The Studer Story

Three Studer brothers prospected in northern Saskatchewan - Ernest, John, and Adolph. Of the three, Adolph will be most remembered as one of Saskatchewan's most dogged prospector-promoters. The story of his life in the bush, as told by his son Vernon, is quoted in its entirety, partly because the Studer name deserves wide recognition, but also because the story mentions names of Northerners who might otherwise be forgotten, but without whom, as Vernon says, they could never have made it . . . .

My father first came to Saskatchewan in 1917 from Kansas, originally from Switzerland. He worked as a clerk in a store in Kansas. They all came together - John, Ernest, and my Dad, Adolph. They heard of the tremendous possibilities, "Go North, Young Man, Go North". So the bug got them. They wanted to get into the Far North, which at that time was probably at Loon Lake. So that's where they headed, northwest of Battleford. There the three of them took out homesteads in 1919.

In 1922, there was a placer gold flurry and a rush at Waterhen River. Dad was always interested in gold. They went up in the spring of 1923 by horses. They staked placer claims on the Waterhen River, north of Goodsoil, south and west of Big River, near the Alberta border.

They put in a sluice, but the gold was too fine. They dug a shaft, but it was caving in on them continually. They worked there off and on, but they were breaking land on the homesteads, so they had to go back. They worked about a month and a half or two months that summer when they could, they would take turns going back. They came back the following year, but they found out it wasn't a good enough grade, so they gave it up.

In 1929, after the "crash", he went into the Mudjatik Country, actually in 1931. This was straight north of Ile-a-la Crosse, this time he was really North. They went into a lake, and after they had worked there it was called Studer Lake, and it's still called Studer Lake today. It's a pretty large lake, straight north of Dipper Rapids on the Churchill River.

They made one trip in from Ile-a-la Crosse, they hired some Native people there and went in by boat. They found it too difficult to get in. n 1932, Dad purchased a diamond drill, they had run into some very interesting mineralization in the Mudjatik area. It was low-grade copper- zinc, and another zone they thought carried quite a bit of gold. It only ran about fifty cents to the ton.

He spent one winter there. During that period they had a very, very bad time, because Dad was inexperienced on a diamond drill, and they had lost several bits — they had "mudded them in", and they didn't get down to where they should have, so they finally gave up, and came down to the University to see Dr. Mawdsley.

Dr. Mawdsley was a professor of geology at the University of Saskatchewan at Saskatoon, and a very good friend of Dad's, and Dad would visit him on every occasion he was in Saskatoon. Dr. Mawdsley would advise him on areas to prospect.

Financing for the Waterhen gold operation was entirely on their own. For the Mudjatik they formed a syndicate. It was called Studer Brothers Diamond Drilling and Exploration. I've still got some of the old letterheads. They raised money from people in the Loon Lake area who had faith in what they were doing.

An example of the cooperation that often existed between the University and the prospector in the field was the friendship of Dr. Mawdsley and Adolph Studer, and how the prospector was guided by the university professor. According to his son Vernon, Adolph Studer's next move was upon the advice of Dr. Mawdsley . . . .

Anyway, on going back to Saskatoon again, Dr. Mawdsley suggested he try the Sulphide Lake area, which at that time was called Dog Lake. It is 25 miles north of La Ronge.

Again in the spring, he left with my uncle John and another man by the name of George Diamond. They drove from Prince Albert to Waskesiu and went down the Waskesiu River by boat and motor to Montreal Lake, where they hired Tommy Clark, who, incidentally, is still alive today, living at Kinoosao on Reindeer Lake. He became a very good friend of Dad's, and when I met him at Co-op Point recently I had to tell him that Dad had passed away.

George Diamond guided them down the Montreal River to La Ronge. It was a tough trip, not only physically, but also financially, as they had only so many dollars to work with. They got across Lac la Ronge and into Sulphide Lake. He wrote in his diary that he liked the area, that the rocks looked good, and that he was going to return. They camped on a small island on Sulphide Lake.

On returning to La Ronge they picked up Tommy Clark and made the return trip. They got back to Montreal Lake, okay, but they had no funds, nothing to pay Tommy Clark with.

