The very words conjure up visions of fabulous fortunes, reeling prospectors and shaking saloons. Although one could, with imagination, have applied similar images to Tilt Cove, Betts Cove and Little Bay years ago, the mining prime of these places has long since departed. The more recent mines at Wabana and St. Lawrence also now lie idle. They wanted to establish a pulp and paper industry in Newfoundland because they feared that their existing newsprint shipments from Scandinavia would be disrupted in the event of a major European war, which in 1903 seemed imminent. Beeton initially intimated that the Harmsworths would accept land around either the Red Indian Lake and Victoria Lake watershed or the Grand Lake and Deer Lake watershed.
Total control is what they got.
The terms of the A.N.D. Co. grant stipulated that within three years the company had to have a survey completed of the concession boundaries. Hardly had the concession agreement been ratified by the Newfoundland government on 15 June 1905 than the A.N.D. Co. hired Sullivan and Canning, Chemists and Surveyors of St. John's, to survey the grant and also to assess its mineral potential. The company in particular asked surveyors to look for deposits of sulphur, it being an essential ingredient in the pulp-making process. The survey company mounted a prospecting party consisting of two men. One was William F. Canning, the firm's junior partner and an assayer who had studied mining engineering at McGill University.