Cobalt: Cradle of the Demon Metals, Birth of a Mining Superpower

by Charlie Angus

Overview

Finalist for the 2023 Trillium Book Award

The world is desperate for cobalt. It drives the proliferation of digital and clean technologies. But this “demon metal” has a horrific present and a troubled history.

The modern search for cobalt has brought investors back to a small town in Northern Canada, a place called Cobalt. Like the demon metal, this town has a dark and turbulent history. 

The tale of the early-twentieth-century mining rush at Cobalt has been told as a settler’s adventure, but Indigenous people had already been trading in metals from the region for two thousand years. And the events that happened here — the theft of Indigenous lands, the exploitation of a multicultural workforce, and the destruction of the natural environment — established a template for resource extraction that has been exported around the world. 

Charlie Angus reframes the complex and intersectional history of Cobalt within a broader international frame — from the conquistadores to the Western gold rush to the struggles in the Democratic Republic of Congo today. He demonstrates how Cobalt set Canada on its path to become the world’s dominant mining superpower.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781487009496
Publisher:	House of Anansi Press
Publication date:	02/01/2022
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

CHARLIE ANGUS is a nationally recognized politician, author, and musician. He has published nine books and is the recipient of numerous writing awards, including the Trillium Book Award finalist Cobalt: Cradle of the Demon Metals, Birth of a Mining Superpower. Angus has served in the Canadian Parliament for twenty years. He has earned a national reputation as a fierce fighter for social justice and Indigenous rights. Angus was the founding member of Toronto punk band L’etranger. He is the leader of the roots band Grievous Angels; their ninth album is Last Call for Cinderella. Angus lives in Cobalt, Ontario, with his wife, author Brit Griffin. They have three daughters.

Table of Contents

Map xi

Preface: The Demon Metal xiii

Introduction: The Cradle 1

Part I Discovery

Chapter 1 Origin Stories 11

Chapter 2 The El Dorado of the North 21

Chapter 3 Cobalt as Imagined by Wall Street 29

Chapter 4 Follow the Money 39

Part II Settlement

Chapter 5 Boom Town 49

Chapter 6 Cobalt as Colony 59

Chapter 7 Women and the Domestication of Frontier 71

Chapter 8 The Myth of the Gunless Frontier 87

Part III Class Conflict

Chapter 9 Class War in Cobalt 105

Chapter 10 A Place Called Hell 119

Chapter 11 Empire Ontario and Temagami 127

Chapter 12 The Birth of an Industry 137

Part IV Spectacle

Chapter 13 The Fight of the Century 149

Chapter 14 The Canadian Holy Grail 159

Chapter 15 Cobalt as a Vaudeville Production 165

Part V Catastrophe and Collapse

Chapter 16 Fire, Racial Backlash, and Epidemic 177

Chapter 17 The War Comes Home 197

Chapter 18 The Final Battle 213

Part VI Cobalt Goes Global

Chapter 19 Exporting Hinterland 231

Chapter 20 The Family Business 241

Chapter 21 The Return to Cobalt 251

Conclusion: Rabbit Decolonizes El Dorado 257

Acknowledgements 263

Notes 265

Selected Bibliography 303

Credits 319

What People are Saying About This

Maude Barlow

Fantastic! Gripping! A page-turner. In telling the story of Cobalt, Ontario, Charlie Angus has told the story of Canada: the rapacious search for easy wealth, the plunder of nature and Indigenous lands, the abuse of women and ethnic minorities, and the creation of a Canadian mining industry still leaving its terrible footprint in the Global South. But Cobalt is also the story of resistance and reconciliation; the birth of union power and the rights of working people; the collective fight for health care, education, and social security for all; and the pursuit of justice. The book is filled with great stories, larger-than-life characters, and rich history. I highly recommend it.

