SNELL: The quest for Ophir — a true story of gold mines, broken dreams, and a Canadian geologist

In ancient texts, Ophir gleams as a fabled land of gold, its riches ferried to King Solomon through maritime trade.

According to 1 Kings 9:26–28 and 2 Chronicles 8:17–18, Solomon, allied with King Hiram of Tyre, launched a fleet from a Red Sea port to this distant realm.

The ships returned laden with 420 talents of gold — roughly 16 tonnes, worth billions in today’s dollars — along with exotic goods that swelled Solomon’s treasury. Yet, Ophir’s location remains a mystery, its name whispered in private debates over East Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, India, or Southeast Asia.

The enigma, shrouded in legend, captivated my father, James Clinton Snell — a geological engineer whose quiet brilliance unravelled its secrets in the early 1980s. This is our story — treasure maps, espionage, triumph, and heartbreak.

Prophecy in the snow

The story begins in the early 1960s in Fairbanks, Alaska, where my father studied geology at the University of Alaska. One stormy night, a friend slipped a cartoon under his dorm room door. The drawing showed him astride a donkey, feet on the ground, a knapsack, a pickaxe, bound for a gold mine in the clouds.

The caption read, “There’s a goldmine in the sky far.” The sketch became a prophecy, a talisman he carried through decades of trial and triumph. It now hangs in my office, a bittersweet emblem of broken dreams — a testament to the love and friendship that bound us.

Years later, in 1981, the prophecy took shape. My father’s geological assistant, Gene Stonehocker, snapped a photograph of him straddling a small donkey on a dusty road near Sadiola, a village in western Mali. There, he uncovered one of the world’s richest gold deposits, a discovery that echoed the cartoon’s promise and cemented his legacy.

A father’s shadow

My earliest memory of my father is vivid — a tall figure in a denim shirt and white Stetson, standing in our hayfield in British Columbia’s Deadman Valley. The sun blazed overhead, its heat absorbed by the surrounding cliffs. Irrigation nozzles misted the alfalfa, a shimmering oasis in the arid Central Interior.

It was the late 1970s, after a mining deal soured and my father, seeking solace, bought a small cattle ranch. He founded Arctic Gold and Silver Mines, a Vancouver-based penny stock venture with a dubious Yukon prospect.

Despite its attractive secretaries and a flurry of stock promotions, the mineral deposit proved too deep and thin to mine profitably. The company folded, yielding no profit. Promoters inflated the shares on the Vancouver Stock Exchange, and my father, fearing a crash, sold his stake for a substantial sum.

With the proceeds, he secured the ranch, only to face a lawsuit for insider trading led by his own father, Gaylord, a company manager. Though exonerated, the ordeal plunged him into mental illness — schizophrenia with depression, as doctors later diagnosed.

When the beef market declined, my father sold the ranch. By the time I was six, he was hospitalized, staring blankly at a hospital wall. Catatonic — a can of Copenhagen snuff still tucked in his denim shirt pocket.

The call to Mali

Around 1980, a Swiss banker named Hans Willi offered a lifeline. Our family, now in Fort Langley, B.C., was drowning in debt, hounded by a Canada Revenue Agency collection agent.

Willi connected my father with Mark Nathanson, a Canadian mining promoter based in London, England. Nathanson, who styled himself a medical doctor, was researching gold deposits in Mali and needed a geologist to validate his claims. He promised my father engineering fees and a share of any discoveries in exchange for exploring mining concessions in Mali.

My father and Stonehocker arrived in Bamako, Mali, only to learn Nathanson held no valid claims. They were pawns in a game to impress Malian officials and secure new concessions.

Complicating matters, Russian operatives were smuggling gold in southern Mali, and my father suspected he and Stonehocker were being used to disrupt their influence. During one perilous excursion near Kalana, Malian agents detonated a building as a diversion, allowing my father and Stonehocker — armed with rifles — to assess a Russian mine’s geology undetected.

Undeterred, my father shifted focus to western Mali, near Kenieba. From a plane, he spotted hundreds of artisanal mine shafts dotting the landscape, evidence of centuries-old gold extraction linked to medieval Mali King Mansa Musa.

Based in a sweltering Bamako hotel, he and Stonehocker mapped the region, collected rock samples, and purchased small gold quantities from locals. Amid humid plains and swarming insects, they fed starving villagers and handed out balloons from Canada to children with swollen bellies, their malnutrition fuelling my father's resolve.

The discovery at Sadiola

My father zeroed in on Sadiola, and several other places, where artisanal mining suggested vast underground wealth. He estimated 625 tonnes of gold had been extracted historically — dwarfing Ophir’s biblical hauls.

His vision of a world-class open-pit mine grew sharper, as did his dreams of restoring our family’s fortunes in the Deadman Valley. Returning home, he declared, “There’s more gold in Mali than oil in Saudi Arabia.” He gifted my mother a yellow and blue Malian dress and my brother and me a mining pick from an artisanal miner, tokens of his adventure.

But his mental health deteriorated as he drafted his geological report for Nathanson and associates George Hervey-Bathurst, a British aristocrat, and brothers Martin and Warren Boston, a lawyer and stockbroker.

