The Radium Gilbert. Photo and text by Robert Del Tredici, Deline, Great Bear Lake, NWT, October 26, 1997.
The Radium Gilbert, named after Gilbert LaBine, first owner and operator of the Port Radium mine, lies derelict one mile outside the village of Deline. Tribal Council bought the boat for $1 and eventually destroyed it. The Radium Gilbert had pulled two-to-four barges with sacks of uranium concentrates 265 km across Great Bear Lake. In calm water, the passage took two days. During squalls, many sacks were lost overboard. When the ore reached Deline, sacks were transferred to the smaller Radium Lad, which carried them down Great Bear River to their destination 4,000 km distant at the world’s first uranium refinery in Port Hope, Ontario, where the ore was processed for the American Manhattan Project in the creation of the first atomic bombs.