Copyright 2022 Charlie Angus
Published in Canada in 2022 and the USA in 2022 by House of Anansi Press Inc.
www.houseofanansi.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
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To Live in the Age of Melting: Northwest Passage by Evalyn Parry reprinted on page 9 with permission from the author.
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: Cobalt : cradle of the demon metals, birth of a mining superpower /
Charlie Angus.
Names: Angus, Charlie, 1962- author.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210290234 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210290439 |
ISBN 9781487009496
(softcover) | ISBN 9781487009502 (EPUB)
Subjects: LCSH: Mineral industriesOntarioCobaltHistory. |
LCSH: Mineral industriesCanada. |
LCSH: Cobalt mines and mining. | LCSH: Cobalt (Ont.)History.
Classification: LCC HD9506.C23 C63 2022 | DDC 338.209713/144dc23
Book design: Alysia Shewchuk
House of Anansi Press respectfully acknowledges that the land on which we operate is the Traditional Territory of many Nations, including the Anishinabeg, the Wendat, and the Haudenosaunee. It is also the Treaty Lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit.
We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada.
To the late Vivian Hylands, who welcomed our family into a Cobalt that was steeped in memory and lore. Lady Vivian swore she was going to be the first person to edit this text. She passed over to the other side before that could happen. This book is for her.
[Cobalt, Ontario] resulted in so much lying, deceit, fraud, over-reaching ambition in such a Pandoras box of miseries, that it would almost have been better if the place had never been discovered.
Reverend Samuel Blake, 1911
Preface
The Demon Metal
The world is searching for cobalt, the miracle ingredient of the digital age. The metals capacity to store energy and stabilize conductors has made possible the proliferation of rechargeable batteries, smartphones, and laptops. More crucially, in the face of catastrophic climate change, cobalt offers the hope of a clean-energy future. Access to reliable supplies of cobalt will be essential if we are to advance into the era of the mass-produced electric vehicle.
But cobalt has a much darker side. The relentless drive to feed the cobalt needs of Silicon Valley has led to appalling levels of degradation, child abuse, and environmental damage in the Democratic Republic of Congo (drc), the worlds number-one cobalt producer. The situation is so dire that human rights campaigners have denounced cobalt as the blood mineral of the twenty-first century.
Tesla, Google, and Apple would love to cut their ties with the abuses in the drc, but cobalt is an extremely elusive metal. Thus, it is not surprising that, in 2020, billionaires Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, and Bill Gates formed a mining company to seek out new sources of cobalt in northern Canada. They named their company KoBold Metals.
Kobold is a variant of the German word for cobalt, derived from the kobalos, a satyr and shape-shifter in Greek mythology who mocked the work of humans. In the Middle Ages the kobalos became the kobold a demon living in the mines of Germany. The men who made their way into the perpetual darkness of the metal mines knew the demons were close from a burning sensation on their fingertips as they touched the cobalt-laced rock. And they knew the kobolds were watching them from the telltale sounds of banging and footsteps echoing through the caverns.
To anyone who has stood in the dark depths of an underground mine chamber, such superstitions are perfectly understandable. As miners dig deeper, the pressure from the millions of tons of earth above them increases. This pressure causes the weight around the underground openings to shift, eliciting a terrible groaning. Sometimes theres a loud banging like two boxcars hitting each other in a freight yard. Other times the pressure is more subtle like the sharp snap of a twig being stepped on, which evokes the deeply unsettling feeling of being stalked in the blackness.
Mining traditions around the world have variations of the legend of the kobold. In the silver mines of Bolivia, the miners leave offerings for El To the devil spirit. In Cornish mines, there are stories of the Knockers; Welsh miners worked alongside the Coblynau. In some cases, these creatures are condemned spirits, forced to work for eternity for no gain. In other cultures, the goblins help the miners by leading them to the ore.
For miners in Germany, the kobold held a particular menace. The metal was even denounced from the pulpit by a sixteenth-century Reformation firebrand who called it the black devil.
Little wonder that they feared the demon metal.
It is doubtful that todays billionaire class has reflected much on the dark power of the kobold. They are looking to strike the next great mineral rush, which is taking place within a broader geopolitical struggle to control the market in strategic metals. The cobalt rush has drawn investors back to a little town in Northern Ontario. A place called Cobalt.
There is a powerful synchronicity in this renewed interest in Cobalt, Ontario. This is not just some old mining town looking for one more chance to flourish. The events that took place here more than a century ago set Canada on its path to becoming the worlds preeminent resource extraction superpower. The country dominates the global industry; three-quarters of the worlds mining companies are registered in Canada. The maple leaf flies over international zones of resource exploitation ranging from uranium mines in the former states of the Soviet Union to gold projects in the Amazon to the metal deposits of Africa, where horrific human rights abuses are accepted as part of the cost of doing business.
To make sense of this, we need to return to Cobalt the place that let loose the demons of the earth.
