I stood among the trees admiring how the rocks sparkled in the sun. Another treasure for my collection. I carefully picked my way across the mine tailings, searching for fool's gold, quartz, and mica. Then I'd gather them up and pretend I was the King in his counting house. If you've never spent time around old mines, you may not know that tailings are the piles of rock left behind after miners extracted the valuable ore. There are countless abandoned mines scattered throughout the Canadian Shield, and exploring them became part of our family vacations when I was growing up in …






