(1888-16 Dec. 1950), prospector. (Phil St. Louis) Born at Maxville, GC. Parents: John St. Louis and his wife Marie Azilda (Exilda) Seguin. John St. Louis (Jean Baptiste St. Louis), who was one of four St. Louis brothers to settle in the Maxville area, was also known at one time as John or Johnny Salway. He and his wife operated one of Maxville’s earliest restaurants. Phil St. Louis was a veteran of World War I and World War II, and was one of the last of the distinguished race of GC-born prospectors. The geological formation called the St. Louis fault is named after Phil St. Louis. Time magazine reported in its issue of 4 Sept. 1950 that “During the summer of 1946, Eldorado [Eldorado Mining and Refining Ltd] grubstaked a veteran French Canadian prospector named Phil St. Louis to pack a Geiger counter over rocky northwestern Saskatchewan. St. Louis reported that his counter jumped like a jive band along a ridge of reddish rock near Beaverlodge Lake, five miles north of the eastern arm of Lake Athabasca. Prospector St. Louis chipped away several top-grade samples of pitchblende and brought them in. Eldorado’s geologists investigated, found that the ridge was part of a geological formation or fault, stretching for at least 20 miles on the surface and probably thousands of feet into the earth. They named it ‘the St. Louis fault’.” In the 1950s, while the uranium boom continued, Eldorado at great expense developed a mine on this site. Phil St. Louis died at Kirkland Lake District Hospital, Kirkland Lake, Ont., a few days after an operation. He is buried in the cemetery of St. Catherine of Sienna Church at Greenfield, a few miles from Maxville. Osie Villeneuve was among those attending the funeral. Phil St. Louis’ brother Alex St. Louis, who was CNR agent over many years at various places including Cornwall at the time of Phil’s death in 1950, married as his first wife the daughter of Frank B. Villeneuve. Phil St. Louis was unmarried. A family member recollected in 1996 that Phil St. Louis, who “kept very much to his own,” lived for a considerable number of years at a hotel in Haileybury, could not read or write, spoke French and English with some knowledge of “Indian,” and had a mining association with the prospector Tom Bathurst.
Glengarry News 22 Dec. 1950 * Maxvillle 817-831 but esp. 818 * family gravestone, Greenfield, and information kindly supplied from parish records, St. Catherine of Sienna Parish * private information * GN 8 Sept. 1950 (Time article noticed) * Robert Bothwell, Eldorado: Canada’s National Uranium Company (1984): various refs. to the fault (“named after Phil St Louis, the Eldorado prospector who discovered it”–p. 231) and the mine (with map of the fault area) * L.S. Beck, “Uranium Developments in Saskatchewan: Present and Future” (1967), report in Sask. Archives, Regina (includes map of the fault area)