Canadian Radium and Uranium Role in American Conspiracy and Crime

It seems helpful to review the history of oil, radium and uranium production in Canada before proceeding with research into what was going on in southern Florida in 1959 and later. All history is a study of what people DO, not just what they admit to doing. The best way to figure out what they actually did is to intersect dots showing who they make connections with and then explore how those connections fit into an historical timetable.

Below are excerpts extracted from a paper called "Grandfather and the Bear," presented by H. J. M. Spence at the Fourteenth International Symposium held by the Uranium Institute in London, September 1989. 

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Gilbert Labine, a partner with his brother and others in a relatively flush but young and momentarily mineless mining firm called Eldorado Gold Mines Limited, spotted the site of what was to become Canada's first uranium mine from the air in 1929. Following up on a tip from a fur trapper and other rumours, characteristic of the times, he was looking mainly for silver, and was attracted by cobalt bloom and other coloured stains, which were easily visible from the aircraft while overflying the Great Bear area....

Gilbert Labine at Great Bear Lake mine

Labine discovered pitchblende, as well as the silver he was seeking, at what was to become Port Radium on Labine Point....

Initial confirmation of what Labine had found - ore containing up to 53 per cent uranium oxide - came by radio in August following analysis in Toronto of hand-picked samples flown out from the site by a rival firm. The message was in code, which was common in the mining industry of the day, but which could not disguise the word 'uranium'....

The prize, of course, was radium, a gram of which was then valued at more than 50 times the average Canadian's annual income. This miracle substance had captured the fancy of the world for its proven use in the battle against cancer. We shudder today in the knowledge that it was also touted for use in treating such things as birthmarks, eczema, ringworm, psoriasis, acne, warts and neuralgia, and was even claimed 'to cause the menopause to be prompt and not distressing'....

In any case, it was the demand for uranium for weapons development that revived the Port Radium mine in 1942. The project was given government priority for men and materials, and it took just four months to recommission the workings. The immediate, urgent requirement for uranium was met by collecting the bagged ore and concentrates which had been abandoned at the mine and various points along its access waterway in 1940.

After a year and a half of intrigue and manoeuvering, on 28 January 1944 the government announced in the House of Commons that Eldorado Mining and Refining Limited, and its Port Radium mine, had been nationalized 'in the interests of military secrecy', which must have caused distress amongst the Allies' security and intelligence communities. It is well known that, at the urging of the United States, security surrounding the uranium bomb project was extraordinary. As a consequence, mistrust strained the relations between friendly nations, and those involved with the work were kept on a short leash - to the extent that one of the small band of US Army scientific experts with the Manhattan project was followed on a visit to his Canadian fianc?by what could only have been a security agent.

The activities at Great Bear Lake retreated into shadow for some three years, while the world sorted out the good guys from the bad....Following the war, uranium mining in Canada was characterized by a boom-bust-boom cycle reflecting the effects of politics and technological developments on the world marketplace. Amateur prospecting really took off in 1948 when the government lifted a partial ban on private involvement in uranium exploration and replaced it with a guaranteed minimum price for acceptable uranium ores. The advent of the Cold War meant there was a market for as much uranium as Canada could produce. There were many promising uranium discoveries in the decade after the war, one of the most significant being that at Beaverlodge on the north shore of Saskatchewan's Lake Athabasca. 

Occurrences first reported in 1934 were pursued in 1944, and underground development began in 1949. The discovery of uranium deposits in northern Saskatchewan was the beginning of a major expansion of the uranium mining industry in Canada, including the establishment of the first open-pit and the first private enterprise uranium mine in the post war period, the Gunnar mine, which was discovered in July 1952. The Bancroft area occurrences first picked over by grandfather Spence in 1922 were tapped for development beginning in 1949....

[Note: see Mr. Spence's references at above link.]

It should be noted here that Bryan W. Newkirk made a huge discovery of uranium at Bancroft in November 1954 through his company, Faraday Uranium. In 1943 it had been reported in the press that monopolistic control of the Vermilion oilfield, had been alleged by Elmer E. Roper, a Canadian representative from Edmonton in an address in the legislature. The charge had been denied in a telegram from Bryan W. Newkirk, Toronto, member of a group operating the field, stating: "there is no monopolistic control of the Vermilion field." 

Newkirk had also been involved with companies named Marigold Oils Limited and Barclay Oil Company, Limited, reputedly licensed by an Israeli man named Arie Ben-Tovim, a chemical engineer by profession, who, after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 had been appointed consul of Israel in Canada during 1949-50, and then as consul in New York during 1951-52, when Ben-Tovim returned to his professional and private occupation and to engage in a joint oil project with Newkirk, with T. R. Harrison (of Trans-Era Oils Limited and Wilrich Petroleums Limited), and with  A. M. Abernethy (of Minerva Mining Corporation Limited). Abernethy was in business with James Crisona of New York, with whom he had purchased controlling interest in the uranium company owned by D. Harold Byrd of Dallas, Texas, in 1956. 

A few years after the Israel venture, Newkirk would also be connected with stock promoter /hockey player Eric Cradock in Marigold Oils Limited, while another Canadian representative made allegations in the legislature that stocks were being rabidly promoted by gangsters who were associated by Cradock and others in sports clubs. These gangster/ gamblers had invaded Canada following a crackdown on organized crime by the United States following Robert F. Kennedy's participation with Roy Cohn on the Senate Committee staff chaired by Senator Joseph McCarthy, and then his appointment to the position of Attorney General under his brother, President John F. Kennedy in January 1961. 

Robert Kennedy had resigned from McCarthy's committee and became Lead Council in the Senate Subcommittee Hearings on Racketeering and Corruption in the Teamsters Union. As Gordonskene reported at Crooks and Liars newstalgia website:

During a panel interview on Meet The Press from 1959, Kennedy is asked by Lawrence Spivak if he was worried regarding Hoffa's threat to sue, from some remarks Kennedy made during a recent Jack Paar Show appearance.

Robert F. Kennedy: “I feel that in our investigation that we have shown that Mr. Hoffa has made collusive deals with employers, that he’s betrayed the Union membership, that he sold out the Union membership, that he’s put gangsters and racketeers in important positions of power within the Teamsters Union, that he’s misused Union funds. I say that and I will say it again. If Mr. Hoffa wishes to sue me I think we can take that to a court and allow it to be decided by a jury. ...That if he loses that case, that he should resign as President of the Teamsters. Because if he is guilty of any one of these things he is not worthy to be International President of that Union.”

Needless to say, the news didn't get any better for Hoffa when Kennedy became Attorney General a little over a year later.

The crackdown against organized crime by Bobby Kennedy led first to the flight of the criminals into Canada and later to Bobby Kennedy's enforced impotence cause by the murder of his brother, the President. Did Bobby's old nemesis Roy Cohn have a hand in that? Was he assisted in any way by his friend and associate Bryan Newkirk,  who developed the island resort of Duck Key south of the most southern tip of mainland Florida, one of the closest points to Cuba, where Roy Cohn was often in residence? Were Newkirk and Cohn connected by their relationship with other Canadian and Israeli members of organized crime who were incidentally out to regain control of Cuban gambling by Meyer Lansky? These questions are yet to be answered.