Mining for Gold
Cowboy Junkies: Mining for Gold
Quiz by Sharon Michiko Yoneda
"We are miners, hard rock miners, to the shafthouse we must go."
Gold mines in Timmins, Ontario
"Can't you feel the rock dust in your lungs? It'll cut down a miner when he is still young. Two years and the silicosis (black lung or miner's lung) takes hold. And I feel like I'm dying from mining for gold."
artists: The Cowboy Junkies
songwriter: James Gordon
date released: 1990 by The Cowboy Junkies
The Cowboy Junkies are an alternative rock/country/blues band which hail from Toronto, Canada. The group was formed in 1985 by Michael, Margo, Peter Timmins (all siblings), and Alan Anton.
Noah Timmins founded the Town of Timmins in 1912 following gold discoveries in the Porcupine Camp. By 1912 the Hollinger, MacIntyre and Big Dome Mines were founded.
The Timmins siblings are descendants of Noah Timmins, the mining prospector for whom the town of Timmins, Ontario, was named. Is there any wonder then why they chose this subject for their song?
After an inauspicious start, the band received critical attention with their second album, "The Trinity Session", which was recorded in 1987 in the Church of the Holy Trinity in downtown Toronto.