Charlie Angus' new book a reflection on rough, complex history of Cobalt, Ont.

The rich, colourful history of Cobalt, Ontario is the subject of Charlie Angus' new book Cobalt: Cradle of the Demon Metals, Birth of a Mining Superpower.

In it, Angus traces Cobalt's history– the community was one of Canada's first boomtowns– and the eccentric characters who dotted its landscape .

"There was a great description of Cobalt in 1909," Angus said. "It looked somewhat like a cross between a wild west town and a medieval slum."

The town had its own banks, theatres and bordellos, Angus said, and even had a stock exchange long before Vancouver or Toronto. 

"At the same time, there's enormous poverty and the entire community is treated as one giant squatters shack by the mining companies," he said. 

"Mining companies could come along and kick you out of your house. Dump rock on your property. Dig a hole. If you got involved in union activity, you got fired and you got evicted."

"So it's a cross between the squatters camp and this place with this image of elegance and world urban cosmopolitan power," Angus said.

But it wasn't just money that came out of Cobalt, Angus said. The modern framework for how mining companies deal with governments was established in those early boom days.

"That model of mining was moved around, it literally has been applied around the world because Canada is home now to 75 per cent of the world's mining companies," Angus said. 

"Because of this regulatory framework, the low tax rate, and that corporations don't have to disclose a lot of stuff that they would have to disclose elsewhere."

"So good things came out of Cobalt and some really bad things came out of Cobalt, but we're still living with the effects," he said.

"That's what the book is looking at: how does a 21st century Canada make sense of where it is? Well, let's look back to where we were a century ago, and you can see some real distinct patterns that have carried on."