A Town Named Arntfield

 Look at any good map of Canada and you will find in Northern Quebec, east of Noranda and Rouyn on Highway 117 near the Ontario border, the town of Arntfield.  This town with a population of barely four hundred has a direct historic relationship to our family name. 

That relationship is due to the efforts of my great grand uncle Fred Arntfield. Fred was the youngest son of family patriarch Henry Arntfield who had, before his youngest child’s birth, lost an arm in a tragic industrial accident.  Fred was born April 27, 1872, the day his father would lose his second arm as the result of a similar accident.  It at first seemed that this son was destined to work, as had his father, in the woollen mill, then the principal employer in Hespeler, Ontario where the family lived. Leaving school at the age of ten to help support his family, Fred soon began working twelve hour days at the mill for two dollars per week. 

Bit by bit, however, Fred managed to improve his lot, eventually marrying and moving to Toronto where hw built a fine stone home on Ellis Avenue in Swansea. It was there that he started small dental supply business which saw him convert his basement into a sort of small factory for manufacture of the supplies.  His grandson Don Arntfield recalled drive shafts and belting hanging from the high basement ceilings, all part of the equipment used in Fred’s small manufacturing concern.  

After caring for his mother there until her 1917 death, Fred, a few years later, then decided to try hishand at prospecting for gold.  Said to be the kind of person who made a varied host of friends, Fred had befriended a prospector who announced in the summer of 1923 that he had staked some Crown land

Fred Arntfield

in Fred’s name in Northwestern Quebec for potential gold mining rights.  Intrigued, Fred decided to inspect the property, taking the train from Toronto to Kirkland Lake from where he then walked the fifty to sixty miles to the property which looked like little more than swamp land. 

Deciding, however, not to return home empty handed, Fred, with no mining experience of his own, enlisted the help of another prospector he had met to instruct him on what exactly to look for in the area.  Making use of his newfound knowledge, Fred eventually staked and acquired what turned out to be over two thousand acres of prime gold property in Beauchastel Township.  After several weeks in the Quebec wilderness during which  his wife and three children had not heard from him, Fred, his efforts having paid off, eventually managed to send a telegram, likely from Noranda, exclaiming “we’re in the gold mining business”. 

From that time on Fred and his only son Ray worked full time in the business raising money in winter to be spent in further exploration in the summer.  Grandson Don Arntfield described them both as pioneers going into the area only one year after Noranda had been reached by rail from Southern Quebec and before the existence of any rail service from Ontario. For years Fred and Ray would annually trek into the property from Kirkland Lake along the Toronto and Northern Railway’s right of way.  It was not until the 1930s that there would be rail service from Kirkland Lake to Noranda in the 1930s and the eventual Kirkland Lake-Noranda road would intersect the Arntfield property with another road pushed north from Ville Marie, Quebec. 

Not surprisingly a community would grow up at these crossroads, a community that would end up bearing the name of the nearby gold mine of Arntfield.  After rail service was inaugurated, it was at one time even possible to purchase a preprinted ticket to Arntfield when travelling on the Toronto and Northern Railway. 

With the Arntfield mine showing great promise, the money necessary to put it into production and to build the mill was all raised, mostly in the United States, during the height of the Great Depression with an original capitalization of three million shares.  With gold fever striking the family, even my grandfather, John Denyes Arntfield, a first cousin of Fred in search of work during the depression, worked in the mine for a time. My grandfather also purchased shares in Arntfield Mines Limited, confident that wealth would soon be his. 

At its peak, the company was listed on the stock exchange and garnered a reasonable amount of publicity, particularly when it began actual production in 1936 and poured its first gold brick.  Arntfield, quickly becoming something of a boom town soon boasted a bank, hotel, movie theatre, and bowling alley.  Corporate offices were maintained on Toronto’s Bay Street, Fred at the helm as the quintessential self-made man.  Unfortunately, however, Fred would die on July 28, 1941 in Toronto from injuries received in a motor vehicle accident.  His Globe and Mail obituary paid tribute to his fundraising skills and further stated that his mining career marked one of the few times in Canadian mining history when a mine had been financed and brought to production almost single-handedly by one man. 

Fred’s death also marked the end of production at the mine.  While almost three million dollars of gold at the then prevailing prices had been taken out of the mine, cash flow problems and thinning veins of gold which could only produce low grade ore eventually ended operations.  Although a much better grade of ore was found towards the end of the mine’s history, the find came too late.  With the final blow said to be the breakdown of the giant jaw crusher needed for production, the mill had to be shut down. 

After Fred’s death, his son Ray reorganized the company, paid debts, and made numerous attempts to refinance mine operations.  His continued enthusiasm and belief in the future potential of the mine is very much evident in correspondence from him in the 1960s.  That continuing gold fever on his part perhaps explains why, despite a continuing poor economic climate for gold mining, Ray for years continued to use his own money to keep the property in good standing.  Upon Ray’s death, his son Don continued the dream for a few years until eventually the Province of Quebec confiscated the property for tax arrears and sold it to another concern. 

Arntfield 1946 Postcard

Arntfield today is a fairly dreary small French Canadian town of 400 which is part of the Regional
Municipality of Noranda-Rouyn.  Apart from posing in front of the sign proclaiming the name of the town approaching and leaving Arntfield or sending home a postcard stamped at the Arntfield post office, there is nothing much to do of interest for any family member who might visit there.  Although the glory days of the Arntfield gold mine and the boom town it created are long over, the Arntfield name lives on as a very small dot on the map. Present day Arntfields, all related, can claim a family connection to that dot thanks to Fred Arntfield so long ago.   

                                                                                                                                David Arntfield