Did you hear 'bout the new king of the klondike...he's from Timmins!

Well, I suppose it’s official now. There’s a nice plaque from Heritage Canada installed outside the Timmins Museum that is part of the new display of bronze statues installed there this past week. The plaque says the gold rush here in Timmins became the largest gold rush in Canadian history …  Just so our good Klondike friends in the Yukon know about that.  It was a nice ceremony to mark the 100^th anniversary of Timmins. The bronzes are of Jack Wilson who found the Dome Mine, Benny Hollinger who found the Hollinger Mine and Sandy McIntyre who found the McIntyre Mine… those became The Big Three Gold Mines. The Dome never stopped operating. The Hollinger should begin mining again this year and I know that they’re looking hard at the McIntyre … there’s a fabulous gold zone on the 11-hundred level that’s looking very lucrative.
It's not easy to explain the excitement over gold ... unless you live in a gold town. I talk to a lot of people who live and work here and have businesses, and they all agree, Thank Goodness for gold. No matter what else goes on in the rest of the world, as long as the price of gold holds on, everyone here seems happy.
The mines just keep plugging away and we all know the day will come when the mines will close ... well that has already happened a few times, but they keep finding MORE gold. Everywhere you go within a 100 mile radius of Timmins, gold, gold, gold. There are mines in Kirkland Lake, Matachewan, Gowganda, Matheson, ... and any day now, the new Detour Mine near Cochrane is set to become the largest gold mine in Canada. I know people like gold for jewellery but I am kind of glad that more gold in being used now in industrial applications.
So its nice to honour the pioneering prospectors. But don't forget we still have prospectors living here in Timmins who have become multi-millionaires. They're getting on in years, but they still run prospecting companies. So that's a good thing.


By the way, the're still finding gold in The Klondike. Oh yes. It was just a few years ago that a fellow named Shawn Ryan arrived in The Klondike. After checking out the creeks where gold was discovered back in 1898, he was told that all the creeks had been mined out. Folks said there was no more good gold to be found there.



Well, here's the thing, Ryan is a Timmins boy and he cut his teeth on a prospecting crew with his Dad who worked for Kidd Exploration in Timmins. I met him in May, here in Timmins. Ryan said he took one look at the mountain above all the creeks and said he knew that's where he'd be staking his claims. Sure enough, there's a new gold rush on in the Yukon, and they're finding more new gold.
Shawn Ryan, a Timmins fellow, has been officially dubbed as the new "King of the Klondike"!