CHARLES L. LABINE

CHARLES L. LABINE has been described in the newspapers of Canada as “a tough old sourdough”, a rugged individualist, one of the few remaining graduates of the hard knocks school of mining.

Although he has lived for more than 30 years in the shadow of a more nationally known younger brother, Charles in his way has been as important a contributor as Gilbert to the success of the Eldorado and Gunnar mines, for which the name LaBine is famous.

While Gilbert LaBine was the discoverer and the man to whom the world gave most of the credit, Charles was an all-important figure behind the scenes, the financial brain, the “money man”. Without his skill and persistence in tracking down funds for their development, Eldorado and Gunnar might not have become the financial successes that they did.

From the time they were teenage boys who left the family home together to seek their fortune, Charles and Gilbert were comrades. They shared discomforts, hardships, insecurity, and eventual prosperity. They were business associates in bad times and in good.

Charles LaBine was born in 1888, two years before Gilbert, at Westmeath, a small community in the Ottawa Valley near Pembroke. The LaBine boys grew up on a farm on which their father had settled. Their father died when still a young man, and Mrs. LaBine was left with the task of rearing a large family.

It may been been economics, the problem of helping to feed, clothe and shelter the LaBine family, that induced the boys to leave school at the same time, when Charles was 17 and Gilbert 15.

Where husky, ambitious lads might best find a future for themselves, even though they had not completed their schooling, was not difficult to decide at that time. It was the year 1905 and Northern Ontario, not too many miles north of Westmeath, was ablaze with excitement. The boys set out for the Cobalt silver camp, the locale of a silver “rush” along the right-of-way of the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway, then under construction to open up the still little-known country above North Bay.

The LaBines found themselves jobs in the Cobalt silver mines. The work was hard, and they did not strike it rich. They decided to go further afield, to try prospecting for themselves rather than working for someone else, who would reap the greatest rewards. The met Benny Hollinger, who had staked claims in the Porcupine district, in the vicinity of the present city of Timmins. They worked and acquired a modest stake that enabled them to continue their prospecting.

In the course of their travels, the LaBines discovered gold in Manitoba and opened there a mine which they called Eldorado. Said Charles:

“When Eldorado was incorporated in 1926, I was the first president and looked after the financing of the company’s operations, which, incidentally, did not meet with very much success.

At a couple of stormy meetings of the shareholders, an attempt was made to pass an investment bylaw which would give us the authority to use what money was left over for further exploration work. Some of the shareholders were up in arms at this suggestion and wanted to discontinue the company and distribute the finances among the shareholders.

Jack Greenburg, who was a young Toronto lawyer and the registered owner of No. 1 certificate of the company’s stock, moved that the bylaw be passed to permit the company to look for a mine. A vote was taken and two-thirds of the shares were voted in favor of the bylaw. That authorization resulted in the discovery by my brother Gilbert of the Eldorado at Great Bear Lake.”

The famous discovery was made on the shore of Echo Bay, an indentation of the lake in the Northwest Territories, 1,450 miles from the nearest railway. There Gilbert almost literally stumbled upon a rich deposit of pitchblende, another name for uranium ore, which at that time - the spring of 1930 - was used only as the raw material for the production of radium.

“Fortunately the deposit was a rich one, “ Charles said, “but it had to be, because Echo Bay was so remote and so far from a railway. It was also fortunate that the find was made when radium was in great demand for the treatment of cancer. Another factor that cannot be overlooked and which made the find so important was that the ore was free from thorium, because radium is sold on its purity.”

Although Charles was not with Gilbert when the pitchblende was found, it was his job to follow up and consolidate the opportunities that were awaiting them on the rocky banks of Great Bear Lake. But to get the ore from its hiding place within a few miles of the Arctic Circle was a problem in logistics.

“Our big problem was transportation,” Charles explained. “I had had experience with canoes, so Leo Seaberg, Shirley Cragg and I decided to take the supplies the 1,450 miles from the railhead to Great Bear Lake by canoe.”

The route they had to follow took them along the Athabaska, Slave and Mackenzie rivers, then from Fort Norman along the Great Slave river to the lake.

“We were fortunate on the trip,” Charles said. “We had some near spills, where we could easily have lost our lives as well as our supplies. It took us five hours to navigate the Bear River Rapids, with a 10-horsepower heavy duty motor on our boat, which was only half-loaded, and there was a 60-foot drop in five miles. But we made it.”

The next problem was that of production at the mine and refining the ore. The LaBines built a refinery at Port Hope, on Lake Ontario, 70 miles east of Toronto. But they had to find an experienced man to manage it.

“I had a streak of good fortune when I met a Welshman named Lillicott,” Charles LaBine said. “He put me in touch with Marcel Pochon, who was the oldest living producer of radium. He had trained under the Curies and had built a refinery in Wales for the production of radium. This refinery had shut down when the supply of ore was exhausted. Eldorado had the ore and was now able to obtain the services of a highly trained and experienced man to produce the radium.”

In order to finance the development, the LaBines mined the silver that lay in the same area of Great Bear Lake. Having had experience in selective mining and high-grading ore, Charles LaBine was able to produce 40,000 ounces of silver at 29 cents an ounce for the first shipment to Consolidated Mining and Smelting at Trail, B.C. It required 27 cases of powder, each of 50 pounds, to produce half a million dollars worth of ore, which the workers carried down a 115-foot hill on their backs.

“But that was the end of selective mining, as a plant was on the way,” Charles said. “My 25 years of experience in prospecting and selective mining surely paid off. With the plant installed, and Emil Walli in charge as mine manager, production went forward in a big way. All this was possible with the help we got from a wonderful lot of men. I will always remember how Bill Jewett of Consolidated Mining and Smelting took his transit and gave the level 28 feet above Great Bear Lake and pointed the entrance to the tunnel that was to cut No. 2 vein, 1200 section, 480 feet north, 80 feet below the hill.”

Although the LaBines were satisfied they had a find of great importance, the news was received in mining offices back east with a certain amount of caution. After visiting Charles and Gilbert at Echo Bay, Cyril W. Knight, the head of a prospecting company, wrote in the fall of 1930:

“The discovery brings to light a new pitchblende occurrence and a possible source of the valuable element radium. At the time of my visit to the property, no work at all had been done; and, therefore, an expression of opinion at this time as to the economic possibility of the occurrence would be unwise.”

In an editorial in its issue of October 10, 1930, the Canadian Mining Journal indicated what Charles was up against:

“The men, or companies, who invest capital in such undertakings are running a risk, and the men who carry out the work are risking life and limb, and it is a peculiar commentary upon human nature that it is easier to find men who will risk their lives than it is to find men who will risk their money in constructive effort.”

But Charles overcame the problem of financing and Eldorado came into being as a productive company.

The contribution that Charles and Gilbert LaBine made to the advancement of medical science was recognized at home and abroad. The brothers received the Curie medal from the governing body of the International Union Against Cancer, the headquarters of which was in Paris.

