The Northern Miner: 100th Anniversary Issue by The Northern Miner Group

Vol. 101

The Global Mining Newspaper

1915 Est.

100 years

Celebrating

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the pioneers of yesterday the heroes of today Congratulations to the northern Miner for 100 years of history, shaping, contributing and informing the Canadian mining industry sandvik is proud to be part of that journey.

mining.sandvik.com

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his special issue is published to commemorate the completion of the 100th year of continuous publication of The Northern Miner. It’s intended to give not just a glimpse behind the scenes in the newsroom, but also to hold up a mirror to the Canadian mining industry, as it has grown from a few isolated camps in Canada’s North to today’s globe-spanning enterprises. Right from the beginning, the newspaper was built on the notion that a good trade journal should also report the bad news, and not just be an industry cheerleader, as was the style of the times. It also made a point of having paying subscribers, so that advertisers knew readers were genuinely interested in mining news. And staff writers have always been forbidden from investing in companies they write about, or shorting any mining company’s stock. But perhaps what has made the newspaper unique in mining has been its insistence — despite the hit to the budget — that its staff writers get out of the office and actually visit mines and exploration projects, as that is the only way to get a true feel for the industry, build connections with its diverse people and better gauge the value of a project. We are acutely aware that we “stand on the shoulder of giants” at the Miner, and are building on a legacy created and sustained by literally thousands of employees working in all aspects of a trade publication. And perhaps more than ever, today’s editorial team is a cosmopolitan and tech-savvy bunch that speak eight languages, have diverse educational backgrounds and have lived or travelled in more than a hundred countries combined for business or pleasure. Over the past hundred years, the publishing business has certainly changed, even if our values have not. What has also not changed is our profound gratitude for the support we get from our readers and advertisers — and it’s only with this support that we can continue to bring you the most important and most interesting stories in mining and mineral exploration. TNM

John Cumming Editor-in-chief

www.northernminer.com

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•Contents• Opening up the Abitibi belt (1915–1929)......................... 9 Uranium, gold and nickel finds (1930–1939).......... 17 The blossoming of an industry (1940–1956)............ 25

incl. remembrance by John Carrington

A golden era for mining (1957–1964)............................... 33 Norman B. Keevil: A lifetime of achievement at Teck................................................................. 38 Conquering new frontiers (1965–1981)......................... 45

incl. remembrances by Don Worth and David Duval

More discoveries (1982–89)......................................................... 62 incl. remembrance by Vivian Danielson

Canada’s diamond age (1990–2004)..................................... 68 incl. remembrances by Virginia Heffernan and John Cumming

On Assignment Map............................................................... 82 Era of the mega-merger (2005–2015)................................. 84

incl. remembrances by Anthony Vaccaro, Trish Saywell, Salma Tarikh, Matthew Keevil, Lesley Stokes and Ian Bickis

Photo Gallery.................................................................................... 96 Published by:

38 Lesmill Rd., Unit 2 Toronto, ON, Canada M3B 2T5 www.northernminer.com www.northernminer.com

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Publisher: Anthony Vaccaro

Production Manager: Jessica Jubb

Editor-in-chief: John Cumming

Advertising Sales: Joe Crofts Dave Chauvin Michael Winter

Art Direction: Stephen Ferrie

Printed in Canada. All rights reserved. The content of this publication may only be reproduced with the consent of The Northern Miner. All photos from The Northern Miner Archives unless otherwise noted. Cover photo: Ontario miner in 1940. THE NORTHERN MINER 100TH ANNIVERSARY | 5

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I am pleased to extend warmest greetings to the staff I am pleased to extend mymy warmest greetings to the staff andand readers of The Northern Miner occasion of its 100th anniversary readers of The Northern Miner on on thethe occasion of its 100th anniversary of of publication. publication. This milestone offers a chance to reflect upon Northern This milestone offers a chance to reflect upon TheThe Northern Miner’s journey to becoming world’s foremost global mining publication. Miner’s journey to becoming thethe world’s foremost global mining publication. From launch a century to its latest online iteration, “the Bible of the From its its launch a century ago,ago, to its latest online iteration, “the Bible of the mining industry” remained a trusted source of news, information, mining industry” hashas remained a trusted source of news, information, andand commentary generations of mining professionals investors. commentary for for generations of mining professionals andand investors. I would to commend everyone involved in producing I would likelike to commend everyone involved in producing thethe TheThe Northern Miner keeping stakeholders informed of issues of pertinence to the Northern Miner for for keeping stakeholders informed of issues of pertinence to the industry from a uniquely Canadian perspective. I am publication industry from a uniquely Canadian perspective. I am suresure thatthat thethe publication continue to provide a strong voice metals mining sector, which willwill continue to provide a strong voice for for thethe metals andand mining sector, which plays such a vital in Canada’s economic prosperity. plays such a vital rolerole in Canada’s economic prosperity. behalf of the Government of Canada, I offer wishes OnOn behalf of the Government of Canada, I offer mymy bestbest wishes for for a memorable centennial every success in the years to come. a memorable centennial andand every success in the years to come.

Hon. Stephen Harper, P.C., M.P. TheThe Rt.Rt. Hon. Stephen Harper, P.C., M.P. OTTAWA OTTAWA 2015 2015

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Premier of Ontario - PremiĂ¨re ministre de lâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Ontario

May 2015

A PERSONAL MESSAGE FROM THE PREMIER On behalf of the Government of Ontario, I am delighted to extend warm greetings to everyone reading the special magazine commemorating the 100th anniversary of The Northern Miner. Newspapers such as The Northern Miner play a crucial role in keeping the mining industry well-informed and up-to-date. For a century, this publication has told the wonderful stories of mineral exploration and has documented the incredible growth of the mining industry from coast to coast in Canada and internationally. This publication continues to be a faithful reflection of the scope, richness and diversity of an essential Canadian industry. I commend the dedicated staff of The Northern Miner for their commitment to excellence in journalism and their steadfast belief in publishing the best possible newspaper for their devoted readership. Please accept my sincere best wishes for a memorable anniversary celebration and for much continued success.

Kathleen Wynne Premier

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opening up THE

abitibi belt (1915–1929)

t’s fitting that The Northern Miner was founded in Cobalt, Ont. — the silver boom town that’s considered the birthplace of the modern Canadian mining industry. The first weekly issue was published on a shoestring budget on March 27, 1915, eight months into the Great War — back when people thought it would be a quick victory for the British Expeditionary Force, and troops would be home before long. The first paper cost 5¢ and an annual subscription was set at $1.50. Mining editor Ben Hughes and printer Ernest Hand were the two original founders, with Hughes’ mine-manager friend suggesting the engineer’s most valuable tool — the level — as a perfect emblem for the paper, and thus was born the “On the Level” slogan. But Hughes wanted to join the war and soon sold his controlling interest to journalist Richard Pearce, who was unable to meet his military fitness requirements. Richard’s brothers Norman and Jack fought overseas, and joined Richard at the Miner after the war. It wasn’t until 1925 that Hand sold his stake to the Pearce brothers, such that until 1989 the newspaper was owned by various members of two generations of the Pearce family. Cobalt was the perfect spot for mining reporting in the 1920s, as the Kirkland Lake gold camp north of Cobalt came alive, after suffering stunted activity during the war years, as did the Porcupine gold camp and nickel mining in Sudbury. Across the provincial border to the east, the Rouyn discovery ignited activity across northwestern Quebec. By then, The Northern Miner had expanded its coverage to include all of Canada, and could soon boast the world’s largest all-mining circulation. At the same time, due to its status as the closest major city to Cobalt, Toronto was emerging as a centre of mine finance and corporate headquarters. Eventually the pull of the big city proved too great, and The Northern Miner’s plant and staff were moved in 1929 to 122 Richmond Street West in Toronto. TNM

Prospecting in the Northwest Territories.

www.northernminer.com

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•1915–1929• Sorting ore in Kirkland Lake.

da. The plant will cost between $4 million and $5 million, according to reports, and it is also stated that the company has the site under option to purchase. It is quite likely, though, that a small unit will be built first, and when enlarged to treat all nickel necessary in Great Britain will cost $4 million. Some 200 acres of land are under option. Port Colborne should be an ideal site for the refinery, as coal is accessible by water. It was hoped that the refinery would be built in northern Ontario, but the extra cost of hauling coal would more than offset the freight on the matte to Port Colborne.

