The heart of the story

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/08/2011 (5395 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Everything was golden last weekend in the town of Bissett, about 150 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg. It was busy celebrating 100 years of gold mining. I went to check out the festivities, since it’s my hometown.

There were tons of children’s activities, tours, music and people coming to visit from all over the country. Many hadn’t been back in decades so there was lots of catching up to do. Some people say small towns are like little families and Bissett is no exception.

The Bissett Historical Society went all out, setting up a museum exhibit in the school. It had mining artifacts, curling memorabilia and tons of pictures from every generation that lived here. I even saw some relatives and myself in a few photos.

The turnout for the dinner was 400 people, which is exceptional considering the town only has about 125 residents. The celebrations even caught the interest of a certain Hollywood star; actor Adam Beach took in the events and was spotted at the main tent.

The outdoor concert by JJ Lavallee was a blast.

Bissett has had its ups and downs, but the San Gold Corp gold mine has been going strong for the past five years, buttressed by a shaky world economy and a surge to invest in what’s traditionally been a safe bet: gold.

Take a peek at the stock market section of the paper and you’ll see San Gold Corp is pretty golden lately too.

How Bissett came to be is an interesting story. I’ve heard different versions of the story over the years.

Wilda Ward recounted it well in her book about the history of the little town east of Lake Winnipeg called Bissett: 100 years of Gold. She was on hand last weekend to sign copies and reminisce with other former Bissetters.

Back in the early 1900s gold fever was in full swing, sparked by the Klondike gold rush. Around 1910 a former RCMP officer and adventurer named Ephrem Pelletier and an entrepreneur named Arthur Quesnel cooked up an idea to strike it rich.

Quesnel traded with the local aboriginal people, who knew the land like the back of their hand. The two decided they’d recruit these same men to look for gold on their travels through the wilderness. Since the aboriginal men weren’t trained prospectors, they were shown ore rock samples so they’d know what to look for.

The men were told to make a note of where they found their samples just in case they brought back a rock with some gold in it. Well, the scheme paid off.

The rocks brought back in the winter of 1911 weren’t promising, except for one wrapped in a scrap of blue denim. It was Duncan Twohearts’ sample and it contained a tiny bit of gold.

Twohearts was an Ojibway man from Sagkeeng First Nation. He found the rock while on his trap line, along the shores of Rice Lake, where Bissett now sits.

Twohearts took Pelletier to the spot he found the rock and Pelletier dug around a bit. He easily found a small chunk of gold. Pelletier claimed the spot that day — March 6, 1911. The spot was named Gabrielle Point and can still be found in Bissett just behind the community hall.

The Gabrielle Mine is no longer around, but it was the first documented gold discovery in Manitoba. History is subjective, so in my mind it was Twohearts that’s owed much of the credit for the find.

According to Wilda Ward, for his part, Twohearts was paid a bag of flour, two bottles of whiskey and a team of horses — which sadly froze to death in the winter. He was also paid a $35 pension from the mine but died three years later.

Back in 2009, San Gold honoured Twohearts with a ceremony at the spot where he found that rock sample. According to Ward, there were 60 of Twohearts’ descendants at the ceremony, as well as several dignitaries and the Assembly of First Nations’ former national chief Phil Fontaine.

I was at that ceremony, and it was good to see Twohearts get the recognition he deserved.

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On my walk around Bissett I noticed some new street name signs were put up in the past few weeks since I’d last visited. There are streets named for many of the old families that made their mark in the town — as well as one named Twohearts Lane.

Here’s to 100 years for Bissett — and here’s to 100 more.

 

Colleen Simard is a Winnipeg writer.