The citation accompanying the medal to Charles LaBine said that the Pierre and Marie Curie medal, which had been struck in 1938 on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the discovery of radium, was conferred upon him “for the distinguished services that you have rendered to science and to humanity.”

Charles has always treasured his memories of the thrilling adventure on Great Bear Lake, even though his participation followed that of Gilbert. In his Toronto home there hangs a permanent reminder of those great days of 1930, a painting of Echo Bay by Franz Johnston.

Gunnar was another successful Labine enterprise - the first Canadian mine to deliver uranium to the refinery at a profit to its shareholders. In less than 10 years, Gunnar paid off its $19 million of bonded debt, paid out some $215 million in dividends, and accumulated $32 million in liquid reserves.

Gilbert was president and Charles the vice-president of Gunnar. Charles retired from the management in 1955, but continued as a director. Gilbert remained as president until 1962, when he resigned because of ill-health.

Although he was 75 in 1963, Charles LaBine is still a strong, vigorous man, proud of his rugged physique, which would be the envy of young men years younger. He built energy and endurance through years of hard physical effort. In his youth, he thought nothing of spending nights in a lean-to, beside a campfire, in temperatures from 40 to 50 degrees below zero. He could live off the land when he had to, getting a meal when he wanted one with a fish hook or a 30/30 rifle.

As he looks back over the years, Charles LaBine sees in retrospect the great pageant of Canadian mining, from the days of the frenzied Cobalt silver rush, through the years of prospecting in almost every part of Canada from Quebec to the Pacific, to the modern era of scientific mining by great corporations. In that pageant, Charles LaBine was one of the standard bearers, a leader in the march of Canada’s economic progress, of whose like few will ever be seen again.

Article from “Builders of Fortunes”7455,7456

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“ GILBERT A. LABINE

GILBERT A. LABINE saw pitchblende for the first time when he was only 17 years old. The sample of radium, or uranium, ore that he saw in the hands of a lecturer in mineralogy so impressed him that he knew he would never forget its appearance and he would always be able to identify it.

LaBine did not see pitchblende again for 23 years. But when he did, quite unexpectedly, in the desolate wildnerness around Great Bear Lake in Canada’s Northwest Territories, that chance discovery made history. The chance that led him to one of the world’s richest sources of uranium may well have shortened the duration of history’s greatest war and altered the fate and destiny of millions of people.

It was an accidental discovery in the main, because LaBine was looking for copper, not pitchblende. But ever since 1907, when he had his first glimpse of that rare mineral, LaBine had kept the recollection of it in his mind. Through nearly two and a half decades he remembered the shining blackness of pitchblende; he appreciated something of its value, even though its use as a weapon of war did not occur to him, and he knew what he would do if he came upon it in the course of his search for mineral treasure in many parts of Canada.

Through the ups and downs of an active life, of prospecting, of finding and failing, of borrowing, of buying and selling, Gilbert LaBine’s unexpected discovery on the ice-bound shores of Great Bear Lake led him in time to the presidency of Canada’s first uranium mine, Eldorado; of a second uranium mining giant, Gunnar; to the honor of the Order of the British Empire, and other tributes of admiration and affection.

The man who acheived all this left high school when he was only 15 (although 35 years later he was appointed to the Board of Governors of the University of Toronto). He was born in 1890 at Westmeath, near Pembroke in the Ottawa Valley.

Gilbert LaBine’s forebears were hardy men and women who came to Canada when the land was new. His grandfather, of mixed Irish, French and Scottish descent, came to Canada to be a clerk for the Hudson’s Bay Company. He was stationed first at Bytown, which many years later became Ottawa, the Capital of Canada. Gilbert’s mother was of Irish ancestry, and his father died while still a young man. The mother was left with a young and growing family to support.

Impelled by the stirring call to adventure that lurks in the heart of every ambitious youngster and by the more mundane but necessary urge to help his mother, Gilbert LaBine, accompanied by his brother Charles, left the family home when he was 16, just after he had left school for good.

The two headed for Northern Ontario. Two years before, during the building of the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway (now Ontario Northland), remarkably rich deposits of silver along the right of way. Cobalt became the centre of the richest silver mining camp in the world, and fortune seekers converged upon Cobalt from every part of the world. Gilbert and Charles LaBine were among them.

But Gilbert was not one of the fortunate few who made a fortune in silver at Cobalt. He went to work for the University Mine - the first, last and only time - with one exception - he ever worked for anyone except himself. His was an independent spirit, filled with the confidence of youth that he could go it alone. All that he needed and lacked was a grubstake, to continue his mining career, and he was willing to work for someone else until he acquired it.

At the same time, Gilbert appreciated the fact that he had cut his own formal education short by joining the silver rush, and he decided to do something about that. He enrolled in classes at the Mining Institute in Haileybury and learned everything he could about mineralogy and geology. It was there the he first encountered pitchblende.

One of the lecturers, Dr. Willet Miller, showed him a sample of pitchblende from Czechoslovakia and explained its virtues, which at that time consisted chiefly of its value in the making of radium.

Young LaBine acquired his grubstake and before the year was out he had found silver near Rice Lake in Manitoba. But he did not remain there. He was a wandering prospector in those days. He looked over the possibilities of mineral treasure in Manitoba, in the Kirkland Lake region of Ontario, in Ungava and other parts of Quebec. When he was to, he discovered a gold mine that gave him back nothing in return for his efforts. He even had a stake in the famous Hollinger mine in the Porcupine District of Ontario, but he did not strike it rich.

The next event in LaBine’s checkered mining life was, although he did not know it at the time, to lead him to his greatest discovery. In 1926, LaBine found gold in Manitoba, to which he had returned. It looked so promising, after the years of almost fruitless searching, that he called it Eldorado, the name the Spanish conquistadors gave the undiscovered treasures they believed were to be found in South America.

LaBine sank a 500 foot shaft at his Eldorado mine and there he did indeed find gold. But the quality of the ore was poor, and the return was low, since gold was then being bought at $20 an ounce. LaBine, a man of complete integrity, was completely honest with the stockholders who had invested in Eldorado. He told them he intended to start out again, to return to prospecting, and keep searching for something better. He was a man of his word, and once more he set out into the wilds, financed by the modest return he had wrung from his gold mine.

The first thing he did was to make an aerial inspection of Great Bear Lake, far north of Edmonton, 1,100 miles for the nearest railway, lying in a virtually empty land inhabited by only a few Indians. Great Bear is gripped by ice, to some extent at least, for 10 months of the year.

In 1930, Gilbert and a companion Charles St. Paul, set out on foot from the nearest jumping-off point. It was May, but it was like January in southeastern Canada. They dragged along sleds laden with equipment and supplies. The ice underfoot was so hard that they fastened the blades of hacksaws to the soles of their boots in order to get traction.

The glare from the sunlight on the snow-covered landscape blinded St. Paul, and he could not go on. LaBine made poultices of the leaves, applied them to St. Paul’s aching eyes, and made him comfortable. Then he set out alone for a fateful three hours.

