Gold gold gold

One day many years ago, I snapped a photo of an unusual event. Several of us were standing in a small room and the heat and the fire from the furnace got so bright and so unbearably hot, I had to shield my face and my eyes. The room was locked. A grim faced man with a loaded shotgun stood watching me. I was witnessing the pouring of several bars of pure gold at the McIntyre Mine. They poured three massive shiny ingots that day. I will never forget watching it. I am still looking for the photo… it was on a KODAK slide. When I find it, I will post it here. The reason I mention it is that Timmins is riding an economic high right now, with the price of gold breaking new records every day. Up until last Friday, the price record was previously set in January of 1980, back when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. It closed at US $850 an ounce then. On Friday it closed at $855. Just so you know, Timmins is the largest gold mining municipality in the world. The experts say gold could hit $900 an ounce by spring and $1,000 an ounce by the end of the year. It’s not all welcome news though. A local mining company has been drilling for more than a year right in the heart of town and they’ve identified a gold zone of approximately four million ounces!!! It could mean a new mine… right in the middle of the city. I just remembered that several years ago, when I was a hardrock miner, a fellow miner handed me a small chunk of pure gold one day. Back in those days, one didn’t want to get caught with a piece of gold … so I sent it to my Dad as a souvenir of Timmins. I wonder if it’s still somewhere in the house in Grand Mira?