April 12, 1919

A resolution was passed in the Quebec Legislature calling for a complete exploration of the Ungava, or new Quebec, district. This immense territory is believed to have great mineral resources, as well as water power and forest wealth. Hon. H. Mercier, Quebec’s Minister of Colonization, Mines and Fisheries, said that exploration of the Ungava district would be made this year.

Sept. 11, 1915

Aug. 16, 1919

The rush of prospectors into Kow Kash has developed in the last week into a stampede of a frenzy not seen since the days of the Gowganda trail. All pack sacks, all canoes, all dunnage bags are labelled Kow Kash these days and the express wagon on the National is full of them every day that the train runs. Johnson Creek and the Kow Kash River are full of canoes and gasoline launches and Howard Falls, the one big portage on the route, is aflame with bivouac fires of the adventurers after gold. In the bush claims are being staked with a frenzy, which is going to make a lot of trouble for mining recorders and the commissioner in future. The discovery clause is, as always, in a rush utterly disregarded and the prospector ties on to the claim nearest Dodds’ he can find.

Cross-cutting at the 100-foot level of the Dr. Reddick property at Larder Lake on Tuesday struck into what is almost certainly the famous Kerr-Addison 300-foot-wide body of low-grade ore. The two properties adjoin. On the Kerr-Addison this body proved to be 1,200 feet long. The new strike lengthens it to at least 2,000 feet, and vastly increases the importance of this already extremely valuable body. Free gold in rich patches was exposed by the second round of shots. The matter is identical with that further a long on the Kerr-Addison-highly fractured green schist and quartz. The strike was made 300 feet from the shaft which was sunk on a 50-foot-wide orebody, in a cross-cut which had also picked up a vein running from 10 to 40 feet wide. The new strike is in the dolomite ridge.

July 1, 1916

June 26, 1920

The remarkable success that has attended the venture of Mr. Harry Oakes to develop the prospect at the Lakeshore into a mine will undoubtedly have a big effect on the Kirkland Lake camp. And the rich ore that has been found on the 300-foot level will serve to advertise the possibilities of the district as nothing has been done since the early days of the Tough-Oakes mine. On the 300-foot level in the west drift a rich shoot of ore was encountered. It was 12 feet long and across the whole face of the drift there were stringers of quartz carrying a remarkable amount of gold and telluride, and some molybdenum. A channel sample taken across the top of the drift in the centre of the rich ore shoot ran well over $4,000 to the ton.

Aug. 12, 1916

It has been officially announced at Ottawa that Port Colborne will be the site of the nickel refinery of the International Nickel Co. in Cana-

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They may have dreamed it, but it is not likely that the first pioneers of Cobalt thought that their efforts would lead to developing gold and silver mining fields that within half a generation would return dividends of $100 million. This week with the declaration of the regular Nipissing dividend, returns to shareholders of northern Ontario silver and gold mines reached the sum of $3,679,953.28 for the year. The grand total to date is $100,180,818.31.

Aug. 28, 1920

Prospecting by aeroplane is not new to the North, for last year a party went into Ungava, their machine following the course of the Hamilton River. This enterprise ended in great hardship for its adventurous participants. The first instance of air prospecting in northern Ontario is the use, these last few weeks, of a large sea plane to land geologists, prospectors and supplies on the Belcher Islands, in Hudson’s Bay. www.northernminer.com

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•1915–1929• Credit: miningthememories.com

Instead of a three weeks’ or a month’s trip, according to weather, by canoe and boat, it is a four- to five-hour trip to Belcher Islands by air.

Nov. 18, 1922

An old-time rush, in which many large mining interests are taking part, has developed through the gold finds centering on Lac Iremon, in Rouyn Township, 20 miles east of Larder Lake in the province of Quebec. Several thousand acres have been staked, a large part of which have been optioned or bought outright by New York and Toronto mining people. Geologically, the new field is the same as the Kirkland Lake area. Economically, according to claims of values secured on surface, the district is one of the first importance. Visible gold and channel sample assays are up to $70 odd, and averages of $8 over commercial widths and lengths of 200 and 300 feet are claimed by prospectors and others interested. Discounting by half their reports — which have come out of the new field — leaves it the most attractive gold area found since 1917.

Feb. 16, 1924

Underground development in a large way is planned for the Horne copper-gold property in Rouyn Township, Que., by Noranda Mines. A complete mine plan is going in to the property, and shaft sinking is to be started as soon as possible. Three diamond drills are at work, and these give indications of a very big and rich thing. Sinking with a large plant should be resumed in a week on the Chadbourne property of Noranda. The first lateral work should reach a depth of 150 feet.

At Larder Lake in 1924: unknown, E Craig, T Lindsley, F Smith.

July 25, 1925

On the Victoria ground, northeast of the Horne, an electrical prospecting device, popularly and facetiously called a “doodle bug,” is giving satisfactory results in the way of giving the boundaries of mineralized zones. This Elboff machine, operated by Electric Prospecting Corp. in New York, is working on the claim alongside the Horne. Two men and one end of the device were working and calling away in a boat on the lake, in the shadow of Horne’s No. 2 shaft. Rows of stakes protruding from the water marked not a line of fishnets, but a zone of mineralization, as indicated by the prospecting machine. Whether ore lies in the zone cannot be stated, but the machine’s work does tell where the mineralization is heaviest, and provides the claim owner with a place for starting his diamond drilling or surface trenching. Victoria Syndicate appears satisfied with the indications furnished by the device. It has found them prospective areas in a lake section and in a land area where the overburden is too heavy for ordinary trenching. Noranda people are moving the device on to their Horne property in a few weeks to explore ground where overburden is too deep to trench, and where diamond drilling would at present be but stabbing in the dark.

Jan. 2, 1926

This week several parties of prospectors left the T. & N. O. Railway points for the Red Lake District in northwestern Ontario. Attracted by reports of unusually fine results there, they are taking one of the most difficult trips that gold has caused in Ontario. The round trip is 300 miles, with dog-team, and as much of the route had been burnt, fallen trees add to the hardship of winter travelling. Few of the prospectors are going into Red Lake on their own, most of them being financed by local syndicates anxious to get some acreage in the new field to be looked over at their leisure after the snow goes next spring. www.northernminer.com

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•1915–1929• Information from Red Lake has been rather meagre, but it has been very optimistic. Several veins are reported to have been found on the Howey claims since last fall, when the Hammill interests sent in a

Zinc plant at Trail, B.C., during WWI.

group of men who have been working since. The group is under option at a price of $700,000, and unit shares are finding a ready market in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal at a rapidly increasing price. McIntyre secured in the early staking days a big acreage adjoining the Howey group. It is said that Dome Mines is also interested in at least one group, and other big mining interests have secured acreage.

Nov. 10, 1927

The chief interest in the Red Lake area, of course, centres on the Howey Mines, where a determined campaign of underground work is carrying out. Here in schisted andesite, a strong vein system has been traced on the surface for 1,800 feet. In some places, particularly at “E” trench, there are a number of quartz lenses paralleling the main vein, and mining widths of 50 feet are encountered. The Howey is definitely a mine — it is only a question of underground work to determine how big a mine it will be.

Nov. 17, 1927

Sudbury promises to be the scene of a tremendously increased copper production, owing to results secured by Mond Nickel Co. on its

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•1915–1929• portion of the famous Frood ore, which it shares with International Nickel. The Northern Miner can say that one recent hole drilled by Mond indicated a width of 70 feet of ore, running 22% copper and 1.5% nickel. This was a central hole in the Frood Extension, the ore being cut from 3,112 to 3,238 feet. This is about $60 ore. Mond is now engaged in a big shaft-sinking job on the Frood Extension, designed to hurry the development of the tremendous copper deposits.

Prospecting in Alaska.

Dec. 8, 1927

This week smoke issued from the big stack at the Noranda smelter, and the expectation is that metal will be poured next Monday, although the official prediction was next Thursday. Some of the directors, including James Y. Murdoch, president, and S. C. Thomson, managing director, plan to be at the property next week and see Rouyn come into production as a copper-gold producer. Pilot drilling, chiefly from the 300-foot level, indicates that several of the larger bodies, including large high-grade ones, extend down to and below 500. This work is being done ahead of drives on the 400and 500-foot levels. These levels should be into the first orebodies in January or February. Work is temporarily handicapped by the putting of the property into production.