From the eastern shore, LaBine crossed the frozen surface of the lake to a small island. There he found deposits of silver. Then he looked back, across the ice, to the snowbound shore. Even at that distance, he could detect the flowering signs of cobalt - a rich deposit that before long was to become the No. 1 vein in the new Eldorado, that was to yield to LaBine and his associates cobalt, bismuth and nickel.

Not far from the cobalt lay a far greater find, and the eyes that first saw pitchblende 23 years before did not fail to see it. There it was - the gleaming black of ore that until that time had come only from Czechoslovakia and from the Belgian Congo in Africa. There it was - the precious mineral that was to mean so much to so many millions, for good and for evil, only 15 years in the future.

LaBine recrossed the ice to the shore, and chopped away the ice that partially covered his find. It was pitchblende indeed, and that location became the No. 2 and No. 3 veins of the Eldorado, from whose ore was refined the fissionable material for the first atom bombs in 1945.

In the next year, LaBine and St. Paul went back to Great Bear Lake. This time they had company - 10 men who joined with them in staking 5,000 claims. (Two years later, in 1933, there were no fewer than 13 important mining companies exploring for valuable minerals in the Great Bear country.)

In order to exploit his find, LaBine had to have capital, and this he did himself. After all, he had found silver on the little island from which he first saw the cobalt and the pitchblende. So he simply took out the silver close to the surface, blasting when necessary, and flew out 600 bags of silver, worth a million dollars, to Central Canada. As Eldorado grew in importance and wealth, the company acquired a fleet of boats to carry ore down the Mackenzie River from Great Bear Lake to the railhead and even had its own freight-carrying aircraft.

The only place in Canada where the ore could be refined was Ottawa, to which Eldorado shipped 20 tons of pitchblende.

Gilbert LaBine, however, was determined both to mine and refine his ore. He and his brother Charles built a radium refinery at Port Hope, on Lake Ontario, 70 miles east of Toronto. At the time it was built, the refinery was the largest in the world and the ony one in the British Commonwealth. It was there that the LaBines saw produced their first gram of radium. The subsequent expansion of the refinery can be seen in the fact that in 1941 LaBine personally gave Lord Beaverbrook three grams of radium.

The most serious competition to Eldorado in the production of pitchblende and radium came from the Belgian Congo. The Belgians by this time had a world monopoly, and this LaBine had to break. He achieved that ambition despite every kind of obstacle. He received threats from influential quarters in London and Paris. A mysterious explosion damaged the Port Hope refinery. Even Canada seemed to be against him, because an order for material to be used in the first Canadian radium bomb, for medical use, went to the Belgian Congo, rather than to Eldorado.

But LaBine persisted and he triumphed. When the Belgian monopoly was finally broken, the price of radium dropped to $25,000 a gram from $70,000.

It took Eldorado four years to produce its first ounce of radium. In the long and arduous process, there emerged a byproduct, uranium. No one then knew what to do with it. Eldorado stored it, however, because LaBine, with the intuition that always stood him so well, thought that some day the apparently useless substance might be of some value.

By 1940 there was a glut of radium on the market, and Gilbert LaBine relunctantly closed down his operation. But it was not to remain inoperative for long. Unknown to him, two warring powers - the United States and Nazi Germany - were engaged in a lethal race. Each of them, working in absolute secrecy, was trying to the first to have what would be regarded as the ultimate weapon, the atomic bomb.

In 1942 Gilbert LaBine was called upon, also in complete secrecy, to reopen his mine and his refinery. This he did, and this time he produced on behalf of the government the byproduct and not the product his refinery had turned out two years before.

Then, in 1944, the year before the first atomic bomb obliterated Hiroshima for the earth, the Government of Canada took over Eldorado. By this time too much was at stake to permit a private company to engage in a business such as the LaBine’s. A Crown corporation, Eldorado Mining and Refining Ltd., came into being, with Gilbert LaBine as the president. Thus, in a sense, he became an employee for a second time, the only minor exception to a lifetime of self-employment after the age of 17.

While LaBine directed operations, Eldorado continued to search for uranium deposits. The hunt for the precious substance was so vital to the war effort that Gilbert’s son Joseph, was seconded from the navy to help in the search. When he was only 14, his father taught Joe how to look after himself in the bush. Joe had been trained to work as a prospector, he had been a helper on a diamond dirll operation, and he had worked in the refinery. Joe, quietly removed from a naval ship off Halifax, was sent with the late Emil Walli to look for uranium in the Lake Athabasca region. It was a top secret assignment, and it was a successful one.

By 1946, uranium was the most desired of all minerals, Gilbert LaBine desired it like every eager mining man. He found it again, too, in northern Saskatchewan and from that find came the Eldorado Beaverlodge mine, whose production had the effect of tripling Canada’s reserves.

LaBine’s third uranium discovery, again in Saskatchewan, came in 1950, the year he resigned the presidency of the Crown-owned Eldorado. He dispatched his son to establish and open up claims, and organized Nesbitt LaBine Uranium Mines.

The fourth and final uranium find was in 1952, when LaBine uncovered a rich deposit on the north shore of Lake Athabasca. From this discovery arose Gunnar Mines, the first Canadian producer of uranium that returned a profit to its shareholders. In order to get Gunnar into production, LaBine borrowed $19,500,000, all of which has been repaid. Four years later, Gunnar and Nesbitt LaBine were combined as the Gunnar Mining Company, with assets reported to be worth $40 million.

By that year, 1960, the market for uranium had become an uncertain one, after the United States and the United Kingdom had indicated they would not renew their options to buy Canadian uranium upon the completion of contracts entered into originally. Like a few other far-sighted mining men, LaBine began to extend his company’s interests into other fields. He provided $5 million for the financing of the Canadian Petroleum Corporation, and he had Gunnar acquire interests in silver and iron ore in Nova Scotia.

In November of 1962, his health failing, Gilbert LaBine retired as president of Gunnar, to be succeeded by his son Joseph. Unhappily, the early months of his retirement were marred by a dispute, in which he himself took no part.

The new president proposed that, as part of its program of diversification, Gunnar buy a contracting firm, the McNamara Corporation, one of Canada’s largest construction companies, for $8 million in cash and 800,000 Gunnar shares. Gunnar Mining Company at that time had on hand more than $27 million in cash, bonds and short term notes, and a working capital of more than $32 million.

The scheme was strongly opposed by Gilbert’s brother Charles, a director of Gunnar.

Gunnar’s shareholders, buy a vote of 2,198,058 to 450,000, approved the purchase of McNamara. But Charles LaBine, refusing to accept the decision, is taking action in the courts in an attempt to prevent the completion of the sale.