The report detailed deposit locations with tonnage estimates, a blueprint for a mining empire. When payment for his engineering work stalled, my father, desperate, flew to London and handed the report to Nathanson without securing a royalty agreement.

In a surreal moment, Nathanson took him to a synagogue, where England’s chief rabbi led him to a private room and said, “Mr. Snell, do you realize what you’ve found? You have found King Solomon’s mines.”

Years later, Mali’s Minister of Mines, Robert Tieble N’Daw, told CBC that his family had worked in western Mali’s goldfields for Solomon himself, a claim that wove history and myth into my father’s discovery.

Betrayal and descent

Danger followed. Days after meeting Nathanson, a knife-wielding assailant attacked my father in his rental car. With a friend’s help, he fended off the attacker and fled to Fort Langley. His mental health worsened.

My parents’ marriage crumbled when I was 11. My father drifted into homelessness, living intermittently in a van. During a snowstorm in northern Ontario, he skidded off the road and spent time in a shelter, a shadow of the man who once discovered gold.

In the 1990s, news broke of a world-class gold deposit near Sadiola, Mali, with Mark Nathanson credited as the founder. His company, Iamgold, used my father’s geological report to guide exploration, extracting a staggering one tonne of gold per month — an extraordinary feat. The company partnered with Anglo Gold Ashanti.

Lord Robert Temple Armstrong, a director of NM Rothschild & Sons, joined Iamgold’s board, later describing his role as ceremonial while distancing himself from Nathanson.

A CBC Fifth Estate episode alleged Nathanson’s involvement in arms trading and claimed he framed Martin and Warren Boston, who, like my father, received no payment for their contributions to the Mali concessions. A UK court case (R v Martin Boston and Warren Boston v Criminal Cases Review Commission, 2002) detailed their alleged betrayal.

My father’s engineering invoices remained unpaid. Iamgold soared to global prominence, while Nathanson prospered, severing ties with my father and the Bostons. George Hervey-Bathurst eventually received Iamgold shares, but my father slid deeper into mental illness, unable to work despite marrying my stepmother, Carol, and raising two sons, Luke and Matthew.

We embarked on prospecting adventures — hiking British Columbia’s rain-soaked Coast Mountains, traversing the Mojave Desert, or soaring in Alaskan helicopters — but lacked funds to develop claims. Those trips, though fruitless, were filled with laughter and camaraderie, fleeting moments of joy.

Nathanson, seeking legitimacy, donated $3 million — enabled by my father’s discovery — to establish The Jack and Mae Nathanson Centre at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School, focusing on transnational human rights, crime, and security.

He was named “Man of the Year” by New York’s Finest Foundation in 1999 and supported the New York City Police Museum, cloaking his wealth in philanthropy.

A final act

In 2008, my father’s despair culminated in tragedy. In the one-bedroom East Vancouver apartment he shared with Carol, Luke, and Matthew, he took his life with his prized hunting rifle.

Carol discovered his remains, a scene of unimaginable horror. My older brother Daniel and I painted over the blood splatter and patched the bullet hole in the ceiling. It was the hardest task of my life. Forgiveness — for Nathanson, for my father — has been a lifelong journey.

The reckoning

Years ago, a National Post journalist tipped me off about Iamgold’s annual general meeting (AGM) at Toronto’s St. Andrew’s Club and Conference Centre. Borrowing money from my friend Gary, I flew to confront the company, seeking justice for my father’s unpaid multi-million-dollar contribution — a standard royalty for the Sadiola discovery.

Weeks earlier, I’d sent Iamgold a letter, ensuring they knew my name. The night before, I stayed with my aunt Heather, 40 blocks or so from downtown. The walk was sweltering, Toronto’s skyscrapers looming, cars roaring.

At the conference centre’s 16th floor, I spotted Iamgold’s CEO, Joseph Conway, but security potentially barred my entry — I wasn’t a shareholder. Dejected, I retreated to the lobby, trembling with fear. Then, two women with Iamgold name tags entered, carrying presentation materials. On impulse, I offered to help with their boxes, slipping past security as if I belonged.

Inside, 100 or so attendees filled the room. I stood, the second to speak, breaking protocol. For 20 minutes, I told my father’s story — his discovery, his betrayal, his suicide — vindicating him before the company that profited from his work. My voice quavered, my hands shook.

Conway twice ordered me to sit; I refused, declaring, “I’ve earned my time here today.” Nathanson was absent, a final disappointment.

I left knowing Iamgold would never pay, unbound by legal obligation absent a court order. The statute of limitations had expired, and key witnesses — my father included — were gone or missing.

A legacy of love

The affection I hold for my father remains, fuelling my resolve, though his suicide brings sleepless nights.

The cartoon from Fairbanks, still on my office wall, binds me to his dreams and our shared journey. Ophir’s gold, once a myth, became my father’s triumph and tragedy, a story etched in Mali’s earth and my heart.

In forgiving him and Nathanson, I reclaim hope — a goldmine not in the sky, but within.

Iamgold and the Jack and Mae Nathanson Centre did not respond to a request for comment on this story.