Feb. 23, 1928

Porcupine gold camp is recovering from a tragedy. The era of horror is passing into history and the normal state of affairs is returning to Timmins. Following the tragic fire of Feb. 10, Hollinger is once more settling down to the usual run of things. The death toll remains the same at 39 lives lost. Soon after recovering the last body from the mine — which for days previous had been filled with deadly gases — an investigation began into the cause of the fire. Hollinger officials are standing by their word that they will aid to the utmost any attempt to learn the cause. As was announced in last week’s ’Miner, property damage to the Hollinger will be very small. There will be a considerable loss caused by the shutdown of workings for several days. Mr. N. A. Timmins, president of the company, has announced that all employees will be paid in full for any time lost through the fire. In addition, the company will financially assist dependents of those who lost their lives in the mine. An inquest was opened into the disaster last week, and as soon as the smoke cleared from the workings, an inspection was made. Several other rubbish dumps were found underground in old stopes, it is said. Premier Ferguson has announced that Mr. Justice Godson, judge of the mining court of Ontario, has been appointed to conduct a thorough and searching inquiry. This inquiry will probably follow the inquest.

April 5, 1928

South and centred from Amos is a district which is rapidly accumulating strong public interest as a field of potential gold production. www.northernminer.com

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That interest is translating into development expenditures on a great number of properties. As The Northern Miner has been foremost in making the district known, the following resume should be of value. The properties at the most advanced stage of development are Cadillac-O’Brien, Malartic Gold, Siscoe Gold Mines, Stabell Mine and Thompson-Cadillac.

Sept. 20, 1928

The editor of The Northern Miner has just completed an aeroplane trip to the Canadian subarctic, up the west shore of Hudson Bay and across the Barren Lands. He accompanied a director of Dominion Explorers, one of the companies that has undertaken intensive exploration of the North. Much of the ground traversed is supposed to have never before been covered by man. The plane was the first to cross the Barren Lands that lie between Hudson Bay and the Mackenzie River basin. The purpose of the trip was to get an idea as to the conditions under which prospecting parties — sent into the territory by Dominion Explorers Northern Aerial Minerals Exploration Ltd. (N.A.M.E.), Cyril Knight Prospecting, Nipissing Mines or other organizations — were working, and as much first-hand information as possible as to results obtained to date. Except for short delays, caused by unfavourable flying weather, the schedule laid out for the trip was easily kept. It took 40 flying hours spread over 12 days, to cover over 3,900 miles. This is believed to be THE NORTHERN MINER 100TH ANNIVERSARY | 13

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•1915–1929• the most ambitious air trip made in Canada to date. Every preparation for the trip was made by Dominion Explorers and Western Canada Airways. One of the latter company’s planes was chartered from Winnipeg, and it functioned perfectly throughout. The crew were Western Canada Airways men; C.L. Dickens, pilot; and Wm. Nadon, mechanic.

But it was a “close fit.” The MacAlpine party, after eight weeks, made food and shelter just in time. They all lost weight, all suffered from the zero cold.

Richard Pearce, editor of The Northern Miner, has wired his office that the eight men made Cambridge Bay after waiting to cross Dease’s Strait, in the Arctic, over ice. TNM

Nov. 1, 1928

The announcement of the formation of Falconbridge Nickel Mines Ltd. was made this week. The company has 5,000,000 shares of no par value, and of those 2,750,000 shares have been issued for the property and the provision of $250,000 working capital, leaving 2,250,000 shares in the treasury.

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Oct. 3, 1929

At press time The Northern Miner’s editor, Richard Pearce, was still unreported. He is a member of the MacAlpine two-plane Arctic flight, and one of eight men who left Baker Lake nearly four weeks ago on a trip across the Arctic that should have taken but two weeks.

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Nov. 7, 1929

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Mine Construction and Infrastructure Mine Development and Rehabilitation

Oct. 3, 1929

Prospector’s Airways Limited is sending in supplies for exploratory work to be done this winter on its copper discoveries, 30 miles west of Lake Chibougamau. The first promising discovery was made in this area a few weeks ago. Already the prospectors have found another deposit two miles west of the first. A large block of claims has been staked in the vicinity of these finds. Other organizations are taking up adjoining property.

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Celebrating 100 years of

THE NORTHERN MINER 1915-2015

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A Message from the Premier On behalf of the Province of British Columbia, congratulations to the team at The Northern Miner on 100 years of advocating for the mining industry and telling its stories. This longevity is extraordinary. It’s a testament not only to the quality of your work, but also to the enduring strength of Canada’s mining industry. Here in BC, the mining sector is going strong, employing twice as many workers as it did 15 years ago, and our province accounts for one-fifth of all mineral exploration in Canada – up from just six per cent in 2001. Despite the challenges of volatile commodity prices, we’ve seen five new mines open and seven major expansions since 2011, with many more now in the permitting stage. And we’re acting on the lessons of the tragic breach at Mount Polley – working with communities, First Nations and labour to make our mining industry the safest and most responsible in the world. With new investments to improve permitting, inspections, and exploration incentives, the future of mining in BC is bright. Thanks for the great work you do to strengthen our economy and communities, and enjoy this special edition of The Northern Miner. Sincerely,

Christy Clark Premier

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uranium, gold

nickel finds AND

(1930–1939)

hile much of the world suffered during the years of the Great Depression, miners in Canada’s emerging gold camps enjoyed the Great Gold Boom, which had been caused by the revaluation of the gold price starting in Britain and Canada in September 1931, followed by Australia and leading European nations like

France. The U.S. got in on the act in 1933, and by the next year had set the gold price at US$35 per oz., versus the century-old price of US$20.67. While the fortunes of Canada’s mining industry and The Northern Miner were initially tied to silver, that changed as gold came the fore in the 1920s and 1930s. Thanks in part to the first commercial use of airplanes, gold discoveries were popping up in the Abitibi of Ontario and Quebec, Red Lake in northwestern Ontario, in Manitoba, and especially in B.C. Base metals were stepping up to take their place in Canadian mining, too, particularly nickel, with its demand on the rise thanks to tireless marketing efforts by International Nickel Co. (Inco), and copper in Eastern and Western Canada. The year 1931 saw the beginning of operations at Noranda’s copper refinery in Rouyn, Que. — a facility that would be the foundation of one of Canada’s greatest mining companies of the Twentieth Century. In B.C., the Trail smelter had grown over several decades to become a major producer of zinc and lead metal, particularly from ore sourced from the mighty Sullivan mine in southeast B.C. As a new European war loomed in 1938 and 1939, there was renewed focus by every major government on securing access to quality iron ore and coking coal for building armaments. The Steep Rock iron ore discovery in northwestern Ontario in 1939 quickly became a major mine that would help the Allies’ war effort. TNM

Noranda smelter.

www.northernminer.com

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•1930–1939•

Flotation cell at United Keno Hill’s mill in Elsa, Yukon.

Feb. 6, 1930

Sweeping brokerage changes will help mines and the public. The Old Margin Game is dead, deader than the cities engulfed by Vesuvius. With it are swept away the old methods of financing mining. They’re gone, with all the machinery of the old-style margin gambling. In their place will have to come rules, new regulations, higher margins.

Aug. 28, 1930

Silently and smoothly, and three months ahead of time, Flin Flon has been brought into production, and the concentrator is already milling 1,000 tons daily and regularly. Concentrates will start moving into the roaster early next month, and by the end of September Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting Co. should be well on the way to recovering and refining zinc. Copper smelter completion is being pushed, and management expects to start warming it up in October.

Feb. 12, 1931

That there is a splendid chance of the pitchblende discovery of the Eldorado Mines, on the east side of Great Bear Lake, becoming important, is the belief of one of the management engineers who examined it. He tells The Northern Miner that while, in his opinion,

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Chapter 2 TNM 100th 1930to1939.indd 18

insufficient work has been done on the property to form an opinion of the economic possibilities, the chances are bright that something of real importance may be found with further development work. He says that there are several breaks in the general strike in which flinty siliceous material occurs, associated with iron minerals. In this siliceous material yellow uranium oxides show at various places, and narrow lenses of rich radium ore were observed. The extent of this important ore can only be known after considerably more surface development work has been done. What might be considered the main break was followed for possibly over 300 feet. Other breaks were observed and further development work is also necessary before their importance can be ascertained. The area is interesting mineralogically and may prove of great importance when thoroughly explored, he remarked.