Serious of mien, quite in speech, LaBine is a man of temperate habits and considerable reticence. He is said to be difficult to get to know. He has had no personal desire to be nor interest in being wealthy. That was not his ambition. He never deliberately sought either riches or honors, although both have come to him. He has been an outstanding prospector, one of the greatest Canada has ever seen, and he has been a sound, hard-headed businessman who, after years of struggle, made a success of what he had discovered. If he has any quality that stands out above all others, it has been that of curiosity, in the best sense of the word. Unless a prospector is inquisitive, he will get nowhere, and Gilbert LaBine was one of the most inquisitive.

Article from “Builders of Fortunes”.7457,7456

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Obituary of Mary E. LaBine

The last surviving member of a well-known Ottawa Valley Family, died in the ‘Temiskaming Hospital July 13, 1984 in her 91st year.

Mary E. LaBine, also known as Min, was one of 10 children, the daughter of John and Mar Jane LaBine of Bromley Line, Westmeath.

After graduation from the Convent of Mary Immaculate, Pembroke, she came to Haileybury in 1914 to train as a nurse at the Providence Hospital. After graduation in 1917, Mary E. did private duty and staff work which took her to Cobalt, New Liskeard and Haileybury.

Probably no one in the nursing profession can surpass her contribution to this field in northern Ontario. During her long career she assisted at the birth of 20,000 babies.

After moving to St. Mary’s Timmins, she spent some two years on night duty, surgical and maternity. After the new maternity wing was built, she was asked to be supervisor.

Miss LaBine went to Toronto and took a special course in Obstetrics. She then came back to Timmins where she worked and supervised and trained nurses in that field. She had a great respect for the medical staff and her friends were many. After 20 years of service the wing was dedicated to her upon retirement.

After coming back to Haileybury to live with her sister Rose, she was involved in Parish work and CWL - a member of over 50 years. Mary enjoyed golf, bridge, reading and music, also a member of several local organizations.

She always felt there was no greater profession for a girl than nursing. Her family included the mining men Charles and Gilbert, Theresa Venn, Mrs. Lauretta Belec, Rose, John-Paul, Mary Jane.

The Mass of Celebration and Thanksgiving was offered by Father LeFond, Parish Priest, and the CWL guard of honor holding candles and joining the choir in hymns of praise. A solo The Lord is My Shepherd was sung by Mrs. William Oslund (Paula), a great niece. The pallbearers were Eric LaBine, Cecil Venne, Charles Belec, William Oslund, Edward Venne and Cy Copps. A great niece Bernadine did a reading. Also serving were Andre Forest and Denis Venne.

A beautiful lunch was served to the family and friends afterwards by the CWL.

Miss LaBine will be greatly missed by many nephews and nieces, neighbors and friends. As Mary would say, Many thanks for all your kindness and prayers.

Article from Newspaper “7402

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Obituary of Rose Labine

Miss Rose Elizabeth LaPasse died at Timiskaming Hospital on Oct. 2, 1982 following a short illness.

She was born in Pembroke, Ont. - the daughter of the late John and Mary LaBine. After finishing school at the Convent of Mary Immaculate Pembroke, she persued a career in the nursing profession and graduated in 1916 after which she took Special Nursing at the University of Toronto and graduated in 1922. On her return to Haileybury she was the Public Health Nurse for Cobalt district.

Her life was dedicated to helping others and thought nothing of getting up through the night and hitching up a horse and buggy or cutter in those days to assist Dr. Joyal or Dr. Arnold to deliver a baby who knows where and be of help where needed.

Miss LaBine was also VON and drove a Model T of later years over many back roads in northern Ontario and Quebec.

After the Haileybury fire of 1922 MIss LaBine was one of the main organizers to help reconstruct the Haileybury Hospital. Many a trip she made to the hospital with food, clothing or goodies of some kind, and she was there to lend a helping hand and kind word or a smile to someone who needed comfort. An honored member of C.W.L. and an avid church worker, and to be a part of the redecoration of Holy Cross Church, made her very happy.

She will be greatly missed in the community by those who knew her - especially her sister Mary E., who survives, and Rose Ann Foster (nee Venne) to whom she as a mother and also by the many nephews and nieces who loved her dearly.

Miss LaBine was a sister to the late Gilbert A., Charles L. LaBine, also John, Lauretta (Mrs. D. Belec), Theresa (Mrs. William Venne and Paul Bertrand).

Her funeral mass celebrated by Father LaFond at Holy Cross Parish Oct. 5 and interment followed in the Parish Cemetery. Pallbearers were Cecil Venne, Eric LaBine, Charles Belec, Bill Keenan, John Molnar and George Morrissette. Andre Forster and Denis Venne assisted Father LaFond.

Friends and relations came from Toronto; Mississauga; Ottawa; Pembroke; Chichester, Que.; North Bay; New Liskeard; Sudbury, Thunder Bay; Lethbridge, Alberta; Grand Forks, B.C.; London, Ont.; Cobalt; and surrounding Haileybury.

Article from Newspaper.7391

[Note: VON is the Victoria Order of Nurses.]

None

Marie-Jane Stought
M-Jane Stought
Mary Jane Stout
Mary Stought
Mar Jane LaBine
Mary LaBine

CHARLES L. LABINE

CHARLES L. LABINE has been described in the newspapers of Canada as “a tough old sourdough”, a rugged individualist, one of the few remaining graduates of the hard knocks school of mining.

Although he has lived for more than 30 years in the shadow of a more nationally known younger brother, Charles in his way has been as important a contributor as Gilbert to the success of the Eldorado and Gunnar mines, for which the name LaBine is famous.

While Gilbert LaBine was the discoverer and the man to whom the world gave most of the credit, Charles was an all-important figure behind the scenes, the financial brain, the “money man”. Without his skill and persistence in tracking down funds for their development, Eldorado and Gunnar might not have become the financial successes that they did.

From the time they were teenage boys who left the family home together to seek their fortune, Charles and Gilbert were comrades. They shared discomforts, hardships, insecurity, and eventual prosperity. They were business associates in bad times and in good.

Charles LaBine was born in 1888, two years before Gilbert, at Westmeath, a small community in the Ottawa Valley near Pembroke. The LaBine boys grew up on a farm on which their father had settled. Their father died when still a young man, and Mrs. LaBine was left with the task of rearing a large family.

It may been been economics, the problem of helping to feed, clothe and shelter the LaBine family, that induced the boys to leave school at the same time, when Charles was 17 and Gilbert 15.

Where husky, ambitious lads might best find a future for themselves, even though they had not completed their schooling, was not difficult to decide at that time. It was the year 1905 and Northern Ontario, not too many miles north of Westmeath, was ablaze with excitement. The boys set out for the Cobalt silver camp, the locale of a silver “rush” along the right-of-way of the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway, then under construction to open up the still little-known country above North Bay.

The LaBines found themselves jobs in the Cobalt silver mines. The work was hard, and they did not strike it rich. They decided to go further afield, to try prospecting for themselves rather than working for someone else, who would reap the greatest rewards. The met Benny Hollinger, who had staked claims in the Porcupine district, in the vicinity of the present city of Timmins. They worked and acquired a modest stake that enabled them to continue their prospecting.

