A lot has been mentioned lately in regards to the Sir Harry Oakes Chateau in Kirkland Lake.
Owned by the Ontario Heritage Belief and operated by the City of Kirkland Lake, the chateau is a monument commemorating the early days of the Northern Ontario gold rushes, the prospectors who made the discoveries and the boys who developed the mines and the communities within the area. Since 1983, the Museum of Northern Historical past, which initially lived within the assay workplace of the Wright-Hargreaves Mine, has been housed in Sir Harry’s former abode.
The chateau was inbuilt 1929 after Sir Harry’s authentic Kirkland Lake home was destroyed by hearth. The copper roof and the craftsman and shingle type design are spectacular. The house additionally boasts a six-car storage with a drive-through basement (I assume he was a automotive nut). The home was used primarily when Sir Harry and his household had been visiting city, his mining properties and pursuits. His everlasting residence was Oak Corridor, a 37-room, Tudor-style, three-storey monstrosity-of-a-mansion in Niagara Falls (now serving because the headquarters for the Niagara Parks Fee, since 1982).
So, who was this Northern Ontario big-wig, and why is his story nonetheless talked about as we speak?
Properly, to start with, Harry Oakes is acknowledged by the Canadian Mining Corridor of Fame as “the self-made prospector and mine-finder who reworked Ontario’s Kirkland Lake district into one of many world’s most well-known gold camps. His excellent achievement was the invention and growth of the Lake Shore mine, the primary vital discover in that space”. The Lake Shore mine was the most important producer within the Kirkland Lake camp and was thought-about, at one time, one of many richest gold producers within the Western Hemisphere. Between 1918 and 1965, the mine produced about eight million ounces of gold.
Harry Oakes was born in Sangerville, Maine, in 1874. He was nicely educated, attending Foxcroft Academy, Bowdoin Faculty and the Syracuse Medical Faculty — however he was seduced by the lure of the Klondike in 1899, and prospecting turned his ardour. His seek for gold took him from the Yukon to Alaska, New Zealand, Australia, the Philippines, Mexico, Africa and again to the American West the place he heard in regards to the silver discoveries in Cobalt and the gold finds within the Porcupine. He hurried again in 1910 however was dissatisfied to seek out each areas closely staked with no claims accessible for miles. Armed with about $2 in his pocket, Oakes headed to the Swastika space on a tip, being the fortunate man that he was, he discovered gold-bearing porphyry on the south shore of Kirkland Lake and he staked the realm.
Oakes continued his exploration work and was grubstaked by Tom and George Powerful, which allowed him to proceed the hunt. By the top of 1912, the Powerful-Oakes Mine (later the Toburn) was in operation. Cash from that operation allowed Oakes to return to his authentic discover and sink a shaft. The preliminary findings had been bleak however Oakes was satisfied there was one thing to pursue. He shaped the Lake Shore Mines Firm to lift funds to proceed with the onerous work of exploration. His tenacity lastly paid off in 1918 when employees hit a significant vein (the “major break”) and the Lake Shore mine made Oakes a multi-millionaire — and Kirkland Lake a brand new northern mining city.
Oakes would go on to be acknowledged as an excellent and beneficiant man. He cut up his time between Kirkland Lake and Niagara Falls, however by 1934, moved his household to the Bahamas to flee the crippling tax invoice imposed on him by R.B. Bennett’s Conservative authorities (85 per cent of his gold mine income in taxes, Oakes claimed it value him $17,500 a day in tax to reside in Canada). He put his cash to good use in his new tropical dwelling, contributing to the constructing of the Nassau Airport and the Hilton Resort. King George VI made him a Baronet of the UK in 1939, in recognition of his philanthropic actions.
Having fun with his time as one of many richest males within the British Empire (and an everyday dinner visitor of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, then Governor of the Bahamas), Sir Harry is credited with kick-starting the sluggish Bahamian financial system with investments that might stimulate the burgeoning vacationer commerce within the Caribbean.
However it all got here to a crashing finish on July 7, 1943, when Sir Harry Oakes was brutally murdered in his mattress at his Nassau property. Found by Harold Christie, a household good friend who simply occurred to be staying within the mansion in a single day, Sir Harry had been bludgeoned (or shot, relying on whose testimony you consider) after which set on hearth whereas he slept. Christie claimed to not have heard or seen something.
The weird homicide methodology, the botched investigation, the arrest of his son-in-law (and his subsequent acquittal), the actual fact Christie was by no means a suspect, the manipulation of the trial by the Duke of Windsor and the failure to seek out the individual or individuals chargeable for the demise of the richest man within the Bahamas has created one of many world’s greatest unsolved crime tales. And to suppose it began proper right here within the North.
