Kirkland Lake townsite

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Kirkland-Lake is a town located in Timiskaming district in northeastern Ontario, Canada. The 2001 population, according to Statistics Canada, was 8,616. The lake nearby was named after Winnifred Kirkland, a secretary of the Ontario Department of Mines in Toronto. The lake was named by surveyor Louis Rorke in 1907. Miss Kirkland never visited the town and the lake that bore her name no longer exists because of mine tailings. Kirkland Lake is served by radio station CJKL-FM and the Northern News. The former town of Swastika lies within the municipal boundaries of Kirkland Lake. Legendary hockey broadcaster Foster Hewitt called Kirkland Lake "the town that made the NHL famous", likely because in the early days of the NHL, it was not uncommon to find an NHLer from the town. The town is now home to the Hockey Heritage North museum. Known as a gold mining town, the area is home to Kirkland Lake Gold Inc., which owns and operates five major gold mines. These properties include the Macassa, Kirkland Minerals, Teck-Hughes, Lake Shore and Wright Hargreaves mines, which have produced 22 million troy ounces (684,000 kg) of gold. However, the mines have reduced production substantially in recent years, and the population has declined rapidly as a result, from as high as 17,000 in the 1970s to less than half that now. The decline is expected to continue. The proposed use of Adams Mine, an abandoned open pit mine close to Kirkland Lake, as a massive dump for waste brought by rail from Toronto, was a defining issue in Kirkland Lake politics – and indeed in Toronto politics and Ontario politics – from the late 1990s to the early 2000s.