Eldorado Tractor Hauling Oil Drums, Great Bear Lake, N.W.T., 1935.
Demand for local supplies of oil for the mining industry in the North and shipment of concentrates southwards for refining increased the output of the Norman Wells refinery to 80 cubic metres per day in 1933, and after the discovery of gold at Yellowknife, to 130 cubic metres per day in 1936. Precious metal finds, such as the discovery in the 1920s of silver at Great Bear Lake, attracted people to the North. Searching there for silver and gold in 1932, Gilbert Labine laid claim to an enormous outcropping of uranium-bearing pitchblende, which resulted in the establishment of Port Radium. To supply the needed oil, barge traffic on the Mackenzie River increased and mine machinery was adapted to move oil barrels to the mine site.
Here oil barrels are being moved by a Fordson tractor for use at the local mine at Port Radium. The line in the background is either a cable mooring the freighter to the rocky shore, or a line securing a tripod for unloading the barrels.