April 9, 1931

The Sherritt Gordon mill has now been operating 20 days and it is possible to give a line on results. As a matter of fact, no new Canadian plant has come in smoother than that of Sherritt. Within 10 days of turnover all the kinks had been smoothed out, and none of them was of any importance. Officials assert that the mill is now running as though it had been operating for years.

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Chapter 2 TNM 100th 1930to1939.indd 19

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•1930–1939• Rotten Row in Zeballos, B.C., in 1938.

April 16, 1931

The Northern Miner learns that Eldorado Gold Mines Ltd. has, this spring, added considerably to stakings in the Echo Bay region of Great Bear Lake. The company now controls almost three miles along strike of the copper-pitchblende discoveries, with the exception of one claim staked by Consolidated Smelting & Refining Co., which angles in. Charles LaBine, president of the company, states that the original shareholdings of his own and Gilbert LaBine, managing director, are still intact, and that no treasury stock has been sold. Contrary to the impression previously received, the company will endeavour to bring out 50 tons of pitchblende ore with the idea of production of radium in mind, rather than for test purposes. Additional information has been secured on processes necessary to produce the finished radium salts and it is not expected that total costs, including freight, will exceed $10,000 a gram. As the price of radium runs from $50,000 to $70,000 a gram, the hope of profit is discernible.

Aug. 27, 1931

The rush to Great Bear Lake is beginning. Until this week prospecting and staking had been confined to half a dozen outfits. Now individuals and syndicates are taking a hand and the sound of the cutter’s axe is resounding among the hills near Echo Bay.

Dec. 31, 1931

Over 2,000 mining companies are dealt with in the Canadian Mines Handbook, which will be ready for distribution within a week. This is 60% greater than the number treated by any similar book of this type. Furthermore, the information given has been brought to a new standard of completeness and usefulness. Shareholders are provided with just what they want to know about their companies, the form of the information being guided by many years of experience in such matters. A special section has been devoted to more than 1,300 companies that have become quiescent, been reorganized or have passed out of corporate existence. This section should be particularly valuable to individuals who possess old certificates, to trust companies, lawyers and some others who have to deal with estates. Some of the information goes back 25 years. A short section is devoted to the principal Canadian oil and gas companies. The handbook also contains the conventional range of stock prices — in this case running back seven years — and also minimum commission rates. A new feature is stock transfer taxes.

Feb. 4, 1932

Without any particular fuss, Quebec has become the outstanding field in gold prospecting in Canada. There is more real exploration going on in northwestern Quebec than in any other part of Canada. Plants are being taken in, several diamond drills are working and the recording offices are busier than at any time since the Rouyn rush.

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Forty miles of belt is under active exploration. The work is in strong hands. A large sum is being spent monthly. The results are excellent and it is reasonable to hope that several new mines will be brought into production. The Quebec gold belt is important to the whole world, not just to Canada. And the Quebec government isn’t saying a word, but is vigorously helping the operators with roads and other forms of active assistance.

March 31, 1932

Hon. Charles McCrea, Ontario Minister of Mines, met a large representation of the newly formed Ontario Prospectors’ Association at a banquet in his honor on Tuesday night of this week. The Minister informed the prospectors that he was glad they had formed an Association and took occasion to outline the policy of the government with respect to mining and promotional affairs. The aims, objects, hopes and purposes of the newly formed Ontario Prospectors’ Association were outlined by Carl Springer. The organization came into being to meet an urgent need and once launched there was revealed the fact that the idea of an organization had been latent in the minds of many.

June 23, 1932

The San Antonio mill, completed in May, has made its first gold brick shipment to Ottawa within the past week. At present the mill is running at little over half capacity, being gradually tuned up to handle 150 tons daily. Average grade, it is anticipated, will run between $15 and $20 to the ton. At $15 the output would approximate $65,000 a month, a sizable addition to Manitoba’s gold contribution.

Dec. 29, 1932

In the quiet town of Port Hope, Ontario, 60 miles east of Toronto, there is proceeding in orderly fashion the development of a unique Canadian industry, one which will put Canada on the metallurgical and scientific map of the world in a distinctive way. At this sequestered location the Eldorado Gold Mines Ltd. has acquired and equipped an extensive plant for the production of radium. Contrary to preformed ideas concerning the plant, it has the dimensions and its equipment represents the cost of a 200-ton gold mill. So far from being a laboratory-scale operation, the Eldorado radium production www.northernminer.com

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•1930–1939• ounce of gold at $35. He announces that the dard and stabilization. This news means that the United States United States Treasury will buy all gold offerwill pay 35 American dollars for the gold ing (foreign and domestic) at $35 an ounce. Geotech_AD_NorthernMiner_100thAnn_April2015.pdf 1 2015-04-15 9:01:33 AM This is the new United States gold stan- from Canadian mines.

King of England visiting Sudbury in 1939.

installation has involved the assembly of large-sized units, unique in Canadian milling and metallurgical practice.

Oct. 26, 1933

The lid’s off: President Roosevelt, yielding to the agrarian drive, is setting up an American market for gold and undertakes to start and keep it at whatever levels are necessary to bring up commodity prices. What those levels will be, where gold will finally rest, is the biggest guessing game in the world today. But $20.67 an ounce is finished, done with, dead. In this place last week, at a time when most people were expecting early stabilization of the U.S. dollar (and the markets were expressing it in low prices), we declared that to us it seemed most likely that the United States, internally insolvent, could run counter to the world trend. Mr. Roosevelt, in breathtaking fashion, upsets the best wishes of the creditor class, the holders of bonds and mortgages. He yields to the great masses, the people must pay interest and repay debts, and starts the U.S. dollar driving towards levels that are calculated to raise commodity prices and wages, and bring his country out of the slough of despond and the swamp of unemployment. His government will buy newly mined U.S. gold at prices to be set from time to time. It will go into the world markets and buy and sell gold as required. Those who declared that gold would be abandoned are given their final quietus. Gold is becoming more sought after, more utilized in the monetary scheme, than ever.

Your Exploration Advantage

Feb. 1, 1934

A flash from Washington Wednesday afternoon says that President Roosevelt has exercised his powers and has set the United States dollar at 59.06% of its former value and the www.northernminer.com

Chapter 2 TNM 100th 1930to1939.indd 21

THE NORTHERN MINER 100TH ANNIVERSARY | 21

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•1930–1939• June 21, 1934

With one property coming into production this fall and at least four others at a stage warranting large-scale development expenditures, the Little Long Lac area in northwestern Ontario is one of the brightest new gold spots in Canada today. Four hundred men are working for different companies, and prospectors are scouring the bush beyond stakings for probable extensions of the favourable rocks in which discoveries have been made to date.

Dec. 20, 1934

The prosperity of mining and its importance in the economic life of the country are forcefully emphasized by the fact that in 1934 the industry contributed 29% of all dividends paid by Canadian corporations. Distributions by mining companies of the Dominion this year exceeded the combined total of those to common and preferred stockholders of all banks, insurance and trust companies, chain stores, brewing and distilling corporations, textile, construction and utility companies. Returns from mining at $49,500,000 were surpassed by only one group, the oils, whose dividends amounted to $62,000,000. Of

this amount however, some $32,500,000 was provided by the foreign-operated International Petroleum Corporation, leaving less than $30,000,000 for the purely Canadian companies.

May 2, 1935

Eldorado Gold Mines Ltd. has sold to the Ontario government three and a half grams of radium for use in the provincial hospitals, it is announced. While the price quoted in the Toronto dailies was given as $170,000, The Northern Miner learns that the figure was somewhat lower than this. This is the first instance of Empire-produced radium being sold in such large quantities. Deliveries will be effected during the summer months.

May 14, 1936

Remarkably rich ore, perhaps equalling anything previously found in Canada, is being mined in drifts east of the shaft on the 700 and 1,000-ft. levels of the O’Brien Mines, in Cadillac Township, Que. An official, talking to The Northern Miner Tuesday, estimated that the two drifts, which had opened up lengths of between 80 and 100 ft. each, had recovered in the form of high grade, that is being quickly turned into bullion. Found the last week in April, production mounted quickly, and in the week ending May 2 a total of $52,000 was taken out, and in the following week $55,000. There has been a great deal more since which has not been appraised. If the estimate of $250,000 production from these two drifts is realized when the final returns are had, the drifts will average around $500 a ton.