So they said, "How would you like the boat and motor?" and he said it was fine with him. They still had the truck. That's all.

Some of the oldtimers we got to know in La Ronge over the years were Andy Hastings and, of course, Chris Olsen with whom we used to stay back in the thirties when we came to La Ronge. Also Dave Patterson we knew very well because he used to contact us many a time by radio beyond his regular hours. He was the radio man at La Ronge back in the early days.

The Studers became attached to the La Ronge area, especially Sulphide Lake, which eventually became the family home . . . .

In 1936, when we arrived there as a family, Kirkby was the RCMP officer at La Ronge and he helped us in many ways when we came into La Ronge. If there was no place to stay, we'd stay at the jail.

Prior to this, in 1933, Dad went back north again. At that time the M.L.A. was Dick Hall. Dad found that Dick Hall had some property tied up in the Sulphide Lake area. Incidentally, Dad, in the years to come, due to the sulphides in the area, called the lake Sulphide Lake rather than Dog Lake, because there were several Dog Lakes around the North, and it still keeps that name today.

Dad learned that Dick Hall wanted his property prospected, and possibly diamond drilled. It was just north of Sulphide, on a small lake between here and Contact Lake. It's called Mikiwap, or Clearwater, today. However, he didn't get anything concrete on this until 1934.

In 1934, he moved the diamond drill onto the property and drilled one or two holes. They had to pack water for the drilling on a yoke. Anyway, they worked, and left the drill over winter and came back in 1935. In 1935, they drilled practically all summer My mother and my youngest sister, who at that time was below school age, came in and they spent the summer there - diamond drilling and working on this property.

Ed Swain was Mining Recorder in Regina at that time, one of the real oldtimers in the Department of Mineral Resources. When it came time to record the work, Ed Swain told Dad, "I'm sorry. There's no property."

Dad asked him what he should do, and Swain said, "I would suggest you see this man Dick Hall, and work out some kind of a deal with him. Perhaps as a partner, you've worked all summer, and you want to file this work, but there's no property."

Actually Hall had had it staked, but he was the type of fellow that thought once you staked it you have it forever, but that, of course, is not true. So they did become kind of partners, but this didn't last too long because there were problems, and eventually there was a break.

We, the family, got in there in the fall of 1936. We'd hoped to get out during the summer holidays, but it didn't work out that way because we got in there, and with finances the way they were, we were unable to get out. We were stranded.

The first house on Contact Lake was pretty rough, I remember very well. One of the oldtimers who helped us in those days was Joe Visintine. He was Italian, married to a Native girl, and he was a fur trader. He had stores north of Stanley.

Joe Visintine came through just before freeze-up, and we were very short of supplies. In fact Dad had to arrange to go out for supplies, because we were right out of food. We'd started building a cabin on Contact Lake. We were all quite small then. We had the walls partly up. It was late October. It was starting to freeze already.

I remember the day Dad left to get supplies it was snowing. We were staying in a tent.

Angus Campbell was the pilot, and he said, "Mr. Studer, the weather's not very good. We may be gone longer than we expect, so make your rations go as far as possible."

That was quite a thing to say. We were pretty small most of us. I would have been eleven years old. The oldest, Iona, was thirteen, and the rest were all smaller. So we weren't too much help, really.

But anyway, Dad made it back okay. He came in with Joe Visintine. It was a fairly large aircraft and they split the charter. They spent the night with us, and that's when we got to know Joe Visintine pretty well.

We finally got the cabin finished and spent the winter there. It was about 14 by 20, not very big for six people. Of course, no indoor plumbing or anything. It was very simple, very plain; it was just one large room. At the back end where the bunks were we had put up a wire and mother had put a curtain across.

Another fellow we got to know, and he saved the day a few times for us that winter, was Hector Campbell. He was a rather strange individual who came through on occasion with dog teams. He was trapping through our area to the Churchill River. He'd stop in, and he'd always have some treats for the younger ones. I'll never forget when he'd take me out on occasion with his dogs. He had a terrific dog team.

