Fonds 421 - Bear Exploration and Radium Limited fonds

Bear Exploration and Radium Limited (BEAR) was incorporated as an Ontario company on June 6, 1932 to finance development of the Contact Lake Mine in the Echo Bay region of Great Bear Lake. The backers of BEAR were an Ontario mining interest represented by William Wright and Harry Oaks. Contact Lake Mine was purchased by BEAR in 1932 and produced silver and a small amount of uranium before shutting down in 1939. The property was later sold, although BEAR retained shares in the International Uranium Mining Company, which had purchased it.
BEAR established a presence in the Yellowknife area in 1933 when their employees C. J. Baker and Herb Dixon discovered free gold and staked the Quyta group of claims. BEAR established a subsidiary, Yellowknife Gold Mines Ltd. to develop the claims and several other subsidiaries in the following years to deal with other groups of claims. BEAR, together with Howey Gold Mines Limited, incorporated Giant Yellowknife Gold Mines Limited in 1937. Frobisher Explorations, a subsidiary of Ventures Limited, assumed management control over Giant Yellowknife Gold Mines in 1943. According to a 1944 report on BEAR, they were “a holding company engaged in the acquisition, promotion, financing and exploration of mining prospects in the Northwest Territories.”

BEAR continued to have numerous interests and associated companies, besides Giant, in the Northwest Territories, specifically the Yellowknife area, including International Uranium Mining Co., Yellowrex Mines Limited, Atlas Yellowknife Mines Ltd., Redpointe Gold Mines Ltd., Fort Rae Gold Mines Ltd., Neptune Yellowknife Gold Mines, Yellowknife Gold Mines Ltd., Admiral Yellowknife Mines Ltd., Moher Yellowknife Gold Mines, and Rich Group Yellowknife Mines. Around 1944, there was enough activity in Yellowknife that BEAR constructed a staff house on Lot 8, Block 1 (now 3612 Pilots Lane). N. H. C. (Hugh) Fraser and his family moved into the house when he became BEAR’s Manager of operations in the Northwest Territories in July 1946. At that time, BEAR remained headquarted in Toronto, Ontario with H.R. Swanson as President, Ralph Pielsticker as Vice-President, Carl Pielsticker as Treasurer and Director, C.A. Gardiner as Secretary, and G. D. Fairley and J.M. Brewis as directors. Several of these men also served on the boards of BEAR’s associated companies.

Hugh Fraser had worked in the Northwest Territories in the late-1930s as a geologist with the Territories Exploration Company and later Camlaren Mines and Thompson-Lundmark Gold Mines. In 1941, he was transferred by Frobisher Exploration Company to eastern Ontario, but returned to the Northwest Territories in 1944 and was in charge of Frobisher’s activities in Yellowknife until being hired by BEAR in 1946. Fraser continued consulting activities with Giant Yellowknife and Frobisher Exploration after being hired by BEAR. Fraser appears to have moved to Toronto in 1948.

BEAR became less active in the north in the years following, and the Yellowknife house was sol d to John Anderson-Thomson in 1948. He continued to do some work for them into the 1950s. Little is known of their later activities outside of the Territories, however, they underwent name changes, incorporating as Yellowknife Bear Mines Limited in Ontario in 1948, changing their name to Yellowknife Bear Resources Incorporated in 1981, and merging with Rayrock Resources, becoming Rayrock Yellowknife Resources Incorporated, in 1986, and then reverting to the name Rayrock Resources in 1998.