In the course of their travels, the LaBines discovered gold in Manitoba and opened there a mine which they called Eldorado. Said Charles:

“When Eldorado was incorporated in 1926, I was the first president and looked after the financing of the company’s operations, which, incidentally, did not meet with very much success.

At a couple of stormy meetings of the shareholders, an attempt was made to pass an investment bylaw which would give us the authority to use what money was left over for further exploration work. Some of the shareholders were up in arms at this suggestion and wanted to discontinue the company and distribute the finances among the shareholders.

Jack Greenburg, who was a young Toronto lawyer and the registered owner of No. 1 certificate of the company’s stock, moved that the bylaw be passed to permit the company to look for a mine. A vote was taken and two-thirds of the shares were voted in favor of the bylaw. That authorization resulted in the discovery by my brother Gilbert of the Eldorado at Great Bear Lake.”

The famous discovery was made on the shore of Echo Bay, an indentation of the lake in the Northwest Territories, 1,450 miles from the nearest railway. There Gilbert almost literally stumbled upon a rich deposit of pitchblende, another name for uranium ore, which at that time - the spring of 1930 - was used only as the raw material for the production of radium.

“Fortunately the deposit was a rich one, “ Charles said, “but it had to be, because Echo Bay was so remote and so far from a railway. It was also fortunate that the find was made when radium was in great demand for the treatment of cancer. Another factor that cannot be overlooked and which made the find so important was that the ore was free from thorium, because radium is sold on its purity.”

Although Charles was not with Gilbert when the pitchblende was found, it was his job to follow up and consolidate the opportunities that were awaiting them on the rocky banks of Great Bear Lake. But to get the ore from its hiding place within a few miles of the Arctic Circle was a problem in logistics.

“Our big problem was transportation,” Charles explained. “I had had experience with canoes, so Leo Seaberg, Shirley Cragg and I decided to take the supplies the 1,450 miles from the railhead to Great Bear Lake by canoe.”

The route they had to follow took them along the Athabaska, Slave and Mackenzie rivers, then from Fort Norman along the Great Slave river to the lake.

“We were fortunate on the trip,” Charles said. “We had some near spills, where we could easily have lost our lives as well as our supplies. It took us five hours to navigate the Bear River Rapids, with a 10-horsepower heavy duty motor on our boat, which was only half-loaded, and there was a 60-foot drop in five miles. But we made it.”

The next problem was that of production at the mine and refining the ore. The LaBines built a refinery at Port Hope, on Lake Ontario, 70 miles east of Toronto. But they had to find an experienced man to manage it.

“I had a streak of good fortune when I met a Welshman named Lillicott,” Charles LaBine said. “He put me in touch with Marcel Pochon, who was the oldest living producer of radium. He had trained under the Curies and had built a refinery in Wales for the production of radium. This refinery had shut down when the supply of ore was exhausted. Eldorado had the ore and was now able to obtain the services of a highly trained and experienced man to produce the radium.”

In order to finance the development, the LaBines mined the silver that lay in the same area of Great Bear Lake. Having had experience in selective mining and high-grading ore, Charles LaBine was able to produce 40,000 ounces of silver at 29 cents an ounce for the first shipment to Consolidated Mining and Smelting at Trail, B.C. It required 27 cases of powder, each of 50 pounds, to produce half a million dollars worth of ore, which the workers carried down a 115-foot hill on their backs.

“But that was the end of selective mining, as a plant was on the way,” Charles said. “My 25 years of experience in prospecting and selective mining surely paid off. With the plant installed, and Emil Walli in charge as mine manager, production went forward in a big way. All this was possible with the help we got from a wonderful lot of men. I will always remember how Bill Jewett of Consolidated Mining and Smelting took his transit and gave the level 28 feet above Great Bear Lake and pointed the entrance to the tunnel that was to cut No. 2 vein, 1200 section, 480 feet north, 80 feet below the hill.”

Although the LaBines were satisfied they had a find of great importance, the news was received in mining offices back east with a certain amount of caution. After visiting Charles and Gilbert at Echo Bay, Cyril W. Knight, the head of a prospecting company, wrote in the fall of 1930:

“The discovery brings to light a new pitchblende occurrence and a possible source of the valuable element radium. At the time of my visit to the property, no work at all had been done; and, therefore, an expression of opinion at this time as to the economic possibility of the occurrence would be unwise.”

In an editorial in its issue of October 10, 1930, the Canadian Mining Journal indicated what Charles was up against:

“The men, or companies, who invest capital in such undertakings are running a risk, and the men who carry out the work are risking life and limb, and it is a peculiar commentary upon human nature that it is easier to find men who will risk their lives than it is to find men who will risk their money in constructive effort.”

But Charles overcame the problem of financing and Eldorado came into being as a productive company.

The contribution that Charles and Gilbert LaBine made to the advancement of medical science was recognized at home and abroad. The brothers received the Curie medal from the governing body of the International Union Against Cancer, the headquarters of which was in Paris.

The citation accompanying the medal to Charles LaBine said that the Pierre and Marie Curie medal, which had been struck in 1938 on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the discovery of radium, was conferred upon him “for the distinguished services that you have rendered to science and to humanity.”

Charles has always treasured his memories of the thrilling adventure on Great Bear Lake, even though his participation followed that of Gilbert. In his Toronto home there hangs a permanent reminder of those great days of 1930, a painting of Echo Bay by Franz Johnston.

Gunnar was another successful Labine enterprise - the first Canadian mine to deliver uranium to the refinery at a profit to its shareholders. In less than 10 years, Gunnar paid off its $19 million of bonded debt, paid out some $215 million in dividends, and accumulated $32 million in liquid reserves.

Gilbert was president and Charles the vice-president of Gunnar. Charles retired from the management in 1955, but continued as a director. Gilbert remained as president until 1962, when he resigned because of ill-health.

Although he was 75 in 1963, Charles LaBine is still a strong, vigorous man, proud of his rugged physique, which would be the envy of young men years younger. He built energy and endurance through years of hard physical effort. In his youth, he thought nothing of spending nights in a lean-to, beside a campfire, in temperatures from 40 to 50 degrees below zero. He could live off the land when he had to, getting a meal when he wanted one with a fish hook or a 30/30 rifle.

As he looks back over the years, Charles LaBine sees in retrospect the great pageant of Canadian mining, from the days of the frenzied Cobalt silver rush, through the years of prospecting in almost every part of Canada from Quebec to the Pacific, to the modern era of scientific mining by great corporations. In that pageant, Charles LaBine was one of the standard bearers, a leader in the march of Canada’s economic progress, of whose like few will ever be seen again.

Article from “Builders of Fortunes”7455,7456

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“ GILBERT A. LABINE

GILBERT A. LABINE saw pitchblende for the first time when he was only 17 years old. The sample of radium, or uranium, ore that he saw in the hands of a lecturer in mineralogy so impressed him that he knew he would never forget its appearance and he would always be able to identify it.

