Tom Payne’s Search for Gold Alice V. Payne President Arctic Enterprises Limited

Alice V. Payne

Tom Payne’s Search for Gold
The story of Tom Payne is an adventure book, amazing, heroic and true. Born to a prominent British physician, the young Tom’s restlessness led him to western Canada in 1912, where he first tackled the farming industry. After a stint in northern Manitoba, freighting supplies for the developing base metal mines near Flin Flon, he drove a Linn tractor for the ill-fated MacAlpine expedition. This was one of the first attempts at aerial prospecting in the far north, but Tom ended up seal hunting on the ice of Hudson Bay with an Inuit friend. By the early 1930s, he moved to the portage at Fort Smith in northern Alberta where he succumbed to the lure of prospecting, inspired by Labine’s pitchblende discoveries at Great Bear Lake. Grubstaked by his employers, his first efforts were met with disappointment and near starvation, but he would not give up. Tom finally discovered a rich gold mine among the quartz veins at Yellowknife; he formed Quin Kola Gold Mines Limited and made an historic mining deal with Cominco. Tom’s four claims became part of the ‘Con’ mine, one of Canada’s largest operating gold mines. Instead of retiring later in life, he found new partners and drilled an oil well in Alberta. His story illustrates the heady excitement of frontier exploration, with the persistence and luck required for success.