Men in the Mines

A History of Mining Activity in Nova Scotia, 1720-1992

Port and Province, October 1944 also published this image "of a real Nova Scotian prospector, handling actual Nova Scotia gold. The subject of the photograph is the late Henry N. Reeves, gold-miner, prospector and tributor, of Oldham, Nova Scotia. When this picture was taken, on 7 September 1912, Mr. Reeves was seated on the apex of Black Brook anticline, in the Oldham district, on which he had been prospecting. Mr. Reeves exemplified much of the romance of the history of Nova Scotia and of the province's gold-mining industry. Born and raised near Dartmouth, he was a great-grandson of one of Col. Edward Cornwallis's colonizing party that founded Halifax in 1749. At the age of sixteen he went to Boston to learn the trade of cabinet-making. Substituting for his drafted married brother, he fought in the Union Army in the last year of the Civil War, returned to Nova Scotia in 1866 when the gold fever was at its height, and spent the remainder of his life in pursuit of the elusive precious metal with varying success, chiefly in and around Renfrew, Enfield and Oldham. He died in 1927 at the age of 87."

Date: 1912

Reference: Geological Survey of Canada  Nova Scotia Archives  Public Archives of Canada Collection: PA no. 45564