LaBine did not see pitchblende again for 23 years. But when he did, quite unexpectedly, in the desolate wildnerness around Great Bear Lake in Canada’s Northwest Territories, that chance discovery made history. The chance that led him to one of the world’s richest sources of uranium may well have shortened the duration of history’s greatest war and altered the fate and destiny of millions of people.

It was an accidental discovery in the main, because LaBine was looking for copper, not pitchblende. But ever since 1907, when he had his first glimpse of that rare mineral, LaBine had kept the recollection of it in his mind. Through nearly two and a half decades he remembered the shining blackness of pitchblende; he appreciated something of its value, even though its use as a weapon of war did not occur to him, and he knew what he would do if he came upon it in the course of his search for mineral treasure in many parts of Canada.

Through the ups and downs of an active life, of prospecting, of finding and failing, of borrowing, of buying and selling, Gilbert LaBine’s unexpected discovery on the ice-bound shores of Great Bear Lake led him in time to the presidency of Canada’s first uranium mine, Eldorado; of a second uranium mining giant, Gunnar; to the honor of the Order of the British Empire, and other tributes of admiration and affection.

The man who acheived all this left high school when he was only 15 (although 35 years later he was appointed to the Board of Governors of the University of Toronto). He was born in 1890 at Westmeath, near Pembroke in the Ottawa Valley.

Gilbert LaBine’s forebears were hardy men and women who came to Canada when the land was new. His grandfather, of mixed Irish, French and Scottish descent, came to Canada to be a clerk for the Hudson’s Bay Company. He was stationed first at Bytown, which many years later became Ottawa, the Capital of Canada. Gilbert’s mother was of Irish ancestry, and his father died while still a young man. The mother was left with a young and growing family to support.

Impelled by the stirring call to adventure that lurks in the heart of every ambitious youngster and by the more mundane but necessary urge to help his mother, Gilbert LaBine, accompanied by his brother Charles, left the family home when he was 16, just after he had left school for good.

The two headed for Northern Ontario. Two years before, during the building of the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway (now Ontario Northland), remarkably rich deposits of silver along the right of way. Cobalt became the centre of the richest silver mining camp in the world, and fortune seekers converged upon Cobalt from every part of the world. Gilbert and Charles LaBine were among them.

But Gilbert was not one of the fortunate few who made a fortune in silver at Cobalt. He went to work for the University Mine - the first, last and only time - with one exception - he ever worked for anyone except himself. His was an independent spirit, filled with the confidence of youth that he could go it alone. All that he needed and lacked was a grubstake, to continue his mining career, and he was willing to work for someone else until he acquired it.

At the same time, Gilbert appreciated the fact that he had cut his own formal education short by joining the silver rush, and he decided to do something about that. He enrolled in classes at the Mining Institute in Haileybury and learned everything he could about mineralogy and geology. It was there the he first encountered pitchblende.

One of the lecturers, Dr. Willet Miller, showed him a sample of pitchblende from Czechoslovakia and explained its virtues, which at that time consisted chiefly of its value in the making of radium.

Young LaBine acquired his grubstake and before the year was out he had found silver near Rice Lake in Manitoba. But he did not remain there. He was a wandering prospector in those days. He looked over the possibilities of mineral treasure in Manitoba, in the Kirkland Lake region of Ontario, in Ungava and other parts of Quebec. When he was to, he discovered a gold mine that gave him back nothing in return for his efforts. He even had a stake in the famous Hollinger mine in the Porcupine District of Ontario, but he did not strike it rich.

The next event in LaBine’s checkered mining life was, although he did not know it at the time, to lead him to his greatest discovery. In 1926, LaBine found gold in Manitoba, to which he had returned. It looked so promising, after the years of almost fruitless searching, that he called it Eldorado, the name the Spanish conquistadors gave the undiscovered treasures they believed were to be found in South America.

LaBine sank a 500 foot shaft at his Eldorado mine and there he did indeed find gold. But the quality of the ore was poor, and the return was low, since gold was then being bought at $20 an ounce. LaBine, a man of complete integrity, was completely honest with the stockholders who had invested in Eldorado. He told them he intended to start out again, to return to prospecting, and keep searching for something better. He was a man of his word, and once more he set out into the wilds, financed by the modest return he had wrung from his gold mine.

The first thing he did was to make an aerial inspection of Great Bear Lake, far north of Edmonton, 1,100 miles for the nearest railway, lying in a virtually empty land inhabited by only a few Indians. Great Bear is gripped by ice, to some extent at least, for 10 months of the year.

In 1930, Gilbert and a companion Charles St. Paul, set out on foot from the nearest jumping-off point. It was May, but it was like January in southeastern Canada. They dragged along sleds laden with equipment and supplies. The ice underfoot was so hard that they fastened the blades of hacksaws to the soles of their boots in order to get traction.

The glare from the sunlight on the snow-covered landscape blinded St. Paul, and he could not go on. LaBine made poultices of the leaves, applied them to St. Paul’s aching eyes, and made him comfortable. Then he set out alone for a fateful three hours.

From the eastern shore, LaBine crossed the frozen surface of the lake to a small island. There he found deposits of silver. Then he looked back, across the ice, to the snowbound shore. Even at that distance, he could detect the flowering signs of cobalt - a rich deposit that before long was to become the No. 1 vein in the new Eldorado, that was to yield to LaBine and his associates cobalt, bismuth and nickel.

Not far from the cobalt lay a far greater find, and the eyes that first saw pitchblende 23 years before did not fail to see it. There it was - the gleaming black of ore that until that time had come only from Czechoslovakia and from the Belgian Congo in Africa. There it was - the precious mineral that was to mean so much to so many millions, for good and for evil, only 15 years in the future.

LaBine recrossed the ice to the shore, and chopped away the ice that partially covered his find. It was pitchblende indeed, and that location became the No. 2 and No. 3 veins of the Eldorado, from whose ore was refined the fissionable material for the first atom bombs in 1945.

In the next year, LaBine and St. Paul went back to Great Bear Lake. This time they had company - 10 men who joined with them in staking 5,000 claims. (Two years later, in 1933, there were no fewer than 13 important mining companies exploring for valuable minerals in the Great Bear country.)

In order to exploit his find, LaBine had to have capital, and this he did himself. After all, he had found silver on the little island from which he first saw the cobalt and the pitchblende. So he simply took out the silver close to the surface, blasting when necessary, and flew out 600 bags of silver, worth a million dollars, to Central Canada. As Eldorado grew in importance and wealth, the company acquired a fleet of boats to carry ore down the Mackenzie River from Great Bear Lake to the railhead and even had its own freight-carrying aircraft.

The only place in Canada where the ore could be refined was Ottawa, to which Eldorado shipped 20 tons of pitchblende.

Gilbert LaBine, however, was determined both to mine and refine his ore. He and his brother Charles built a radium refinery at Port Hope, on Lake Ontario, 70 miles east of Toronto. At the time it was built, the refinery was the largest in the world and the ony one in the British Commonwealth. It was there that the LaBines saw produced their first gram of radium. The subsequent expansion of the refinery can be seen in the fact that in 1941 LaBine personally gave Lord Beaverbrook three grams of radium.

