Diego MacDougall has gold fever.
And if the explosion of TV shows on prospecting for gold underground, in the ocean and in the woods is anything to go by, he is not alone.
Today while the majority of the gold in B.C. is mined commercially (such as at the recently re-opened Bralorne lode gold mine) there is a growing culture of amateur prospectors that have caught their own gold fever.
"Start where there's history, because we never got it all," says 11-year Whistler local Diego MacDougall, who owns three claims in the Bralorne/Bridge River area.
"People ask, 'Is there still gold out there?' Oh yeah, There's still tons of gold to be had, its just deep in the mountains. All the easy stuff has been gotten."
MacDougall has had a fascination with the treasures that lie in the soil, and the process of unearthing them, since a young age. His move to B.C. in 2002 reignited his spark to seek the alluring glitter.
"I've always been a rock hound, always studying them since I was a kid. I moved out to Whistler and one of the first things that I did was make a pan, then I headed out to a creek. I just sat by a creek and basically played in the mud."
It was not long before MacDougall was buried in research on the geology of the area, cross-referencing historical data to pinpoint areas that could yield significant gold deposits.
"I did some homework on it, studied up on the matter and figured out how it all works. Next thing you know I've got claims with really good potential.
"The main goal is to mine it with machinery one day, that's what I would like to do. You're taking soil samples up top, you're hiking dirt out and panning it and seeing what's there. Then you put it on a map and try to figure out the pattern — if there is one. It's one hell of a study.
"My newest claims are 200 metres above the river, so I'm looking (for gold) up top, but I also journey down into the river because... there's always gold there. You can always put your pan in the water and find a nice speck of gold, even if it's a tiny one. It's definitely worth the hike."
Starting with the bare essentials of the amateur prospector — a gold pan, shovel and pick axe — MacDougall has built up more advanced equipment to increase his productivity on his placer claims — after all, the more dirt you can wash, the more gold you'll hopefully find.
The sluice box utilizes flowing water over a series of riffles to catch finer flakes of gold, a technology that has changed little over the centuries. Despite gold being 19 times more dense than the water around it, finer gold flakes can wash straight through the sluice box, especially if it is not set up with the correct gradient and flow rate of water. This is overcome with the rate that the ore can be washed, meaning despite the minute losses, more gold flakes are recovered per hour over hand panning.
The first prospectors on the Fraser River used this technique extensively, but with the increased amount of sediment in the river the salmon population suffered. Today it is illegal to run a sluice box in any river in B.C.; however, with the use of a high banker (a modified sluice box that pumps water from the river) prospectors are able to deposit the tailings — containing a harmful suspension of sediment — away from the flowing water.
"It's a mini wash plant essentially," says MacDougall, who can spend weeks, and even months at a time, washing ore on his placer claims during the summer and fall.
"I had that opportunity last fall. I went out there with my high banker and my brother joined me. I was itching to get out there the whole month but by the time we got out there we had just four days before the weather turned. It took us a couple of days to hike our gear up the canyon and set up camp. We ran about an eight-hour day's worth of dirt and we pulled a gram and a half of gold out of there. At the time that would have been worth about $150. That's OK for a day of work, even if you split that between two guys.
"And that was just the top material. If we had been out there for the whole month it just would have gotten better and better. The deeper you go, the better it gets."
While making money from a hobby is a welcome bonus, the possibility of striking it rich and affording an early retirement was slim on the Fraser during the gold rush, let alone the combed-over waterways of B.C. 150 years later. Independent full-time prospectors are few and far between, particularly due to B.C.'s long and snowy winters.
But it's not all about money. The all-important experience is the search for the gold and the places it takes you.
"Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life, even though it's some of the hardest work I've ever done," says MacDougall.
"Guys spend tons of money to go fishing for a fish that they have to throw back. I get to keep my catch. I'm not in it for the money, that's not the MO. I work here (in Whistler) and then go out there. But I can go down to the creek and pan a decent wage at the end of the day."
Tourism Strikes Gold
Recreational gold panning is a relatively simple technique to learn, making it an accessible pastime and an alternative way to spend a day on the banks of one of B.C.'s many remote creeks and rivers.
"There's always been a fascination with gold, it never seems to go away," says Kirstin Clausen, the executive director of the Britannia Mine Museum. The copper mine also produced over 500,000 ounces of gold during its 70 years of operation, and of the 60,000 visitors a year, majority will try their hand at the gold panning troughs set up at the end of the mine tour.
"Most people do the gold panning and we let people pan as long as they want," says Clausen.
"Most people spend 10 or 15 minutes at it and they might find flake or two, but some people will spend hours at it and go home with up to 20 flakes of gold."
Any gold found by visitors is theirs to keep, so the valuable flakes need to be replenished in the troughs several times during a busy day. The flakes are mainly sourced from a B.C. gold trading company and generally come from the Barkerville area, or they can be bought from amateur prospector, like MacDougall.
"We buy roughly about eight to 10 ounces of gold per year that we salt our troughs with," says Clausen. We have a process now that we know to add between 35 and 50 flakes for about every 50 people. On a busy day we salt our troughs throughout the day so there's always gold in them."
To simulate the natural setting of a riverbank, hematite and pyrite (Fool's Gold) are also added to the gravel, making finding the bright yellow gold flakes all the more exciting.
"If you're diligent you will find it, our goal is for visitors to have the joy of finding gold," says Clausen. "It's really cool to watch a little kid recognize gold in a pan."