Before that first arduous winter was over Adolph Studer must have been feeling concern for the future. Was he on a wild goose chase? Perhaps he was again in the wrong area, and the hopes of Dr. Mawdsley and himself would never be realized. But there were brighter days ahead . . .

The following spring, in April, Dad was prospecting along the shores of Sulphide Lake, and he picked up the first high-grade gold showing. This was what we call the "Discovery Showing", not far from where our cabin is today on Sulphide Lake. It looked good, very interesting, so he started staking. It started a gold rush. Angus Campbell said word would not get out, but in no time at all people were staking like mad, and the whole area was staked by the late summer of 1937.

Since most of the work was centered around the Sulphide Lake area, Dad decided in the spring that we would build there. So he selected an area on the shore of Sulphide Lake and started getting out logs, in the spring of 1937. We hired a man from La Ronge by the name of Johnnie Feitz to cut the logs. By the middle of summer, we had a rough cabin constructed. It was larger than the one at Contact Lake, being about 18 by 24. We also started clearing for a garden among the stumps. There was a very heavy growth of trees in the area we'd selected. Stumps were quite a problem and dynamite was very scarce.

That winter we did some trapping, and in 1938 we met a Native fellow, Malachi MacKenzie, who I believe is still alive in Stanley.

We went through a period of trenching the showings. Dad made use of the diamond drill. I remember he didn't have any rock drill, or plugger, so he drilled several holes with the diamond drill, perhaps four feet deep in a row, and then we'd fill them with dynamite and blast.

In the early spring of 1938, he made another gold discovery about 1,000 feet north of our cabin. We call it the "Arseno Showing". It is a fairly large deposit of rusty "gossan"13 with massive arsenopyrite. Dad had been panning this gossan and found there was quite a bit of gold in it, so he decided he would put up a sluice and try to separate some of the gold out of it. This was a failure.

I might add that a sluice is a series of elongated boxes with traps or steps - baffles - where the material is washed down over these baffles, and the gold settles to the bottom because it is the heaviest. We had no pump, so there was a canal dug for the water to run into. Then a windlass was set up, so that a pail would go down, and you wound it up on the windlass, and the water would go into the sluices. Everything was done by hand, and it worked.

The only thing was, we found out after a considerable length of time, that the arsenopyrite was too "harsh". In other words, the gold was tied up in the sulphides. We ended up with a lot of concentrate we, couldn't do anything with at the time. This was given up in late 1938 with a loss.

The next step was more prospecting. Dad and I worked together as partners on the trenching and even the staking. At that time a cousin of mine came into the picture. In 1939 John Krowie came from Loon Lake. He was a few years older than I was. I was 14 and he was 18. He fitted in very well. He was able to do trenching, and I helped him. We got to know what gold was like.

Several more high-grade showings were discovered. I found a small showing to the west. It didn't amount to much. It was called the "Nugget Showing". It had visible gold. There were a couple of extensions farther south, now the Bee Group of claims. John and I found what we call the old "Hi-Ho Showing". Extensions to that were discovered for quite a distance, even including material carrying gold at the outlet of the Dog River, where in 1940 we had our small mill.

1939 was a very busy summer. There was a lot of activity by individuals in the area, such as Jack Hebden (Hebden Lake was named after him), Bob Caldwell, who was the discoverer of Preview gold mind, and George Gillies, who discovered the "PAP Showing". Jack Hebden would come down from Hebden Lake. He had a Native chap with him who is well known in La Ronge today - Joe Bell, who was young at the time and spent several years with the Hebdens, Joe was a tremendous bushman, just terrific. They sort of brought him up, in a good manner, and treated him as their son. They didn't have any children of their own.

There were other fellows came up and worked in 1938; for example, Bert Lien. In 1939 he was very active. He prospected and worked with my Dad later - in 1940 and 1941. Two other fellows who came in were Al Bullwiller and Pat Gillies. They were working for Cominco - Consolidated Mining and Smelting. They worked in the Lynx Lake area, on showings in the south end by the creek. They would visit back and forth. In 1938 and '39, nearly every weekend we'd have a get-together on Sunday, and we'd crank up the old ice cream freezer, hand operated, to make a big freezer of ice cream, and everybody would enjoy themselves.

