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Chapter Three
Coal Mines and Railways
The first settlers saw great value in the coal that, for miUennia, had been ignored by the prairie people. By 1870, the industrial revolution had swept across settled North America and coal had become the predominant fuel. Visitors to the Canadian prairies noted the coal outcroppings on the river banks and recognized their utUity as fuel for the projected transcontinental railway and the thousands of settlers expected to flood the plains.
As long as the transcontinental railway was only in the planning stages, coal mining in the North-West remained small scale. In October 1874, Nicholas Sheran, an Irish-American adventurer, opened the first commercial coal mine in the region at the Coal Banks (now Lethbridge). There he Uved with Awatoyakew, a Peigan woman, who bore his two sons: Charles Sheran in 1880 and WiUiam Sheran in 1882. Sheran, an ex-sailor who had once spent three years with the Inuit after suffering shipwreck, had fought in the Civil War and pioneered in Montana. Involved in the whiskey trade, he turned respectable upon the arrival of the North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) in western Canada. Besides operating a ferry, Sheran mined coal from the river bank and sporadicaUy prospected for gold in the mountains. He sold most of the coal to the NWMP at Fort Macleod and some of it to merchants operating from Fort Benton. The high cost of transportation, however, kept sales small.
One visitor who used Sheran's ferry was Elliott T. Gait, the assistant Indian commissioner. Gait, a tall, quiet man, then about 30 years old, visited Coal Banks in 1879 on one of several inspection trips. He noted the five-foot (1.6-m) thick seam of coal outcropping on the river bank and had a few samples analyzed. But, without an economical means of transportation to a sizeable market, the coal was worthless and Gait did nothing to exploit it.
In the spring of 1881, however, the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) decided to cross the southern plains rather than to follow the North Saskatchewan River. The decision solved Gait's transportation problem and the coal deposits he had noted on the southwestern fringe of the plains took on great value.
With transportation and a market assured, organizing a minmg
company was an easy task. Elliott's father. Sir Alexander T. Gait, the prominent Montreal promoter and then High Commissioner in London, marshalled the investors. Late in the summer of 1881, Sir Alexander hired Captain Nicholas Bryant, a Nova Scotia mining engineer, to prospect for coal in the southwestern plains. In a quick, preliminary survey, Bryant uncovered several large deposits of useable coal. His findings substantiated those by George M. Dawson of the Geological Survey of Canada, who had explored the region earlier that summer. Consequently, late in the fall of 1881, Sir Alexander had sufficient evidence to support an approach to British financiers. No doubt he bolstered his plea with stories of the fabulous real estate boom then raging in Winnipeg, a frenzy sparked by the start of railway construction. In any case, by April 1882, he had gathered a group of prominent investors incorporated as the North Western Coal and Navigation Company, Limited (NWC&NCo).
The initial group of backers was smaU but powerful. It included the wealthy William H. Smith, owner of the well-known news agency and bookselling firm, W. H. Smith & Son. Another member was William Ashmead Bartlett Burdett-Coutts, a wealthy American residing in England and recently married to the elderly Baroness Angela Burdett-Coutts, the richest heiress in England, admired for her devotion to charities. The most enthusiastic founder of the NWC&NCo was WilUam Lethbridge, a close friend and associate of WiUiam Smith. These three men, and Gait, formed an influential core quickly joined by prominent investors from Canada and Great Britain.
With incorporation completed and financing arranged. Gait next sought government permission to mine coal. This was relatively easy to obtain because the Dominion government, which controUed the natural resources of the North-West Territories, was anxious to encourage the rapid development of the western coal reserves. Believing these resources to be inexhaustible, the administration felt that regulations could only hinder development. In December 1881, it provided for 24-year leases and minimal royalties, but a year later eased the rules and allowed free-hold purchases of Umited acreages.
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Object Description
| Title | Lethbridge : A Centennial History |
| Local Subject(s) |
Lethbridge (Alta.) -- History Lethbridge Historical Society -- Monographs |
| Description | A publication authored by Alex Johnston and Andy A. den Otter on the centennial history of Lethbridge, Alberta. |
| Creator | Johnston, Alex ; den Otter, Andy A. |
| Publisher | City of Lethbridge and The Whoop-up Country Chapter, Historical Society of Alberta |
| Date.Original | 1985-05-26 |
| Type | text |
| Source | Lethbridge Historical Society |
| Language | eng |
| Relation | University of Lethbridge Library Digital Collections |
| Rights | Copyright - Lethbridge Historical Society |
| Resource Type | monograph |
| Date.Digital | 2009-06-01 |
| Date.Last.Modified | 2009-06-01 |