Gold 101
There is no doubt that gold shines with a glowing luster unlike any mineral pulled from the earth, captivating those that are skilled and lucky enough to find it. Throughout human history the search for gold has lead to conflict and death. But the history books record that nothing beats it as a symbol of wealth, prosperity and social prestige. Its rarity, as well as its colour, has made it a desirable commodity throughout time.
The World Gold Council estimates that the total volume of gold mined to the end of 2012 was approximately 174,100 tonnes, which could fit in a 20.8-metre cube. Over half of that gold has been mined since 1950.
Nestled between platinum and mercury on the Periodic Table, gold (represented by the symbol Au from the Latin word Aurum meaning "glowing dawn") is far more useful than just symbolizing one's social status. It is incredibly malleable and ductile; a single ounce can be hammered into a 30-metre square sheet, or drawn into a wire stretching eight kilometres. It has high conductivity and is resistant to corrosion, which is why it is used in almost every type of electronic device.
The world demand for this precious metal means it will probably be mined for the remainder of the human civilization, but for every corporate mining operation there are thousands of individuals journeying into the hills to look for gold on their own. Today a new wave of amateur prospectors is scouring the woods, streams and backcountry of B.C. for potential riches, and with gold currently valued at over $1,300 (down from a high of $1,700 in the last 12 months), there is still worth in every flake.
The Golden Butterfly and the birth of B.C.
"That most infectious of all maladies – a gold fever – had broken out, and had seized every man, woman and child." – Royal Engineer Lt. Richard Charles Mayne, 1858
It was the amateur prospectors who joined the great gold rushes of the last two centuries, several of which occurred right here in B.C. that established the colony of British Columbia in the first place.
On April 25, 1858, the Commodore, a side-wheel steamer from San Francisco, landed at Fort Victoria bringing 450 passengers — instantly doubling the population of the sleepy fur trading post and the headquarters of the Hudson Bay Company (HBC). It was the only ocean port and British colony in New Caledonia, as B.C. was then known, and served as the main gateway to the goldfields. Thousands more followed on steam ships, mostly men of a rough calibre hailing from California bearing guns, bowie knives and packs containing wash pans and shovels. The secret of the Fraser River was revealed after the HBC shipped 22 kilograms of gold to the mint in San Francisco. Newspapers touted a "New Eldorado" north of the 49th Parallel music to the ear of prospectors after the Californian gold rush had lapsed.
The Governor of Vancouver Island, James Douglas, was wary of the sudden flood of miners looking to enter the Fraser, which he declared "are represented as being, with some exceptions, a specimen of the worst of the population of San Francisco; the very dregs, in fact, of society." Concerned not only of the impact on the HBC's fur trade and potential for conflict with the First Nations, Douglas realized a threat of annexation by the U.S. if the Crown did not assert its authority on the mainland.
With two Royal Navy ships at his disposal at nearby Esquimalt, Douglas appointed gold commissioners and stationed one of the ships at the mouth of the Fraser River, proudly flying the British flag. Every miner that entered the Fraser was charged a 10-shilling license fee.
On November 19, 1858, a ceremony was held at Fort Langley proclaiming the mainland Colony of British Columbia and Douglas was sworn in as Governor and commander-in-chief, an authority derived from a commission issued by Queen Victoria.
It was an anticipatory move by Douglas, who as a fur trader had witnessed the influx of American settlers to Oregon, which resulted in Britain's claim to the region being trumped. He was well aware of the American belief in the "Manifest Destiny," that the U.S. was destined by God to spread over the entire North American continent.
Douglas had maintained an amicable relationship with First Nations through the trade of fur, salmon and berries, and negotiated treaties when he could to cement strong relationships. Protecting the interests of the First Nations people was prudent, lest he require their assistance to defend the colony against American territorial ambitions.
But the growing number of miners pushing further and further up the Fraser were driving the Nlaka'pamux people from the rich gold along the river, which at the time was out of reach of British colonial authority still headquartered in Victoria. In 1858 the Nlaka'pamux blamed the low salmon run on the placer mining operations washing tons of sediment into the river
In July of that year a group of 25 miners travelling to the Fraser Canyon from the Okanagan Valley stole and destroyed provisions at an aboriginal camp, ambushing the unarmed First Nations as they returned the next day, killing approximately 10 and injuring as many.
Tensions were already high in the Fraser that summer with several skirmishes, but the worst violence broke out in the infamous "Fraser River War" when the Nlaka'pamux sent the headless bodies of two French miners, who had allegedly assaulted an Nlaka'pamux woman, floating down the Fraser River towards the mining camps.
Retribution from the miners soon followed with willing volunteers forming six companies of militia to press north and secure the rich gold river bars. As many as three First Nations villages were burnt with the exact number of deaths unknown, but one Captain Snyder of the New York Pike Guard militia soon convinced the miners that the war should be one of pacification, not extermination. Snyder arrived in Lytton and met with 27 chiefs and offered them an ultimatum; accept peace or face the prospect of being forever driven from their lands. Several written and oral peace treaties were brokered and by the time reports had reached Victoria and Douglas set out for the Fraser to respond, the brief but bloody war was over.
With the gold rush of the Fraser River (and later the Cariboo) attracting immigrants from all over the world and creating brief yet booming economic period, B.C. owes its very existence as a colony, and later a province of Canada, to this lustrous metal. No other mineral has been such a source of obsession, whether by a multinational mining corporations, or individuals who spend their summer weekends sifting dirt, constantly searching for that elusive glitter.
Says MacDougall: "I've just always liked playing in the sand and in the dirt and I've always liked gold.
"Mum said do what you love so I'm given 'er a shot."