July 2, 1936

The mining boom has struck Red Lake again and this Patricia pioneer camp, still in its infancy, is proffering the mine seeker with all kinds of likely ground meriting serious attention. The Northern Miner was caught in the bustle and activity of the camp last week, and was impressed with the widespread nature of the renewed exploration activity. Three airplane companies, maintaining daily air service into the camp are doing a rushing business. Red Lake is being thronged with prospectors and promoters, engineers and mining men. Diamond drills are at a premium and several outfits are waiting for a drill to be made available. The speculative fever has caught most of the inhabitants, many of whom are holding vendors’ interests-for, following the first heyday of the camp, a decade ago, many of those who came in the rush decided to stay.

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•1930–1939• After a period of quiescence, even though the main developing and producing efforts have steadily reported entrancing ore conditions, it remained for Gold Eagle Gold Mines with its startling ore developments in recent weeks to touch off the spark, and now much of the outlying ground that cannot afford to be ignored seems assured of thorough-going investigation. Well over a score of operations are settling down to serious exploration and development along the 20-odd mile long front of the Red Lake gold bearing formations. Many others are making preparations to start. Some few will come through, but many more will be forgotten — that is the law of mining. The important thing is that justifiable work is to be done.

Eldorado mine in N.W.T., 1937.

June 10, 1937

Taking full advantage of the higher copper prices, the Britannia Mining and Smelting Co., Howe Sound British Columbia, controlled by the Howe Sound Co., second largest operator in the coast province, has stepped its mine and mill up to operating at capacity basis again. The huge mill and concentrator are handling over 6,000 tons daily and the mine, working on a six-day/week basis, is turning out 7,000 tons daily.

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Chapter 2 TNM 100th 1930to1939.indd 23

In the short space of eight months mill tonnage has been increased from 70,000 to 180,000 tons per month, and further increases may be in prospect later on. Payrolls have advanced accordingly and over 1,100 men were employed when The Northern Miner visited the property.

THE NORTHERN MINER 100TH ANNIVERSARY | 23

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•1930–1939• Dec. 23, 1937

During the past season, exploration of the large mining concession in Labrador held by Labrador Mining and Exploration Co. has resulted in the discovery of two iron deposits believed to have possibilities of major importance. Due to the shortness of the season for work to be carried on in this area, only preliminary investigation was possible, but if further work next year substantiates present indications, there is an excellent chance that the next few years will see the opening up of another vast and virtually unexplored section of the British Empire. Already the British government has indicated interest in the project and it is understood negotiations are proceeding at the present time. The situation in Spain has forced Great Britain to be on the lookout for other sources of iron ore.

May 5, 1938

Kerr-Addison gold mines hoisted 785 tons of ore for crushing on May 1, and Monday afternoon grinding in the big new mill officially started. For the first few days the automatic feeder is being held to about 325 tons daily, but before the week is out, it is expected the mill will operate at 500 tons daily or over, The Northern Miner was told on Tuesday by W. S. Row, manager. Some old surface muck is being utilized for tuning-up purposes, but with nearly all stopes on the 300ft. level silled out now, the full requirements of the mill will be looked after from underground.

June 2, 1938

Sachigo River has cut its ore on the third level and The Northern Miner can say that the crosscut assay is 11.38 ounces across one foot. The mill is now running, latest report saying that the feed is two ounces, tailings less than 30¢ a ton, 25 tons a day. These results make Sachigo Ontario’s highest grade gold mine.

March 2, 1939

At long last a Canadian dream is coming true. After a century and a half of effort there is being displayed on the Canadian side of Lake Superior a big-tonnage deposit of high grade iron ore equal in grade to the best on the American side of the lake. There is reckoned to be in sight already 100,000,000 tons down to the first thousand feet of ore depth, with grade likely to average between 55% and 60%. The estimate is based on preliminary diamond drilling, with about a dozen holes in the deposit so far. The body is 4,000 ft. long and appears to have a minimum width of 200 ft., with the deepest hole 1,400 ft. below surface. Geophysical work corroborates the feeling that extensions or repetitions of this deposit are indicated to occur. Diamond drilling last week pulled high grade core from another body.

Aug. 31, 1939

The International Nickel Co. of Canada has acquired under option to purchase the old Alexo nickel mine at Alexo station on the Porcupine branch of the T. and N.O. Railway. An option has also been secured on the adjoining property of Alexo Extension Mining Syndicate and several other claims in the same neighborhood have been staked, and will be absorbed into the main groups in the event that exploration should uncover results of value. The Alexo nickel mine was acquired from Alexo Nickel Mining Co. The property was a shipper to Mond Nickel Co. during the Great War, but shipments were suspended when the drop in demand for nickel in the early ’20s curtailed the nickel operation generally. An examination of the property at that time showed 20,000 tons of 3% nickel-copper ore remaining in the mine. Total shipments during the war were reported to have amounted to 60,000 tons of a similar grade.

Oct. 26, 1939

During the first year of its operation, the Con mill of Consolidated Mining and Smelting Co. of Canada has produced gold valued in excess of $1,000,000. The mill has a rated capacity of 100 tons per day using the cyanide process, but has handled up to 120 tons in a 24-hour stretch. On the basis of an average mill schedule of 100 tons daily, the reported output of $1,000,000 would represent an average recovery of $35, or 1 oz. gold per ton. Additions to the mill have been made recently, permitting an increase to a 160-ton daily capacity. TNM

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Miners at Quebec Copper in 1953.

AN blossoming OF industry THE

he cataclysm of World War II made mining an essential activity tightly monitored and directed by governments around the globe until at least 1945. At the same time, the need for men to head to the battlefields of Europe and beyond severely depleted staffing levels and productive capacities in Canada’s mines. While the U.S. considered gold mining a non-essential activity, the Canadian government encouraged it to help pay for its war efforts. Of particular concern to Falconbridge was the 1940 seizure of its nickel-copper refinery in Norway by invading German troops, which forced the company to seek alternative refining until it regained its asset in 1945. Uranium mining, of course, took on paramount importance to supply the Manhattan Project and the first U.S. atomic bombs. In 1942, the Crown corporation Eldorado Gold Mines (a precursor to Cameco)

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Chapter 3 TNM 100th 1940to1956.indd 25

(1940–1956)

reopened its uranium-radium mine in Port Radium, N.W.T., to supply the U.S. war effort. In 1948 the Canadian government relinquished its exclusive right to mine and prospect for uranium, and set the stage for the uranium boom around the newly built town of Elliot Lake, Ont., kicked off by a major uranium discovery in 1953. For the next four decades, Elliot Lake would produce most of the Western World’s uranium. The mid-1950s also saw the creation of Noranda’s Gaspé Mines division, its second copper asset in what is today Murdochville, Que., as well as the development of one of the world’s great zinc-lead mines, spurred by the 1952 discovery of large massive-sulphide deposits in northern New Brunswick’s Bathurst camp. In northern Manitoba in 1956, after a decade of exploration efforts, International Nickel made a major nickel discovery that would become the Thompson nickel mine and smelter complex.TNM THE NORTHERN MINER 100TH ANNIVERSARY | 25

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•1940–1956• Feb. 29, 1940

Falconbridge Nickel Mines Ltd. has an insurance policy against the possibility of losing its Norwegian refining facilities in the form of an offer from The International Nickel Company to provide accommodation for Falconbridge matte on a toll basis for the duration of the war. This announcement, one of the most far reaching of the year in connection with the Canadian metal industry, came from J. Gordon Hardy, president of Falconbridge, in the course of his address to shareholders at the annual meeting held last Thursday at Toronto.

May 10, 1945

The ending of the European War will not see an immediate bursting open of development activity in the Canadian Mining North. It will be weeks before any important numbers of men become available for the mining industry because warplant cutbacks will chiefly chase men into city civilian jobs, and the release of soldiers will be at best a slow procedure. The base metal mines are shorter of men than at any time in the war and the demand for base metals continues high and urgent on the part of their customers. The Japanese War remains to be finished and in government circles there is no disposition to believe that it will be a quick and easy job.

But, it would appear that new developments, generally, will have to wait a little while longer before getting the green light. In the meantime they can, of course, keep on with their diamond drilling, confident that as soon as new labor begins to show any strength they will be given every encouragement to get going underground.