James Daschuk

Cobalt is an epic story of a mostly forgotten town. From the silver screen to Silicon Valley, from the Guggenheims to the Montreal Canadiens, from the predatory capitalism of the Gilded Age to the Cold War to the globalized mining industry of the twenty-first century, the power unleashed in Cobalt more than a century ago continues to reverberate in Canada and the world. It is a cautionary tale of a land and economy based on resource extraction, and, as a northerner, I was at once elevated and infuriated by the events recounted so masterfully in this book. With Cobalt, Charlie Angus has hit paydirt.

From the Publisher

PRAISE FOR CHARLIE ANGUS AND CHILDREN OF THE BROKEN TREATY

Winner, 2016 Leadership Award by the Ontario History and Social Science Teachers Association (OHASSTA)

Winner, Foreword INDIES Award (Bronze, Political Science, Adult Nonfiction)
Winner of two Saskatchewan Book Awards: the University of Regina Faculty of Education and Campion College Award for Publishing in Education and the Ministry of Parks, Culture and Sport Publishing Award

“A legitimate must-read.” — Quill & Quire

“This book affected me deeply. I highly recommend it.” — Vicky Johnston, Policy Options

“A very important book.” — Doug Cuthand, CBC News

“In reading this historic chronicle of the painful poverty among the Cree in James Bay, Ontario, Canada, I keep thinking how incredible it is that a member of parliament could care so much about his constituency and devote so much of his time to helping the beautiful people of the land of the Cree and Ojibway in sub-Arctic country.” — Alanis Obomsawin, filmmaker.

“In this must-read book, Charlie Angus shares Shannen [Koostachin]’s inspiring journey from a child going to school in run down trailers next to a toxic waste dump to one of 45 children in the world nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize. Shannen did everything in her power to ensure First Nations children would get the proper education they deserve, and after reading this book you will, too.” — Cindy Blackstock, First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada

“The book, along with Edmund Metatawabin’s Up Ghost River, tells the story of sustained evil done by our government to indigenous peoples, who have the right to the rights of Canadian citizens. This is discomforting reading, but essential.” — John Ralston Saul, author of The Comeback

“If you think Canada provides equal treatment to all of its citizens and that our injustices to indigenous people were in the past, think again. Angus sheds light on one of the ugliest features of our nation, that we deny First Nations children the chance at a proper education, that we have written them off and that the legacy of unequal education that began with residential schools continues to the present.” — James Daschuk, author of Clearing the Plains

Editorial Reviews

12/06/2021

Canadian MP Angus reveals in this harrowing history the damaging legacy of resource extraction in his country. He notes that the demand for cobalt, a key component in electric vehicles, smartphones, and laptops, has brought investors and mining companies back to Cobalt, Ontario, where railway workers discovered silver in 1903, sparking a silver rush that, by 1906, had seen “more than $3.6 million... dug from the ground.” Angus links the Guggenheim family and other investors who began to dominate the region’s mining interests to the extermination of local Indigenous tribes, environmental destruction, and fraudulent investment schemes. He also notes that unlike in the U.S., where “a steady march of settlers” opened the West, the history of mining in Canada centered around the creation of “outposts” such as Cobalt, which “was treated by officials as little more than an industrial worksite where thousands of families lived.” Offering massive financial incentives, and few, if any, safety or environmental regulations, these economically devastated “hinterlands” now litter Canada, according to Angus. As modern-day prospectors return to Cobalt (where the namesake metal was often discarded during the silver boom), Angus strikes a persuasive note of caution. This immersive history includes a trenchant warning about the unknown costs of the race to a clean energy future. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

Charlie Angus passionately and comprehensively pulls apart the existing narrative about Northern Ontario by exploring the extraordinary history of an overlooked town … In deftly handled prose, Angus details the media manipulation, violence, and government collusion (or ineptitude) that would gradually turn mining corporations into superpowers that spin fictional stories of a ‘nicer’ frontier in Ontario’s north. In actuality, Cobalt suffered municipal dysfunction, disease, xenophobia, murder, and catastrophe, and ushered in an era where the land was transformed into a series of company towns in order to bolster economies in the south and grow a nation.

Quill & Quire