Pioneering Trailblazer · Kate learned Cree, and was trained in bush craft by First Nations peoples. Her Cree name was: Mooniasquao (white woman) Kathleen 'Kate' Creighton Starr Rice

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Kathleen Rice

Prospector


Kathleen 'Kate' Creighton Starr Rice


Born in St Mary’s, Ontario in 1883 Kate’s father, Henry, planted an ‘adventure bug’ in Kate when he taught her to canoe and camp along the St. Mary’s river.




Gold Medal in Mathematics, University of Toronto, 1906 School teacher in Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta, until 1912.




1913 Herb Lake area, North of La Pas

Kate homesteaded 4 miles north of The Pas. Women weren’t permitted to homestead according to regulations, so the homestead was in her brother Lincoln’s name and Kate did the proving. The Toronto Daily Standard, 1928




1914 Canada’s first female prospector –

Kate joined the gold rush in Manitoba in 1913.




Kate learned Cree, and was trained in bush craft by First Nations peoples.

Her Cree name was: Mooniasquao

(white woman)




Travelling by dog sled and canoe, Kate prospected

over a large area: Reindeer Lake, Beaver Lake,

Wekusko Lake, Herb Lake and Snow Lake, Burntwood and

Flin Flon mineral belts, Scoopin’ Rapids.

1927 - Kate staked her Starr Claim.




If women could understand the thrills of prospecting there would be lots of them doing it… No woman need hesitate about entering the mining field because she is a woman – it isn’t courage that is needed so much as perseverance.” (Kate Rice quoted in “100 More Heroines”, Merna Forster, 2011)




In 1962-63 authorities removed Kate from her home and took her to Brandon Mental Institution, where after 2 months of analysis they concluded she was not crazy – but simply a woman prospector! Kate spent her last days at a nursing home in Minnedosa, Manitoba, where she died penniless, and was buried in an unmarked grave.



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Pioneering Trailblazer · Kate learned Cree, and was trained in bush craft by First Nations peoples. Her Cree name was: Mooniasquao (white woman) Kathleen 'Kate' Creighton Starr Rice

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