Three years of prospecting in the Sulphide Lake area by the Studers and others had uncovered numerous small, high-grade, gold deposits. It looked as if mining was a possibility. During the following period, production was attempted both at Sulphide and Preview Lakes . . . .

Dad had decided by 1940, to do some stockpiling of gold ore. Bert Lien had been working on a fairly high-grade discovery on the "Hi-Ho" claims. They combined material from here, along with some from the original showing, as well as the high-grade in arsenopyrite to the north, and the high-grade quartz lens with visible gold.

At this time, Preview Mines had started and they brought in steamers for power, all the way up the lake from La Ronge, under the direction of Bob Caldwell, Courtney [Courtney's Furniture Store in Prince Albert, now closed - BR], and Fred Colburn who had originally owned one of the bowling alleys in Prince Albert. They were the people who got Preview started. It was a syndicate type of operation, mixed with people from the Prince Albert Prospecting Syndicate. George Gillies was involved. And there was a fellow by the name of Smith, Al Smith. He was president of the Prince Albert Prospecting Syndicate. And there was Glass, Sr. Later Floyd Glass, owner of Athabaska Airways, was involved.

By 1940, everything was in gear for Preview, which preceded our operation. I had left then and was back in Loon Lake at school. Dad stayed on alone with Bert Lien, and they high-graded and did some prospecting. On occasion, he went up to Preview to give them a hand there. By this time, in the winter, he was very busy trapping to help supplement the mining operation. With the prices we got then we were better off than we are today.

The actual Preview operation got going full blast in 1941. My uncle John didn't come in until 1942. At Preview they high-graded and operated the mill, but they didn't have much success. They blasted out the gold-bearing material and they had to hand-pick. They just couldn't run it through as they brought it up. At first, they didn't have a mill, so they picked up several tons of gold-bearing quartz with visible gold, as well as gold telluride. They sent this out to the smelter at Flin Flon. This helped to pay for the purchase of a mill. It was in 1941 that they got the mill up. They operated it for a while in 1942 when my uncle and his family moved in.

It was quite a cavalcade that moved in in 1942. I was there at the time with a cousin of mine who'd come up ahead, and we did some trapping in April. The cavalcade travelled up with Chris Olson. He had a Caterpillar. They came in from Waskesiu to La Ronge by truck. I think altogether there were three families involved. There was my uncle John's family, which is quite large. There was another family, an uncle of mine, Walter Warner, who settled for a time on Caribou Lake, which is downstream from Sulphide Lake. He had his children along. They had chickens, they had goats, and all the furnishings you would need in a new area.

But they didn't make it. They got as far as Lynx River and they couldn't go any farther. They had planned on coming with the trucks, but they couldn't make it, and they had trouble with the Cat coming behind. It had broken down on Lynx River, so they came in on foot, which was quite a walk.

I remember them coming up. There was a snowstorm in April, and we saw some of the girls, my sister Iona was one of them, along with several of the older children walking up the lake. We'd expected them in any day, but we didn't expect them on foot. We had a good dog team that my cousin had brought in, so we took off with the dogs and helped them, especially the younger children.

In 1942, Dad set up a small mill (a Gibson Elliptic Mill it was called), at the outlet of Sulphide Lake. We had built a small dam there and it was run by water power. Dad built the water wheel which, except for the shaft, was made completely of wood. All the pulleys were made of wood. It developed, we thought, about 35 h.p. We ran everything with that except the crusher. We couldn't get enough speed up for that so we had a small 31/2 h.p. gasoline motor that we crushed the rock with. At first, we had to break it down by hand as the small crusher could only take about 21/2 inch material.

We worked there most of 1942, but we were running short of high grade. We had heavy rains, so it was very difficult to get the high grade out. We tried to high-grade some of the lower areas, but they were flooding and we had no means of pumping out the water - so we quit. We tried to run through some of the arsenopyrite, but again it was a failure. It was so harsh on the amalgam plates. It would scour the plates and the recovery was poor, so we were forced to close down.

Around the same time the Preview closed down, in 1942. The main reason was that, first of all, the recovery was very poor. They had been high-grading from the surface down, and they had many narrow trenches that were getting dangerous.

