

The silver boom in the Slocan isn’t as well known as it should be because of its short duration. A major depression in the United States in 1893, and drop in the price of silver due to over-production in the west, as well as over-investment in railways, led to a financial panic. Banks failed and unemployment ballooned. The Silvery Slocan wasn’t immune to this upset. The Klondike gold rush at the end of the century drew off great numbers of men. Silver was fine but gold was the ultimate mania, as it had been for thousands of years. Profitable silver mines endured in the Slocan but many closed down, giving birth to ghost towns. Some mining continued for many years but the rush was long gone.

In great detail, and having undertaken a mountain of research, Peter Smith has written a definitive work. At more than 350 pages with bibliography and notes it may be the biggest book in terms of length venerable Heritage House Publishing has ever brought out.

There’s a bit of an anomaly on the acknowledgements page at the end of Mining Camp Tales of the Silvery Slocan, something unexpected unless the reader was already aware of it. This reader wasn’t until he got to this page. The author mentions his earlier book and this earlier book, by Peter J. Smith, the “J.” is dropped for the present work, has a similar title to this present one. Silver Rush: British Columbia’s Silvery Slocan, 1891-1900, published in 2020. It was reviewed in The British Columbia Review in 2022 (review number 1434). This book was described elsewhere as self-published. Ron Verzuh, in his review, mentions its massive size at over six hundred pages and also mentions the “sometimes dense text.” The book covers the same region in the same era as the present book.

This aroused curiosity. The 2022 review mentions several names of contemporary people also discussed in Mining Camp Tales. Some of the images used in the review taken from the book are the same images used in Mining Camp Tales. But these two books can’t be the same book, retitiled. Of course not. It behooved this reader to obtain a copy of Mr. Smith’s first book. It’s out of print but a copy was obtained thanks to the Vancouver Public Library.

Aside from the similarities, starting with both books covering the same subject, silver mining in the Slocan region of southeastern British Columbia in the last decade of the nineteenth century, how do these two titles differ? Well, the 2020 book is massive. It tips the scales at one point eight kilos or four pounds. It’s an inch and a half thick and measures eight-and-a-half inches wide by eleven inches tall. It’s the culmination of an absolutely massive amount of research. But as Ron Verzuh alluded to at the time, this work is a historical artifact. In spite of its great value, its bulk is a bit overwhelming and not likely to generate enthusiasm among a general readership. Heritage House has distilled down the giant book to a manageable level. That in itself was a sizeable undertaking. It’s rich British Columbia history.

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“Books have ruined my life,” jokes Steven Brown. A professional in the book trade for years he’s managed to retain a deep and abiding passion for good books and first rate literature. He was born in Saskatchewan and grew up in Ontario and British Columbia. Vancouver is home these days. His reviews have appeared in Canadian newspapers, a literary review or two and he has donated reviews to good causes. [Editor’s note: Steven has reviewed books by Jonathan Swainger, Bruce McLellan, Gail Anderson-Dargatz, Patrik Sampler, Taslim Burkowicz, and Rhonda Waterfall for The British Columbia Review.]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

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