May 30, 1946

The shaft has been collared at Dickenson Red Lake. A portable compressor and other equipment was delivered last week. Preparations are well in hand for starting actual sinking. Five or six important ore zones are within easy reach of the shaft. It is expected that a large proportion of the initial development will be in material of mineable grade. Present plans anticipate a 500-ton mill. Recent work, diamond drilling and resampling of old holes, has considerably cleared the geological picture. Many ore sections have been cut lately, representing several new ore zones as well as extensions to previously known bodies, The Northern Miner finds at the property. All the exploration work to date has been within the four claims south of Balmer Lake and west of Balmer Creek. There are still 12 claims which have not been explored. That matter will be attended to at a later date. Some difficulty was found in obtaining a suitable shaft site. Four vertical diamond drill test holes were put down before deciding on a site — ore kept getting in the way. There is still ore at the selected location, but not enough to warrant further delay.

June 9, 1949

Spurred by new discoveries of pitchblende as prospectors were able to get at the actual prospecting after spending some time in putting up camps, cutting trails and other preliminary jobs, the search for uranium ore north and east of Sault Ste. Marie is gaining momentum. Some 3,700 claims or the equivalent of 250 square miles, have been staked, and recordings are being made at the greatest rate since the discovery last fall by Robt. Campbell of what is now Camray, on the shore of Theano Point. In two days last week the recorder at Sault Ste. Marie put through 250 locations, or about a year’s average before the present excitement. Staking has spilled over into the Sudbury Mining Division, as prospectors work easterly along the north shore of Georgian Bay.

June 9, 1949 The producing gold mines are also suffering from the most acute labor situation of the war period. If this were to last a couple of months more, several mines would be brought to a shut down, with dire effects upon their business communities. This situation, it is reported from Ottawa, must receive consideration. There may be special situations where permission can be granted to developers of new mines to start preliminary work, that is, situations where such work would not interfere with other mining operations.

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Ontario’s third ranking gold camp, the Red Lake area, is in pretty fair shape these days. At least, the health of the camp is as good as can be expected in these trying gold mining times, The Northern Miner can report after a tour through the district. This favorable sentiment, though, is restricted entirely to the present producing operations. Outside exploration and development are at the lowest ebb in many years and Red Lake has seen some pretty flat times in the history of its first quarter century. Where two or three years ago there were scores of drilling projects in progress and as many more in prospect, to say nothing of a half-dozen underground jobs, today all The Northern www.northernminer.com

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•1940–1956• At Inco’s Copper Cliff mine in Sudbury, Ont. in 1954.

Miner can find to report is one machine plugging away in solitary glory on the Macfie property and an X-ray program of assessment drilling winding up on the MacBuck group. Boymar, successor to McMarmac and Richmac, with its long exploratory drive on the 775 level, is the only development flag flying. Despite this lack of new effort the camp is in fundamentally good shape. Rising out of the ashes of the 1945–46 drilling boom are last year’s two new producers, Starratt Olsen and Dickenson, and Dome’s Campbell Red Lake which turned over its fine new mill only a week ago. Three new producers starting up within a space of a year is no mean achievement for a camp that turned out its first gold 18 years ago. Last year’s $4,000,000 output represented an increase of more than 25% over 1947, and it will be 50% higher again this year.

Nov. 3, 1949

At Pine Point on the south shore of Great Slave Lake, not far east of Hay River, northern terminus of the Mackenzie Highway, Canada’s hopes for a big new lead-zinc mining camp have been entrusted to one of the most ambitious exploration programs undertaken in recent years. Here, 300 miles north of Edmonton, Consolidated Mining and Smelting Co., assisted by the minority participation of Northern Lead Zinc Ltd. and Hoyle-Ventures, is pouring men, money and machines into a grand scale prospecting venture, which if it succeeds, will mean the establishment of a sizable industry in a section of the country previously notable only for a few scattered trappers. www.northernminer.com

Chapter 3 TNM 100th 1940to1956.indd 27

Sept. 3, 1950

Cartier Construction Company, Quebec, has been awarded the contract for building the 360-mile railway from Seven Islands, on the St. Lawrence River, to the iron range along the Quebec-Labrador boundary. Associated with Cartier are Fred Mannix & Co. Limited, of Edmonton and Vancouver; Morrison-Knudsen Corp. Boise Idaho; and McNamara Construction Company, Toronto. The line will be known as Quebec North Shore and Labrador Railway Company. It will be wholly owned by the Iron Ore interests. Work is to start at once. Completion of a temporary dock, at Seven Islands, for handling construction equipment is to be rushed. This equipment will be distributed this winter over the first 100 miles of the route, so that grading can be gone on with in the spring. Tunnels, of which there are several in the first few miles in the climb to the height of land from the St. Lawrence, are to be completed this winter, along with some of the heavier rock cuts. This will permit speedier grading. Airfields are to be cut at regular intervals to service construction. Men will be put on cutting right-of-way and other pre-grading work this winter as fast as they can be accommodated in a big scale.

Oct. 11, 1951

New Brunswick is in the midst of the greatest wave of exploration in the province’s history, The Northern Miner learns from government and mining company officials. The excitement revolves around copper and zinc showings mainly, along with some lead, in three sections of the province. The showings for the most part have been known for some time but have aroused new interest in the light of the great demand for base metals with accompanying high prices. One official summed up his company’s ground by saying that normally they wouldn’t take a second look but now the need is so great that they couldn’t afford to chance passing anything by. Some of the mining greats have taken an interest in the province, including such organizations as Noranda, Ventures, American Metal and Kennecott Copper. Other interested parties are M. J. O’Brien Ltd., F. M. Connell, B. W. Newkirk and Anacon Extension Ltd. Diamond drills are known to be working on at least three properties and plans are heard for exploration programs on other blocks. THE NORTHERN MINER 100TH ANNIVERSARY | 27

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•1940–1956• July 16, 1953

With upwards of 1,700 men and scores of machines swarming over two mountainsides, the Noranda subsidiary, Gaspe

Copper Mines, is transforming a section of the Gaspe wilderness into the site of a modern industrial enterprise and a thriving town. It is one of the biggest “new mine”

1915 WAS A DEFINING YEAR IN

CANADIAN MINING. As The Northern Miner celebrates its 100th anniversary, Hudbay is marking the centenary of the Flin Flon deposit. In the hundred years since its discovery in 1915, the Flin Flon deposit has produced a company, a town, and an economic engine that continues to thrive. Present day Hudbay took root in Northern Manitoba, launching a long road of growth that today also leads to Peru and Arizona.

hudbayminerals.com

28 | THE NORTHERN MINER 100TH ANNIVERSARY

Chapter 3 TNM 100th 1940to1956.indd 28

jobs ever attempted in Canada and has few counterparts elsewhere. Without being seen, the scope of the job is hard to imagine and the bald figures hardly convey a sense of the effort and accomplishment that lies behind the development of a big-tonnage mine, the sprawling surface plant and the building of a brand new town which in a few years is expected to be supporting a population of at least 4,000 people. A year ago a handful of workers was on the job and there was scant evidence that these hillsides, already denuded by logging operations, would soon give birth to activity of a different, and more permanent, sort. Today, broad acres have been cleared, miles of road have been constructed, blocks of houses line the streets in the rapidly growing townsite, and at the mine two big buildings already up and foundations in for several more sketch the shape of the industrial giant that will start to breathe a year hence. True to Noranda tradition, nothing is being skimped. This is a big job. The operators know it and they have planned accordingly. They are building, for the future, a plant that is destined to be operating for many years. And as they build now, so will they reap later. The initial cost represents a financial hurdle that was no mean feat, even for Noranda with all its millions of assets, but the big expenditures now will pay off in low operating costs throughout the life of the mine.

Dec. 9, 1954

Manitoba is to be the scene of a really largescale investigation of nickel ore possibilities. The locale is Moak Lake, a short distance north of Mystery Lake and 40 miles north of the Hudson Bay Railway, 450 miles north of Winnipeg. Here International Nickel will sink a shaft 1,300 to 1,400 ft., and then do 10,000 ft. of crosscutting and drifting. The main idea is to provide setups for an extensive campaign of underground drilling, deemed the only way to truly determine the ore situation. Peridotite, the nickel host rock, does not outcrop and there are other limitations upon the information that can be secured from further surface drilling. Hence the underground program. The surface drilling has www.northernminer.com

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Honouring a Pioneer Congratulations to Dr. Norman B. Keevil, recipient of The Northern Minerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Lifetime Achievement Award. Dr. Keevilâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s profound impact on the mining industry in Canada and beyond will benefit countless generations to come.

