Local prospector Walt Humphries gave presented "A brief but humorous history of mining in the North" with slides and anecdotes at the Prince of Wales Heritage Centre last week.

Walt Humphries gave a humorous talk on the history of NWT mining last week at the Prince of Wales Heritage Centre. -

About 100 people turned up for the talk which covered the centuries between the ice age and the Second World War.

"That way all the people I talk about are long gone and I won't get sued for libel if I say anything amiss," said Humphries, who writes a regular column for Yellowknifer.

He called Martin Frobisher a "precursor to Bre-X" for his early Arctic explorations. Frobisher started his voyage in 1576 with the promise of returning to England with gold, but the rock samples he brought back did not contain gold so the promise was never kept.

"It was the NWT's first mining scam," Humphries said."

He gave an interesting context to mining in the Yellowknife area, when work was done with "a wheelbarrow, bucket and hoist."

In the mid-1930s, early Yellowknife residents came in droves to work in the Con, Rycon and Negus mines.

"Those days the town grew so quickly somebody said all you could hear from dawn till dusk was the sound of hammers," he said. "Up here with the 24-hour daylight, that's a lot of hammering."

Humphries dedicated the presentation to recently deceased miner D'Arcy Arden.

The talk was part of a new series of monthly presentations at the Heritage Centre. The next talk, on Feb. 20, will be on the heritage of Yellowknife.