The Thunder Bay amethyst

Fishermen found it. In 1935 anglers, hobbyists and rock collectors turned up the first amethyst crystals and cluster groups here.

The Ontario Geological Survey's mineral inventory carries the whole sequence under three names for the same ground: Elbow Lake in 1935, Thunder Bay Amethyst in 1967, and Thunder Bay Amethyst Panorama from 1980. Claims were acquired by A. Hartviksen and partners in 1959, and Hartviksen was trenching, drilling and blasting by 1962. Thunder Bay Amethyst Company Limited was incorporated in 1965 to take on the two original patented claims, and the mine officially opened in 1967. Precious Purple Gemstones Ltd. bought it in 1980 and gave it the Panorama name. The survey still lists it as a producing mine.

The geology is a fault full of purple. The bedrock around the mine is a pink, coarse-grained monzonite, and the main fault zone sits entirely within it, occupied by a breccia of Proterozoic mudstone and monzonite fragments. Amethyst runs right through the east-west fracture and shear zone, and the survey estimates that amethyst makes up about twenty per cent of the whole fault zone.

The sizes are worth stating plainly. Individual crystals run from tiny up to nine inches across. Clusters run from small up to two feet, and can weigh as much as 750 pounds.

Ontario made this its own. Amethyst, a six-sided purple quartz crystal, was adopted as the province's official gemstone in 1975, and while the mineral occurs worldwide it is in rich supply along the north shore of Lake Superior near Thunder Bay. It also turns up around Bancroft and North Bay.

Getting there is straightforward if you follow the survey's own directions. From Highway 11 and 17 take the East Loon Lake Road, about 5 kilometres east of the Pass Lake highway, and follow East Loon north, staying right at the first Y intersection. The mine is about 10 kilometres in from the highway, just east of Elbow Lake in McTavish Township.