Chapter 3 TNM 100th 1940to1956.indd 29

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•1940–1956• indicated, The Northern Miner can say, the existence of 50,000,000 tons of ore running 0.7% nickel, with some portions running higher and some showing lower values. Widths of up to 300 ft. of material have been had. Since 1947, the International Nickel Company of Canada has been actively engaged in extensive exploration work in Manitoba covering in the main region along the Hudson Bay Railway between Herb Lake and Moak Lake, where numerous occurrences of nickel were reported in favorable geological settings. Extensive airborne geophysical work has been carried out by the company and since nickel bearing rock of the area rarely outcrops at surface a great deal of diamond drilling has been necessary to investigate encouraging indications.

Sept. 16, 1954

Consolidated Denison Mines is drilling the first deep hole at its uranium prospect in the Quirke Lake area, Algoma district, Blind River, and expects to contact the possible extension of the Algom Uranium Mines orebody before the end of the month, it is reported. The hole is going down close to the joint boundary, near which Algom Uranium has started sinking a shaft. So far, geological formations intersected have conformed to the structure on the Algom property, says R. Benner, engineer, and it should follow that the formation will continue to depth. If ore conditions extend into Consolidated Denison Mines property, it is anticipated they will be intersected at about 2,100 ft.

Sept. 22, 1955

Management and financing of Bethlehem Copper Corp. has been taken over by American Smelting and Refining Co. Bethlehem holds a 100-claim copper prospect in Highland Valley, about 26 miles southeast of Ashcroft, British Columbia. Under the terms of the agreement, repayment of preproduction expenses is to be on a pro-rata basis from 80% of the first returns. The re-

Northern Miner staff in late 1940s.

maining 20% and all net profits are to be split on a 55-45 basis between American Smelting and Refining and Bethlehem. A five-year program will be carried out, dependent on first year’s results. During the first year it is proposed to complete 10,000 ft. of diamond drilling together with surface work to cost $200,000. Blocking out of ore and production preparation work is expected to require two additional years. Mill construction and commencement of production are expected to be completed during the last two years of the program.

Oct. 27, 1955

Signatures were placed on the formal contract this week covering sales of uranium precipitates to be produced by Consolidated Denison Mines. The premium price contract is for a total of $182,250,000 worth of precipitates to be delivered to Eldorado Mining and Refining by March 31, 1962. Target date for commencement of production is Apr. 1, 1957. Several new records have been established by Consolidated Denison culminating in the signing of the purchase contract. It was less than a year ago (Nov. 11) that The Northern Miner stated the No. 3 hole had penetrated bands of uranium bearing conglomerate. Between that time and late this June, diamond drilling had succeeded in outlining an indicated 12,500,000 tons grading 0.112% uranium oxide. There is no surface exposure of Denison’s ore to indicate the presence of any of this tonnage. It all lies deep underground.

Micon Congratulates the Northern Miner on its 100th Anniversary valuation and evaluation of mineral properties mineral resource and mineral reserve estimates independent engineer services; project and feasibility studies expert witness and litigation support

www.micon-international.com Toronto, Canada mail@micon-international.com Norwich, UK office@micon-international.co.uk Vancouver, Canada Cornwall, UK

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March 1, 1956

With production and net income at an all-time record high, and with ore reserves increased to a new tonnage record, Asbestos Corp. in 1955 had the best year in its history. It was a year of growth, in which the new Normandie mine was brought to full production, while the company’s other leading properties were kept at maximum capacity. TNM www.northernminer.com

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•1940–1956•

Remembrance

Reminiscences of a Northern Miner Kid

By John Carrington

Dad graduated with a Bachelor of Applied Science (Mining) degree in 1934, right in the middle of the Depression. He told me that he had had three job offers, no mean feat in itself: MacIntyre Porcupine Mines in Schumacher — a now long-defunct mining company whose name he couldn’t remember — and The Northern Miner. Almost on a whim he took the job with the Miner “because I always had a hankering for writing.” So began a 44-year career with The Northern Miner, broken only by three years’ service in the Royal Canadian Navy during the Second World War. Those days reporting involved lengthy trips by train and the occasional bush plane to any mining site with a story. No cell phones, GPS, Internet or laptops — just pen, paper, typewriter, mail and the occasional long-distance phone call. Mom and Dad’s first child, Cathy, was born on a winter January day in 1941, when he was up at Uchi Lake Gold Mining Co.’s operations in northwestern Ontario. Who remembers the Miner’s offices at 122 Richmond Street, long

gone for the Sheraton Centre? I recall three things: the smell of printer’s ink and the clatter of the printing presses in the basement, the long climb up the stairs to the editorial office and the swinging gate that slapped you in the rear when you entered and left that office. Every Tuesday night Dad worked late to finalize the paper before going to press Wednesday morning, and hitting the streets soon thereafter. That meant Welsh rarebit or wieners and beans with toast for my sisters and me. To this day I enjoy wieners and beans — Welsh rarebit not so much! In the early 1960’s Dad helped me land a summer job in the bindery at the Miner’s new plant on River Street. That’s where publications other than The Northern Miner itself were folded, trimmed and assembled into their final book form. Back in those days the Miner printed its Canadian Mines Handbook and Mining Explained, plus countless mining company annual reports right there at River Street. Large sheets of paper with perhaps 24 or 32 individual pages of a publication would come from the presses to be folded by machines into a section of the book. One of the supervisors patiently tried to teach me the art of operating the folders. Subsequent sections would be stacked together until all the sections comprising a book were in order. These would be trimmed by

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Chapter 3 TNM 100th 1940to1956.indd 31

THE NORTHERN MINER 100TH ANNIVERSARY | 31

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•1940–1956•

Remembrance

an hydraulic cutting trimmer, the most terrifying device I had ever seen. (Rule number 1: “Hands always off the trimming plate.” Rule number 2: “Read Rule number 1!”) One afternoon our foreman asked if I wanted some overtime. “Fold all these sections of the Canadian Mines Handbook into three-foot stacks. Wrap some twine around them and tie it in a slip knot. You know how to tie a slip knot, don’t you?” Well I didn’t, and was too embarrassed to say so. So I tied a good old square knot. A day or two later he said, “I have a job for you. Go upstairs and keep all the places on the revolving table filled with the right Handbook sections for the women assembling the books.” Each section of the book had a place on this revolving table. As it rotated women would take off each section as they moved by, thus assembling all the sections into a complete book. My job was to keep those piles filled on the rotating table. It was amazing how quickly those piles became depleted. And how long it took to untie a tight square knot! I just couldn’t untie the stacks I had folded two days earlier fast enough, and before long, production ground to a halt from empty slots on the table. The women laughed, the foreman yelled and I learned never to answer a question untruthfully, no matter how awkward it might be. If you look closely you will see that coupled with The Northern Miner’s motto, “On the Level,” on its masthead is a good old-fashioned

surveying level. The Miner has always been a stickler for thorough and ethical reporting, a bit of a rarity in the heady days of mining speculation of times past. That logo and level sum it all up. As a teenager I never thought much about it until I overheard a phone conversation my father had one Sunday afternoon in the early 1960s. He was talking to a reporter about a trip to Timmins to get the scoop on the still unannounced Kidd Creek discovery by Texas Gulf Sulphur. Back in the day, announcements like this were made via the press and The Miner had the inside on this tremendous discovery. I can still hear clearly my dad saying something like: “You get all the details from Texas Gulf and send them back here in time for the press run on Wednesday. And no playing the stock market before the paper hits the streets on Thursday. If I get wind that you have traded any TGS stock between now and then you won’t have a job here any longer.” Given the legal trouble senior executives of TGS got into with the Securities Exchange Commission and the subsequent Windfall Oil and Mines scandal, Dad’s admonition was prescient. To be sure, On the Level. TNM — John K. Carrington is a director of Kinross Gold and was vice-chairman and a director of Barrick Gold from 1999–04, and COO from 1996–04. His father John W. Carrington was Editor of The Northern Miner from 1949–78.

