Over the next few weeks in our Timmins history feature, we’ll learn about some colourful characters from the mining camp’s past, with local historian Karen Bachmann.
“And boy, are there a lot of them to pick from,” she says.
We begin with an early prospector who didn’t make huge discoveries, but did leave a mark.
Johnny Jones arrived in 1921. He actually took the train from Toronto to Cochrane, upon hearing of three American balloonists who were lost in the bush in the James Bay area.
“And when he got there, he hooked up a dog team and brought the balloonists out alive,” Bachmann recounts. “He actually made it all the way up the coast looking for them, found them and took them out alive.”
In celebration, Jones shipped 14 dogs to Toronto and rode a sled to city hall to leave a delivery of coal for Mayor Tommy Church, who he did not like.
“He also got kicked off a train when he was travelling with Sir Harry Oakes because he was carrying dynamite,” Bachmann adds. “And he said ‘well, I’m a prospector, what do you expect?’ Yeah, that didn’t work.”
During the 1964 mining rush, from a tent under the ONR overpass, Jones tried selling claims as well as liquor to anyone coming out of the Empire Hotel.
Jones was known to say he wasn’t a prospector looking for a big find — he was in it for the love of the chase.