The Department of Labour came in and looked it over, and said, "You're going to have to do something. Go underground, or do something else, or we're going to have to close you down." So it was a case of close down or go underground. They were in no position to go underground, because of costs, so they ceased operations.

The excitement, the hard work, and the dreams of bygone days were passing. A different age had come upon the mining industry, where only bigness seemed to count. Adolph Studer spent the last 25 years of his life establishing and nurturing a Saskatchewan-owned mining company . . . .

For the next years, from 1943 to 1949, it was pretty quiet. We went quite heavily into commercial fishing, and ran an efficient operation on all the lakes in the area - Contact, Sulphide, McKay, Bartlett, Cavanagh, and even some of the smaller ones. We also fished quite successfully on Pipestone Bay of Lac la Ronge, for several winters. We made our own fish boxes, using a small band saw Dad had installed. We used about 100 boxes a winter. This saved us $100 which was a lot those days. We moved frozen fish out by Cat swing in the spring, and they brought in our year's supplies. We got 7 to 9 cents a pound on the ice.

Studer Mines was formed in 1949. Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting had come during '47 and '48, and they did considerable work on the properties. We had difficulty financing an operation ourselves any more. Dad had hopes we could start what he called a Saskatchewan company, whereby Saskatchewan shareholders could reap some of the benefits.

And this is what he did. It came into being, and we ended up with over 1200 Saskatchewan shareholders. Studer Gold Mines originally, later Studer Mines.

Gold seemed to be in a slump and we felt we had to get into something else to keep the company moving. So we branched out. We acquired a couple of base metal properties and a fair amount of work was done on them - diamond drilling and surface work. There was nothing commercially proven. It was still a battle.

Neither Dad nor I were on salary. But many people think you're out there and you're taking the cream off, and that you're making a mint.

My Dad died in 1972. I guess that was the end of the era.

When Allan Blakeney was Chairman of the Saskatchewan Securities Commission, he had dealings with Adolph Studer and recalls him with the deepest admiration and says . . . .

I can think back to an old fellow by the name of Adolph Studer who was operating in northern Saskatchewan. Perhaps I was naive, but I don't think I was, thinking that Studer was a very fair and honest operator who attempted to sell his shares by explaining what the risks were and take the money - $30,000 or $40,000 he would raise and he would go up and spend it on the property, and he would live very frugally while he spent it. Almost all the money got into the ground. And he died a poor man. He had some good showings and, for the grace of God, he might have died a millionaire, but he certainly didn't take the shareholders' money. Those are the sorts of operators that should be able to be operating.

Helga Reydon, when she worked in the Prince Albert Recording Office, had dealings with the Studers she says . . . .

You couldn't mention the old Mineral Resources Office in Prince Albert without mentioning the Studers - Adolph and John. Both are terrific people. Adolph was in almost every day. And John was in often too, when they weren't working somewhere in the bush.

Floyd Glass, pilot and owner-manager of Athabaska Airways recalls working with the Studers says this . . . .

My first recollection of mining and its connection with flying was back in 1938, before the war. I was a young fellow, just out of high school. It was in the days of the M and C [Mason and Campbell] Aviation Company here. They were the two original flyers in the Saskatoon area, where there was a flying club. There was a friend of mine, by the name of Bill Smith, who was an experienced prospector, or so I believed then anyhow. Between Bill and Angus Campbell I was invited to go along and help stake claims in a very secret sort of way. We were told to get ready and get a grubstake together. The grubstaker was a fellow by the name of Scott, west of here, a farmer.

We got in this old Fairchild and flew north one day, and landed on Montreal Lake in a rainstorm. We were told to get into the back of the aircraft and hide, because there was another aircraft there, and they didn't want them to see us.

Then we reached the Sulphide Lake area, and we were dumped off there with our grub, and the pilot, Angus Campbell, went back to pick up a canoe and leave it with us.

We were on our own for about a week, and we were told where to stake these claims. It happened to be right across from where Adolph Studer was staking. There had been a falling out between Angus and Studer, so one was playing against the other. I was just going along for the ride, I guess.

