Sandy McIntyre
Scottish-Canadian
1869 – 1943
Sandy McIntyre, born Alexander Oliphant in Scotland, staked claims at Pearl Lake during the 1909 Porcupine rush that became the great McIntyre Mine. He sold his interests cheaply and, despite a second famous strike, died poor in 1943.
Biography
Sandy McIntyre was born Alexander Oliphant in Scotland in 1869. Unhappy with his life there, he emigrated to Canada in 1903, leaving his wife behind and adopting his mother's maiden name, McIntyre, together with the nickname Sandy. He drifted into prospecting in the silver and gold country of northern Ontario.
In October 1909, during the rush touched off by Benny Hollinger's Porcupine discovery, McIntyre and his German-born partner Hans Buttner beached their canoe at Pearl Lake and staked the nearest open ground, finding visible gold. Their claims became the nucleus of the McIntyre Porcupine Mines, which grew into one of the three great producers of the Timmins camp alongside the Hollinger and the Dome, ultimately yielding millions of ounces of gold. McIntyre, chronically short of cash and hard-drinking, sold his interests piecemeal for small sums long before the mine proved its worth, by most accounts realizing only a few thousand dollars, part of it famously traded away cheaply.
He kept prospecting and struck it big a second time, participating in the discoveries that opened the Kirkland Lake camp in 1911-12, but again profited little. Celebrated in his lifetime as a legendary mine-finder whose name was worth millions on the stock ticker, he died nearly penniless in 1943. He was inducted into the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame in 2010.