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BIG NEWS. THERE IS A REUNION FOR ALL UCITIES CLICK here for all the latest.
Someone has an unofficial list of snail mailing addresses. If you wish to find an old friend, click here for the access to the list.
Since this page has got so big it was hard to find a given artical so I have created this table below to speed up finding certain information.
Pictures are here.Older pics
Pictures are here.Circa 1996
The Municipal Corperation of Uranium City and District
was formed in 1956 and is on the north shore of Lake Athabasca on northern Saskatchewan. The district includes 1000 square miles. The population reached a peak in 4,600 in 1959. When the bottom fell out of the uranium market in the 1960's the population bottomed out at 1450 people and then slowly increased again until Eldorado Nuclear closed the Beaverlodge OperationsI had the opportunity of living in Canada's north while I was a teenager. For five years, my family lived twenty-five mile south of the Northwest Territories Border. This provided an insight that has forever changed my life. Not only did it show the depth to which CBC North fall in quality programming, but the diversity of cultures beyond those some closed minded canadians feel they have a distinct society.
As I develope this page I will be adding special pictures from the region that is home to the world's largest lake trout, only 102 pounds!
Several years ago, a friend of my family wrote a book about the early days of Uranium City and the surrounding area. It is a great book. Plug...plug.. called-" Uranium City, The Last Boom Town".
Driftwood Publishersc/o Ben McIntyre
2434 Bidston Road
R.R. #1
Mill Bay, British Columbia
Canada
V0R 2P0
You can reach me at my mail address grimshaw@eagle.ca. I would love to
hear from grads et al from Candu High School.
Here is a site that provides fishing trips to the Athabasca region.
Breakfast sized Jackfish
That's a Lake Trout
Nice Walleye
A Background..
Much to my surprise there is not much on this community on the net so I guess I will endevor to put as much as I can into this.
There is a belief that there were mines in town, well yes and no. There were no mines in Uranium City just in the surrounding area. There were infact 52 mines in the area during the boom of the fifties. This was reported in the Uranium Times on October 1, 1954. That dwindled down to three operative mines before Camaco (Eldorado Nuclear Limited) shut down its Beaverlodge operation on December 3, 1981. They were the Fay headframe (main) and Ace and Verna headframes. A headframe is the elevator system that people see over a mine. I think there were thirty two levels a hundred feet apart in the Fay mine and I can not remember how deep the Fay Winds went. I'll update this with the correct information when I get it.
These mines were actually located in a "mining camp" or as we called it the Camp Site called Eldorado, Sask. A small village of about five hundred people. These included residences single miners in Bunkhouses and homes mine managers, supervisors and their families. Hey it got cold in the winter time so there was a natural ice hockey rink with heated dressing rooms. We even had red cross swimming lessons and the beach in the summer but I don't remember the water getting above seventy degrees F. There was a post office and mail boxes as the mailman moto about rain, sleet or hail said nothing about 35 below zero or better. There was a rec hall for people to use for pool, four sheets of ice for curling, a full size Gym for sports including a equipment loan, a squash court, a TV room with big screen TV, bowling alley and a Theater with the newest releases for all. There was even a coffee house that served the works to all and a general store. Much to the dismay of some of the local students the comany upgraded the alleys about 1978 and installed automatic pin sets. Guess they felt they made to much money from league nights :)
There was a cookery for the miners to eat steak and goop depending on who you talked to. I eaten there a few times and I didn't think it was so bad. The Camp Stewart's Office provided dry cleaning and a hang out for some. There were about 500 people in this little community. There was a full service airport service by Pacific Western Airlines (now Canadian) and Eldorado Aviation every day.
Uranium City was a major station for the north of Saskatewan, it was about 2500 people. There was a hospital and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. Buses for school and miners were supplied by Uranium City Bus Lines that had about six old armed forces including one they just green spray bombed over the logo to match the rest of the bus. We kids called it, with great affection, the pickle bus. Hudson Bay Company was managed but the boy who played Charlie Brown in our grade six play (Mark Cummings) 's Dad. Roy Robinson and his wife ran the local drug store which acted as a record store outlet. This record monopoly went on unchallenged until a record store openned beside Uranium City Taxi and the world famous Gus Hawker store. There was a legion and of course a liquor store. Eldorado ran a grocery store called surprisingly The Eldorado Retail Store, it was across the street from the Bus Terminal. At the next corner of Nuclear and Uranium road was the Uranium City Hotel which had a collect of shall we say get togethers with some of the more intoxicated members of the community. To their good they did serve a chinese buffet that could feed a growing teen quite well on a Sunday evening.
Hey where it got that cold and you lived in such beautiful territory there was religion. There was a "Floating" J.Witness, yeah I know.. The Evangelical Church that operated the beacon-bible camp on Ace lake for ages 7 to 16. A great summer activity and there was a beach there since Ace was probly one of the smallest lakes in the area it got warm quick. The Roman Catholic church and the Catholic Womens League (CWL) were active in the community and even had a separtate school board at one time, 1962. There were even Knight of Columbus. Many a movie and a dinner or two was seen in the basement. The United church had the other vestry of faith in a community in God's country. The United Church Women (UCW) where active as catering and service. In the last few years the united church doubled as an Anglican church, everyone was issued pillows, and the A.F. and A. Masons met as lodge number 210 of the Grand Lodge of Saskatchewan. For thous into masonry, the Uranium Lodge was the only lodge that had the Grand Master preform installations and a Man named Jim Grimshaw was installed as the twenty-fifth master in 1978. We were not left out in the cold when it came to learning. Shannon school was named after Earl Shannon, the first Conservation Officer. Ben McIntyre Primary School was the newest, openned in December 1977, was named after the first teacher in the town. He was the author of the book stated above and the man who convinced my mother that her eldest son was going to stop growing sooner or later as he owned the Shoe and Clothing store. Gilchrist school was for grades three to six and was named after the first mine manager and president of Eldorado Nuclear, William Gilchrist. For there rest of us there was Uranium City High until a fire in the industrial arts area destroyed a third of the school in 1976. It was rebuilt and enlarged and renamed Candu High School. Only in a pro-nuclear comminuty could you name a school after a reactor. It didn't matter how cold it got unlike some places I have lived, we went to school just like every school day. Anyone who lived a quater mile or farther got bused. I remember waiting in the house watching for the bus to come over the hill into the camp site so we could run out and catch the bus. One day Dad told me they had measured 75 below zero that day at the airport. I don't know if that included wind chill, we never bothered much with that. At forty below both scales (F and C) are the same, anything below that it just fucking cold.(sorry)
We even had a cafe at the corner near Gilchrist school and the high school called the Hi-Spot. They had a jutebox, pinball and Diane made great fries and gravy for a buck. I think she was happy after we stopped making plant hangers in Art class because I don't know how many fries and gravy she traded for them..
