Cobalt

Slightly embarrassing confession time -- I requested this from the library because the wait list for 'Cobalt Red' is so long, and only after I received it did I discover that it's about silver mining in the Northern Ontario town of Cobalt. Still, glad I did so -- so much great history here, examining how the utilization of the mineral reserves was based on the exploitation of the local Indigenous people, the mineworkers (many of whom were very recent European immigrants), and the environment.

The late nineteenth century was marked by brutal industrial development everywhere, but it feels as if it was even more naked in this 'frontier' town where the mining companies could just decide to excavate the main street or even within peoples' houses, and the mineworkers had to borrow to pay their way up north and could be hunted down if they tried to leave before their debts were repaid.

The book also deals with the way the wealth generated in this northern town was rapidly funneled south to Toronto, building that town up to be the financial capital it now is. Particularly ironic that the nearby town of Temagami and its surrounding lakes were sold to the rich Torontonians as a location for 'rugged outdoorsy' activities such as canoeing, while only 40km away lakes were being drained for mining and others were polluted with arsenic and cyanide.

The silver was mostly mined-out by the end of the First World War, and the book then jumps to the present in the concluding three chapters, covering how mining in Canada still receives extraordinary tax breaks that are largely kept secret, how Canadian mining companies have exported their exploitative practices elsewhere in the world, and how the town looks set to experience another round of mining as there are local cobalt deposits that might be useful for batteries.