The most serious competition to Eldorado in the production of pitchblende and radium came from the Belgian Congo. The Belgians by this time had a world monopoly, and this LaBine had to break. He achieved that ambition despite every kind of obstacle. He received threats from influential quarters in London and Paris. A mysterious explosion damaged the Port Hope refinery. Even Canada seemed to be against him, because an order for material to be used in the first Canadian radium bomb, for medical use, went to the Belgian Congo, rather than to Eldorado.

But LaBine persisted and he triumphed. When the Belgian monopoly was finally broken, the price of radium dropped to $25,000 a gram from $70,000.

It took Eldorado four years to produce its first ounce of radium. In the long and arduous process, there emerged a byproduct, uranium. No one then knew what to do with it. Eldorado stored it, however, because LaBine, with the intuition that always stood him so well, thought that some day the apparently useless substance might be of some value.

By 1940 there was a glut of radium on the market, and Gilbert LaBine relunctantly closed down his operation. But it was not to remain inoperative for long. Unknown to him, two warring powers - the United States and Nazi Germany - were engaged in a lethal race. Each of them, working in absolute secrecy, was trying to the first to have what would be regarded as the ultimate weapon, the atomic bomb.

In 1942 Gilbert LaBine was called upon, also in complete secrecy, to reopen his mine and his refinery. This he did, and this time he produced on behalf of the government the byproduct and not the product his refinery had turned out two years before.

Then, in 1944, the year before the first atomic bomb obliterated Hiroshima for the earth, the Government of Canada took over Eldorado. By this time too much was at stake to permit a private company to engage in a business such as the LaBine’s. A Crown corporation, Eldorado Mining and Refining Ltd., came into being, with Gilbert LaBine as the president. Thus, in a sense, he became an employee for a second time, the only minor exception to a lifetime of self-employment after the age of 17.

While LaBine directed operations, Eldorado continued to search for uranium deposits. The hunt for the precious substance was so vital to the war effort that Gilbert’s son Joseph, was seconded from the navy to help in the search. When he was only 14, his father taught Joe how to look after himself in the bush. Joe had been trained to work as a prospector, he had been a helper on a diamond dirll operation, and he had worked in the refinery. Joe, quietly removed from a naval ship off Halifax, was sent with the late Emil Walli to look for uranium in the Lake Athabasca region. It was a top secret assignment, and it was a successful one.

By 1946, uranium was the most desired of all minerals, Gilbert LaBine desired it like every eager mining man. He found it again, too, in northern Saskatchewan and from that find came the Eldorado Beaverlodge mine, whose production had the effect of tripling Canada’s reserves.

LaBine’s third uranium discovery, again in Saskatchewan, came in 1950, the year he resigned the presidency of the Crown-owned Eldorado. He dispatched his son to establish and open up claims, and organized Nesbitt LaBine Uranium Mines.

The fourth and final uranium find was in 1952, when LaBine uncovered a rich deposit on the north shore of Lake Athabasca. From this discovery arose Gunnar Mines, the first Canadian producer of uranium that returned a profit to its shareholders. In order to get Gunnar into production, LaBine borrowed $19,500,000, all of which has been repaid. Four years later, Gunnar and Nesbitt LaBine were combined as the Gunnar Mining Company, with assets reported to be worth $40 million.

By that year, 1960, the market for uranium had become an uncertain one, after the United States and the United Kingdom had indicated they would not renew their options to buy Canadian uranium upon the completion of contracts entered into originally. Like a few other far-sighted mining men, LaBine began to extend his company’s interests into other fields. He provided $5 million for the financing of the Canadian Petroleum Corporation, and he had Gunnar acquire interests in silver and iron ore in Nova Scotia.

In November of 1962, his health failing, Gilbert LaBine retired as president of Gunnar, to be succeeded by his son Joseph. Unhappily, the early months of his retirement were marred by a dispute, in which he himself took no part.

The new president proposed that, as part of its program of diversification, Gunnar buy a contracting firm, the McNamara Corporation, one of Canada’s largest construction companies, for $8 million in cash and 800,000 Gunnar shares. Gunnar Mining Company at that time had on hand more than $27 million in cash, bonds and short term notes, and a working capital of more than $32 million.

The scheme was strongly opposed by Gilbert’s brother Charles, a director of Gunnar.

Gunnar’s shareholders, buy a vote of 2,198,058 to 450,000, approved the purchase of McNamara. But Charles LaBine, refusing to accept the decision, is taking action in the courts in an attempt to prevent the completion of the sale.

Serious of mien, quite in speech, LaBine is a man of temperate habits and considerable reticence. He is said to be difficult to get to know. He has had no personal desire to be nor interest in being wealthy. That was not his ambition. He never deliberately sought either riches or honors, although both have come to him. He has been an outstanding prospector, one of the greatest Canada has ever seen, and he has been a sound, hard-headed businessman who, after years of struggle, made a success of what he had discovered. If he has any quality that stands out above all others, it has been that of curiosity, in the best sense of the word. Unless a prospector is inquisitive, he will get nowhere, and Gilbert LaBine was one of the most inquisitive.

Article from “Builders of Fortunes”.7457,7456

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“ Gilbert would become famous for his discovery of uranium in 1930. Spending much of his boyhood in LaPasse, Gilbert would travel with his father on field trips to Northern Ontario before he was 10 years old. At age 15 he went to Cobalt, Ontario during the rich strikes of 1905, and soon made a silver strike. He sold that strike for $5,000 and old timers were saying that he had a lucky instinct, a “natural nose” for ore. He was still not 17 when , uncovering a second silver strike, he spurned an offer of $25,000, only to find his vein too low grade to repay extraction. Ignorance of geology led him to miscalculate so de decided he needed a mining education. Earning his living from camp to camp, young Gilbert edged into field lectures by government experts, fingered samples in assay offices, memorized the multicolored mineral maps of Canada, studied every pamplhlet and textbook he could lay his hands on. Before others of his age had finished college, he had acquired a practical and scientific background rare among Canadian prospectors.

In 1931 a famed geologist, Dr. W. G. Miller, was trying to arouse interest in a newly discovered ore, pitchblend, the source of radium. The price of radium was then $120,000 a gram, the entire world supply measurable in ounces. Miller had identified pitchblend in Canadian ores, but in infinitetesimal amounts. Gilbert sent for samples from abroad and studied the physical properties of this strangely heavy mineral, hoping to find this ore someday.

