Abstract
This article examines northern Ontario’s Matachewan mining district as a case study in the environmental consequences of twentieth‑century northern development. Centering on the Young‑Davidson and Matachewan Consolidated gold mines, it traces how provincial policies, low taxation, and permissive claim laws encouraged a rapid extension of Ontario’s extractive economy into the Canadian Shield. By juxtaposing the interwar political economy of “opening the North” with the long‑term impacts on land, water, and fish populations, the article argues that Ontario’s eagerness to promote northern mining produced a regime of de facto deregulation whose environmental costs only became fully visible decades after the initial gold rush.
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Recommended Citation
Baer, Simon
(2026)
"Developing the North: The Matachewan Region Mines and Northern Development in Ontario, 1916-1954,"
Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of History: Vol. 16:
Iss.
2, Article 7.
DOI: 10.20429/aujh.2026.160207
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/aujh/vol16/iss2/7