Although not santioned by the company there was an annual gambling game that played an important role to the community. People would buy a date and time for the arrival of the First Barge of the year. This was no mean feet as the barge would leave Fort McMurray Alberta and the whim of mother nature. Remember there was the winter road a few months before and the ice was over three feet thick.
We had a winter carnival every year called Freeze n' Frolic. The mascott was Segak
the raven. He was a pleasent sort sporting a pair of earmuffs and a scarf around his neck. It was a week of festivities including a ice skating winter carnival, carnival night at the High School and to top it off there was a weekend of activities on Martin Lake by the Norcanair Base. Snowmobile races were a great crowd pleaser. A challenge to the students was an egg drop. Norcanair would load specially designed packages, complete with a raw egg in the middle, and drop them from one hundred feet. Scrambled eggs anyone? The Kawanis club was the sponsor of a pancake breakfast complete with a rag-time piano player. Fun for all and a great way to have fun in the snow.
After people discovered the old golf course was not working, it was all sand, people in the community selected some crown land and built the Monosa Golf Course, That is MOst NOrthern SAskatchewan Golf Course, sponsored by Musk Oil or at least it should have been. It was east of Eldorado just past Ace Lake. It was claimed from some virgin bush as Ches Pruden discovered digging at ONE tree root all day. When it finally came out it was desided to be used for the annual tournement trophy. Ches fortunately was the luck winner the first year. They did have green for the farway even if some of it was moss and club rules stated you must rake the green after putting out. Somethings never change..
This something we all take for granted but one must understand how it is made to understand it. The first radio signals reach UC in 1962 as CBC. Data was collected in Yellowknife and transmitted by scatterwave at Hay River and Fort Smith. It was converted to normal AM signals at a blistering transmition rate of forty (40) watts. Service was upgraded in January 1975 to a microwave system from Regina. Community announcements, news and weather were added as part of the service. Hey if this didn't sound thrilling there was always skip radio. Radio waves that bounced alone the atmosphere, troposphere, and showed up when they wanted. Thats how we weaned ourselves from the CBC. It was not real reliable but we heard Led Zep alot more this way than with CBC,
We also had a collection of CB radios. The Green Hornet and Little Hector where there with me. My set up was a portable with power supply, power mike and a Quad Beam Arial. I did a few calculations and I stopped at over 200 watts. I shut down the power mike for local. Christmas 1979 we had Australia and Hawaii coming in regularly.
Can you imagine no telephone service with teenagers? It happened. What about my Grandmother trying to call her daughter only to be told by the operator she could not get through. Here is/was the problem.. Look outside your house and what do you see. Telephone poles right? Now place yourself in the north and think about it.. I remember having a four digit phone number when we first moved up there, 4318..
In 1962, along with the tv equipment, outside phone equipment arrived . A year later the services came into action. In 1956 ,there were 201 phones and NO LONG DISTANCE! Any "Outside" contact had to be be radiogram or by mail. Originally, we could not dial direct, we had to go to the operator. If the signal could be sent, it would go to Hay River by scatterwave and then to Edmonton by microwave and the world beyond. It was expencive a fifteen minute from UC to Prince Albert , just over 300 hundred miles, was $14.30 and that was at two thirds off. At the same time a phone call from Regina to Newfoundland would cost $4.55. Were we ever happy to get direct dial in 1975
Check back soon as this is a continually updated page....
Eldorado Sask
Town Site
Churches
Schools
Other Communities
Bushell
was the only port, yes port, in the province and acted as the only way to get large packages like cars, fuels, mine supplies and a whole bunch more to the communities. It also acted as the first piece of perminant road one saw at the end of the six week temperary road we called the winter road. A major project the carved its way across cut lines and frozen lakes . A twenty eight hour trip from Prince Albert. Barges came from Fort McMurray, Alberta. Bushell was six miles west of town.
Goldfields
was a gold mine that closed in the fifties and the headframe remained intact until arson claimed it in 1980. You could safely climb the headframe and see the south shore of Lake Athabasca and the beautiful sand dunes clear as a bell.
Gunnar
was a uranium mine not far from Bushell but was not connected to us by any roads.Gunnar mines didn't want miners going into town, it was a dry camp It had its own airport and port. It was on tip of Crackingstone Penisula. When I lived there you could go to Gunnar and see what was left of the town by the winter road. One could even buy a house for a dollar but you had to move it , hence the deal The headframe was sealed in the sixties and the open pit flooded.
Freeze n' Frolic
Monosa
Were was I, Ken introduced the new teaching staff and gave us a visual tour of our new home. It was great with all the conveniances of modern schooling, kiln, welding and automotive shop, two Gyms, kitchen and huge library.
Radio
Telephone service