Meanwhile, Gilbert was doing well as a prospector. After making a substantial gold strike in Northern Manitoba, he organized the Eldorado Mining Co. which he and his brother Charles ran for 10 years until the strike began to run out in the late 1920’s. In 1928, he proposed a plan to his stockholders to fly north to the Great White Bear Lake Region in the Northwest Territories and search for minerals up there. During the summer of 1929, Gilbert spent weeks along the shores of Great White Bear Lake looking for any traces of gold, silver or other valuable ore. Finding nothing, Gilbert boarded his plan (sic, plane) to return home when he saw along the eastern shore some strange and colorful rock formations. He decided to return the next year with a fellow prospector, E. C. St. Paul, and after seven weeks of searching and fighting the cold, Gilbert, on May 16, 1930, discovered the richest source of radium and uranium in the world.

At the time of discovery, Gilbert did not know of the further power locked into this black rock tht he had discovered. He pioneered the Western Hemisphere’s first pitchblend refinery and single handedly forced $45,000 off the price of every gram of radium. Not knowing about atomic energy, Gilbert was approached by Nazi agents who offered him a fabulous price for pitchblend before the war. He probably began to suspect at that time that radium could be used for major purposes other than in medicine, and did not sell to the Nazis. Then, in 1939, the splitting of the atom sounded the start of the big race among nuclear physicists to fit a key into the lock of atomic fission. By 1940 Nazi institutes had swept aside other projects, spurring their top flight researchers to furious efforts. By 1941 British and American scientists were close behind them. In 1942 Fermi and his Chicago group shot triumphantly ahead, achieved the first nuclear chain reaction. Now the only vital question mark which barred the undertaking of the Manhattan project was - where was the necessary quantity of raw material? Gilbert Labine’s mine, of course! As early as May 1942, practically pure uranium oxide was ready for delivery from his Arctic mine - several tons a month then, and soon the amount was doubled.

Realizing the critical importance of a uranium stockpile in the international race, Gilbert, before the chain reaction was effected, had started full scale production. To carry out this plan over the disapproval of banks and stockholders, he and his brother Charles put up all of their private fortunes, nearly a million dollars. The extent to which their patriotic action speeded completion of the atom bomb has never been disclosed. It is certain that without it, however, August 14, 1945 would have come and gone without those headlines of Japanese surrender.

Gilbert was made an officer of the Order of the British Empire and in 1969, a member of the Order of Canada. He was president of a half a dozen mining companies, was president of the Canadian Uranium Foundation and a governor of the Univeristy of Toronto. He died in 1977 at the age of 87.

SEE September 1949 Reader’s Digest, “Discovery of Great Bear Lake”. “7458

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Obituary of Mary E. LaBine

The last surviving member of a well-known Ottawa Valley Family, died in the ‘Temiskaming Hospital July 13, 1984 in her 91st year.

Mary E. LaBine, also known as Min, was one of 10 children, the daughter of John and Mar Jane LaBine of Bromley Line, Westmeath.

After graduation from the Convent of Mary Immaculate, Pembroke, she came to Haileybury in 1914 to train as a nurse at the Providence Hospital. After graduation in 1917, Mary E. did private duty and staff work which took her to Cobalt, New Liskeard and Haileybury.

Probably no one in the nursing profession can surpass her contribution to this field in northern Ontario. During her long career she assisted at the birth of 20,000 babies.

After moving to St. Mary’s Timmins, she spent some two years on night duty, surgical and maternity. After the new maternity wing was built, she was asked to be supervisor.

Miss LaBine went to Toronto and took a special course in Obstetrics. She then came back to Timmins where she worked and supervised and trained nurses in that field. She had a great respect for the medical staff and her friends were many. After 20 years of service the wing was dedicated to her upon retirement.

After coming back to Haileybury to live with her sister Rose, she was involved in Parish work and CWL - a member of over 50 years. Mary enjoyed golf, bridge, reading and music, also a member of several local organizations.

She always felt there was no greater profession for a girl than nursing. Her family included the mining men Charles and Gilbert, Theresa Venn, Mrs. Lauretta Belec, Rose, John-Paul, Mary Jane.

The Mass of Celebration and Thanksgiving was offered by Father LeFond, Parish Priest, and the CWL guard of honor holding candles and joining the choir in hymns of praise. A solo The Lord is My Shepherd was sung by Mrs. William Oslund (Paula), a great niece. The pallbearers were Eric LaBine, Cecil Venne, Charles Belec, William Oslund, Edward Venne and Cy Copps. A great niece Bernadine did a reading. Also serving were Andre Forest and Denis Venne.

A beautiful lunch was served to the family and friends afterwards by the CWL.

Miss LaBine will be greatly missed by many nephews and nieces, neighbors and friends. As Mary would say, Many thanks for all your kindness and prayers.

Article from Newspaper “7402

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Obituary of Rose Labine

Miss Rose Elizabeth LaPasse died at Timiskaming Hospital on Oct. 2, 1982 following a short illness.

She was born in Pembroke, Ont. - the daughter of the late John and Mary LaBine. After finishing school at the Convent of Mary Immaculate Pembroke, she persued a career in the nursing profession and graduated in 1916 after which she took Special Nursing at the University of Toronto and graduated in 1922. On her return to Haileybury she was the Public Health Nurse for Cobalt district.

Her life was dedicated to helping others and thought nothing of getting up through the night and hitching up a horse and buggy or cutter in those days to assist Dr. Joyal or Dr. Arnold to deliver a baby who knows where and be of help where needed.

Miss LaBine was also VON and drove a Model T of later years over many back roads in northern Ontario and Quebec.

After the Haileybury fire of 1922 MIss LaBine was one of the main organizers to help reconstruct the Haileybury Hospital. Many a trip she made to the hospital with food, clothing or goodies of some kind, and she was there to lend a helping hand and kind word or a smile to someone who needed comfort. An honored member of C.W.L. and an avid church worker, and to be a part of the redecoration of Holy Cross Church, made her very happy.

She will be greatly missed in the community by those who knew her - especially her sister Mary E., who survives, and Rose Ann Foster (nee Venne) to whom she as a mother and also by the many nephews and nieces who loved her dearly.

Miss LaBine was a sister to the late Gilbert A., Charles L. LaBine, also John, Lauretta (Mrs. D. Belec), Theresa (Mrs. William Venne and Paul Bertrand).

Her funeral mass celebrated by Father LaFond at Holy Cross Parish Oct. 5 and interment followed in the Parish Cemetery. Pallbearers were Cecil Venne, Eric LaBine, Charles Belec, Bill Keenan, John Molnar and George Morrissette. Andre Forster and Denis Venne assisted Father LaFond.

Friends and relations came from Toronto; Mississauga; Ottawa; Pembroke; Chichester, Que.; North Bay; New Liskeard; Sudbury, Thunder Bay; Lethbridge, Alberta; Grand Forks, B.C.; London, Ont.; Cobalt; and surrounding Haileybury.

Article from Newspaper.7391

[Note: VON is the Victoria Order of Nurses.]

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Jean Baptiste Guilde dit LaBine
Jean “John” Guilde dit LaBine
Jean Guilde dit LaBine
John Guilde dit LaBine
John LaBine
Jean Baptiste Labine
John Labine
John Labine-Guildry

None

Henry Gilbert Bertrand