Page 8 - Sept 2020

In fact, the heavy gold bricks mined, formed, and
Lead Bricks: Worth Their Weight in
Gold!
Written by Jenna Greig. Pictures by Nicholas Mather
In a quiet and inconspicuous corner of the Alberta
Aviation Museum’s Wardair Exhibit, sits a tribute to a
gold heist and subsequent manhunt straight out of a
Hollywood film. To uninformed eyes what may seem
like a pair of slate grey bricks, not dissimilar from
cinder blocks used in a household construction
project, is actually the beginning of a three year-long
story that brought Tony Gregson around the world.
And little did pilot Max Ward realize on that fateful
night in early July 1954, his airline would always have
a connection to Canadian criminal history.
Like many men of his day, Tony Gregson found
himself in Canada’s north looking for his golden ticket.
After spending three years panning for gold,
prospecting the Nahanni and Mackenzie Valleys, and
toiling through other labour-intensive jobs, Gregson
began strategizing a plan that would net him a quick
buck and return him to a more southern locale – he
would steal the heavy gold bricks he often found
himself so captivatingly close to. He told Maclean’s
Magazine in 1964 that, “It was no trick to get hold of
the bricks… but how to jump those hundreds of miles
to a big city without getting caught. That was the
question.”
shipped south were generally transported in basic canvas
sacks on the floor of small planes, like Wardair’s Beavers
and Otters throughout the 1950s. Noticing this early into
his tenure in the north, Gregson quickly devised a plan
using specially designed canvas bags made by a
seamstress from Edmonton and $30.30 in lead from a
caretaker at the Negus Mines in Yellowknife. Using a lead
brick purchased from a foundry for $25, he was easily
able to make a second brick from the clandestine Negus
lead the same size and shape as the gold he targeted.
st
On July 1 , 1954, Consolidated Discovery Mine poured
its most recent haul of gold into two bars weighing a
hefty 72 and 52 pounds, respectively. Despite only
working with Consolidated since the winter prior,
Gregson told his mill superintendent, James Engstrom,
that he intended to quit and fly out on that Saturday’s
plane, the same plane that happened to be carrying the
gold to Yellowknife. The close proximity and a quick stop
at a bush camp en route to town that left Gregson alone
with the gold bricks made it easy for the criminal to
switch his lead foolers for the real thing. It was in
Yellowknife that Max Ward quipped while unloading
Gregson’s bag from the plane, “Jeez, Tony, what’s in
there, gold bricks?”
Of course, anyone who opened the canvas sacks would
know instantly something was off. Not only did his lead
bricks look nothing like gold, the weights were way off,
coming in at only 48 and 43 pounds. Knowing his time
was limited before the swap was discovered by
inspectors in the mine office, Gregson chartered a
Wardair Beaver that same night to the edge of the
highway, Hay River and began his journey south.
Using a series of buses and steamers, the race to stay
ahead of law enforcement was on. Multiple aliases were
used, including Anthony Johnson, who Gregson became
upon his arrival in Vancouver. From Vancouver, he
escaped to more exotic climates in multiple attempts to
market his stolen gold.