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Faculty of Arts and Science researcher Heather Jamieson has co-authored a new paper examining water samples and 547 documents including more than 800 measurements of arsenic concentration in water bodies from Yellowknife between 1949 and 1956 in the early days of gold mining at both Con and Giant mines. The study was led by Dr. Mike Palmer from the in Yellowknife.  

What they uncovered shows extreme and widespread arsenic contamination of water bodies near Yellowknife during the early 1950s. The documents describe severe health effects on animals and people.

“A local doctor asked the government to stop the arsenic releases, but this did not happen. This confirms the stories that have been passed down through the local indigenous community,” says Dr. Jamieson (Geological Sciences and Geological Engineering).

Dr. Jamieson and her graduate students have been researching the environmental impact of mining in the Yellowknife area since 1999. She says this is very different from their previous research because it involves understanding historical documents. What was surprising to her team was the detailed, high-quality data on the contamination in these decades-old documents. She adds she was also surprised that so much of this correspondence had been saved.

“It is clear from the documents that horses, dairy cows and dogs died from drinking water polluted by arsenic shortly after the ore roasting started,” she explains. “Arsenic was released from the roaster stacks and fell into the local lakes. People became sick from arsenic poisoning and eventually a two-year-old Dene boy died from drinking arsenic-contaminated water. Public health officials asked the government to stop the roasting activity until better pollution controls could be put in place, but this did not happen. This confirms what the local Indigenous community has known for decades. They were not directly involved in mining, but those activities contaminated their land and water.”

Dr. Jamieson says there are two ways this research impacts the present day.

“Firstly, the ongoing reconciliation process between the Indigenous community near Yellowknife and the federal and territorial government now has documented information about what happened in the early days of mining. This information is consistent with what elders from the Yellowknife Dene First Nation have told their community, especially the loss of a child, their dogs, etc. and reaffirms their traditional knowledge.

“Secondly, our ongoing research on the recovery of the mining-impacted landscape can now use the comparison between the arsenic measured in lakes in the early 1950s and that concentration measured now to understand what factors control how lakes change and improve over time. For example, the larger water bodies such as Yellowknife Bay (part of Great Slave Lake), have recovered from arsenic contamination much more than smaller lakes in the area.

The research was    and covered by .