Henry Brodie Hicks
Brodie Hicks spent eleven years at the Central Patricia mine in central Ontario, working for the most part as the assistant general manager. The owner of the mine acquired silver properties in the Keno Hill area and two or three staff members accepted transfers to work under the engineer Frank Buckle. In April 1947, Hicks was promoted to General Manager, United Keno Hill Co., replacing Buckle who was having difficulties getting the old mine into production. Brodie and his wife Adele and new-born daughter Betty were not keen to move so far away but the appointment was not a request. Brodie’s career and the well-being of the company depended on getting the mine up and working. The old mine was shut down in 1942 and all saleable items removed, including sheet-iron roofing. The re-established mine maintained a grade of fifty ounces a ton and the mill processed five-hundred tons per day for many years. The recovery factor was eighty-percent so the mine was producing 20,000 ounces of silver per day, although the silver price was low in 1947; sixty-four cents an ounce. Still the mine was one of the best producers of silver in the world. The ore also contained gold, lead, zinc, and cadmium but silver was the most important at the time.1)
Hicks had more to worry about than ore. The camp had to feed and house up to five hundred people. They cut their own lumber for mine props and operated a sawmill to produce construction materials. They opened a coal mine and operated it on a commercial basis. They had their own transportation division after the Mayo Road was built with twenty heavy trucks and a distributorship in Whitehorse handling trucks and tractors. Brodie Hicks and his family remained in the Yukon for six years from 1947 to 1953.2)