We staked claims there for about four or five days. We were supposed to be picked up in a week, but I think it was more like two weeks. All we had to eat was lard and the fish we caught.

During this time we did our staking. One morning, about six o'clock when I was walking down one of the lines, I heard some girls singing. It was terrific. The music and the singing. So I went over to the edge of the shore. And across this little bay were the three Adolph Studer girls sitting on a rock. We let it be known we were there. There were some pretty choice words said to us by Adolph.

Scotty MacLeod, another early bush pilot, often flew the Studers and their families relates this . . . .

One of the biggest thrills I got in my life as a bush pilot was with the Studers. John Studer lived up on Contact Lake, north of La Ronge, with the family, where he had a gold property. I was taking a load of supplies up there one year. It was the first trip after the freeze-up. We'd got a report from the Studer family that the ice was okay, so I took off with the Norseman and flew to Contact Lake, about 30 miles. When I got up there the girls, Berna and Joan - both now pilots themselves - had tramped with snowshoes out on the lake, I would say half a mile long, "Welcome, Mr. MacLeod". You could see it for miles. It gave me a great thrill. It was a real event getting the first load of supplies after freeze-up. They had been isolated for six weeks.

I have the kindest recollections of all the Studers. They were great northern families.

I remember John Studer's camp very well. It was a nice camp. A really fine log house. They were very handy. Everything was handy about the camp. It was a great place to bring up a family It was a fine family, too. Everybody turned out well, and they all were enthusiastic aviation people.

The Studers were real handy fellows. They could turn their hands to anything, and they never lost their enthusiasm for the North.

Joan Studer, a northern bush pilot, is the daughter of the late John Studer. It was from her that we gleaned some of the details of a family living in the northern bush of Saskatchewan, without the benefit of schools and the ordinary amenities of life had this to say . . . .

Dad worked alone, especially in the earlier years, until we were old enough to go out with him. Then we'd quite often go out with him exploring. Actually, we were out picking berries, and he'd be exploring at the same time.

He worked quite a bit with my uncle Adolph. They worked together on different properties. But he did not work with other prospectors until he started working for a mining company.

Preview Gold Mines was operating the first summer we moved up there, in 1942, and Dad worked for them for the summer. Then they shut down that fall and pulled out. They sold some of the equipment. My uncle bought part of it later and I think just mined what was left in the tailings and sold the ball mill.

My Dad was with Eldorado Mining and Refining for a while. They prospected this area, near Otter Lake, then they were in the Foster Lakes area, and they worked some north of Stony Rapids. My uncle Ernest was with them the summer that my Dad worked for them north of Stony Rapids. The three brothers, Ernest, Adolph, and my Dad, John, were all prospectors. My uncle Ernest is still living over at Loon Lake. He is the only surviving brother. There were two others, but they were in the States.

The last year my Father prospected he was down in Ontario, near the north end of Lake Superior. It was a logging company name but they were doing some prospecting. He got the job through Eldorado, as they were not doing any work in Saskatchewan that year.

Yes, I've panned for gold a little bit. Got a little, too, I think. Usually, we had to break up the rock with a mortar and pestle. We'd grind it up. My Dad did most of the panning because he was good at it. But he showed us how. You just keep swirling the water around in the pan until you see whether you've got any gold in the back end or not. I've had a few colours. It's always interesting.

I think we all enjoyed it very much. I don't think we missed that much growing up in the bush and not being in the city. Yes, I would certainly recommend it as a way to bring up a family. I think so, yes.

I remember the old house on Contact Lake, although I haven't seen it for a couple of years. It was a log building. My Dad built it when we first moved up there in 1942, part of it the first year, and he finished it in the spring of '43 when we moved in. There were four of us kids and Mother and Dad. The cabin was 20 by 24, I think, and all logs, were cut locally. It seemed like a big one to me at the time - I suppose because we were so small.

We lived there for 14 years. We moved out in 1956. We took all our schooling by correspondence; Mother helped us. She kept us at our studies and both Mother and Dad encouraged us. A lot was reading. My Dad was a great geology and geography hound. He would take a world atlas and read it like a book.