Both Miner and Timmins maternally descend from several early French-Canadian settler families, include Boucher, Langlois, Guyon, Gagné, Gaudry, Merlot, Proulx and Martin.
[1] Growing up in the prairies, especially on his uncle's ranch, Paré was an excellent horseback rider, and, pushed by his sister, he applied to the Royal Military College in Kingston.
Upon graduation, he was offered a commission as a captain with the British Army in India, which he initially accepted, but he was dissuaded from this course by his uncles and aunts in Montreal.
Paré was then a Royal Military College of Canada graduate studying mining engineering at McGill University[3] at the behest of his Timmins uncles, with whom he had grown close.
[4] Al Paré described the find: "It was as if a giant cauldron had splattered the gold nuggets over a bed of pure blue quartz crystals as a setting for some magnificent crown jewels of inestimable value."