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he late 1950s and early 1960s saw a scaling up of Canada’s mining industry, complemented by major productivity gains and leaps in the sophistication of exploration technology. The perfect example of Canadian miners’ upsizing in operational scale was the development of vast iron ore mining, processing, and rail and port facilities built in the Labrador Trough region of Quebec’s North Shore and western Labrador. While the first ore was shipped out of the region in 1954, the late 1950s and 1960s saw the region reach fruition as a major global player in iron ore. Other highlights in Canadian base metals mining included the start of commercial production of nickel in Thompson, Man., and lead-zinc from the Brunswick mine in New Brunswick. In B.C., the Highland Valley porphyry copper mine, discovered by Herman “Spud” Huestis’ Bethlehem Copper in 1955–56, was brought into production by the company in 1962, thanks to financial help from Japan’s Sumitomo. The town of Val-d’Or, Que., saw a flurry of drilling in 1962–63, spurred on by Kiena Gold Mines’ discovery of gold mineralization under Lake Dubuisson, kicking off decades of successful gold exploration and mining by many players under the lake. In the spring of 1964, Texas Gulf Sulphur electrified the Canadian mining scene with its copper-zinc-silver massive sulphide discovery at shallow depths in the Porcupine area north of Timmins, Ont. One early hole returned 183 metres grading 1% copper, 8% zinc and around 136 grams silver per tonne. So that it could quietly acquire claims, the company kept its work in the area as secret as possible since first discovering copper in November 1963, but sleuthing by Northern Miner reporters allowed the news to be made public in our April 16, 1964 edition, which prompted lawsuits over withheld information and one of the country’s biggest-ever staking rush. TNM

www.northernminer.com

Chapter 4 TNM 100th 1957to1964.indd 33

A era

golden

FOR

mining (1957–1964)

At Gaspe Copper Mines in Murdochville, Que.

THE NORTHERN MINER 100TH ANNIVERSARY | 33

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•1957–1964• At Henderson molybdenum mine in Colorado.

Jan. 17, 1957

The rich new nickel discoveries of Le Moyne Ungava Mines have rapidly set the stage for what promises to be one of the biggest, most intensive and most expensive exploration efforts in the exciting history of Canadian mining. Announced exclusively by The Northern Miner only two weeks ago, it is believed as many as some three dozen companies have already made determined bids for concessions or interests in the new area in the bleak, sub-Arctic barrens of New Quebec. They represent what is probably the greatest array of mining talent and resources ever to be thrown into a new area. It is understood that applications for concessions that cover virtually the entire belt of favorable rocks, stretching 200 miles from Cape Smith at the northeast tip of Hudson Bay to Wakeham Bay on Hudson Strait, have flooded the offices of Quebec’s Department of Mines, which in 1955 withdrew the entire area from staking.

June 13, 1957

Quietly working on a broad exploration project for the past year, the Mattagami Syndicate in recent days has come up with what could well

be an important copper-zinc discovery in Northwestern Quebec, The Northern Miner can say. Results of the first hole show two impressive intersections. This is the word from people connected with the syndicate, and is concurred in by a number of engineers who have seen the show. The syndicate is composed of a group of six mining companies, each holding a 16.66% interest. The companies are Leitch Gold Mines, Teck-Hughes, Dome Mines, Iso Uranium Mines, Highland Bell, and Area Mines. The discovery has touched off another large-scale staking rush, with a number of the “big name” companies engaged in the scramble for ground. Interest in the area has climbed to a fever pitch as a result of the first hole put down by the syndicate. This was to test the first of a dozen or more important looking anomalies that have been covered by syndicate stakings. Altogether, close to 500 claims in a dozen or so groups have been pegged out. These are currently being added to, it can be said. After going through 50 ft. of overburden, the hole collared in massive sulphides with the 27 ft. intersection assaying 0.89% copper, 6.6% zinc, 0.03 oz. gold and 0.58 oz. silver. At 275 ft. an 88.5 ft. section of massive sulphides assayed 0.83% copper, 8.89% zinc, 0.02 oz. gold and 0.6 oz. silver.

Oct. 23, 1958

Initial production is scheduled to commence in November from the Potash Company of America Ltd. plant about 15 miles east of Saskatoon, Sask., The Northern Miner found while visiting the property. All phases of the mine preparation and plant construction programs are well along and, barring unforeseen hitches, mining should be under way before the middle of next month. Shaft sinking to the 3,450 ft. horizon has been completed and driving both east and west from the shaft at the ore horizon is under way. The shaft-sinking job itself and the equipping of the shaft for production have been unique in the annals of Canadian mining. Shaft sinking took place through ground that had been previously frozen Inuit family in Canada’s Arctic in 1958.

On behalf of the Government of Saskatchewan and the Ministry of the Economy, I extend our sincere congratulations to the Northern Miner on chronicling a century of mining and exploration from the Canadian perspective. Over the past 100 years, your publication has helped build the permanent historical record of the events, the people and the businesses of one of our most exciting and dynamic industries. Entering its 2nd century of publishing, we wish both the Northern Miner and the industry it covers continued growth and success. Hon. Bill Boyd Saskatchewan Minister of the Economy

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www.northernminer.com

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•1957–1964•

Huntley coal mine in New Zealand.

solid. It is believed to be the deepest shaft, put down through pre-frozen ground, ever attempted on this continent and probably anywhere in the world.

Dec. 31, 1959

Uncertainty over the immediate future has residents and merchants of Elliot Lake, Ont., centre of Canada’s largest uranium-producing area, on edge these days, The Northern Miner noted on visiting the area. While there are many who feel that over the long term the camp has a promising future, it is the years immediately following expiration of present sales contracts that cause the most concern. Main fear at present is that some of the producers — perhaps three — will shortly cease operations and throw some 2,500 mine employees out of work. This fear followed the announcement early in November of a new agreement between Eldorado Mining and Refining, the Canadian government’s purchasing agent for uranium concentrates, and the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. This agreement paved the way for weak operators (those in financial difficulties) to sell the unfilled portions of their contracts to their more fortunate brother operators.

Aug. 18, 1960

Quebec Cartier Mining Co., Canadian subsidiary of U.S. Steel Corp., is on the last lap of a huge construction job that is creating the largest single mining enterprise ever attempted in Canada. First production of high-grade iron concentrate is expected to be realized this fall, and the initial shipment is scheduled to go out early in the new year. This is a tremendous achievement for the project which is unofficially estimated to represent an expenditure of almost $300 million. Bids were not called for until the end of May 1958, so that the production effort has been achieved in less than 2.5 years’ time. More than 8,000 men are swarming over the job now, hurrying to completion the preparation of an open pit, construction of a mill, railway, power plant, two towns and port facilities.

March 30, 1961

of International Nickel Co., at Thompson, Man., was officially ushered into production. Premier Duff Roblin, of Manitoba, cut the nickel ribbon symbolizing the start of operations. Attending the dedication ceremonies were some 200 representatives of government and industry from as far away as Paris and London. The federal government was represented by Hon. Paul Comtois, Minister of Mines, and Hon. Walter Dinsdale, Minister of Northern Affairs. Congratulatory messages were read from Prime Minister Diefenbaker, Luther H. Hodges, U.S. secretary of commerce, and others. The $185-million Thompson project made a great impression on the visitors. They saw a plant solidly built, using the most modern equipment designed to assure efficient and low-cost operation. Although compact, the layout is spacious and the designers obviously have made provision for expansion. Nearby is the townsite provided with all the amenities for modern living. Hundreds of comfortable homes in the modern style are being rushed to completion, and more will be built. Population approaches 4,000 but it will quickly expand to 8,000 as more accommodation becomes available. That will make Thompson the fourth-largest community in Manitoba.

May 25, 1961

The productive days of a prolific and once mighty gold camp are fast coming to an end. Kirkland Lake, in the full flower of youth some 25 years ago, is now well past its prime and it will not be long before the number of operating mines dwindles to but a few.

June 22, 1961

Production plans for Brunswick Mining and Smelting Corp., which have blown hot and cold for several years now, have jelled at last. The stage is set, so The Northern Miner can say, to bring the company into operation as a major produce of silver and base metals, to be followed eventually by ancillary plants turning out fertilizers and chemicals.

Congratulations to THe NoRTHeRN MiNeR on its 100th Anniversary The Northern Miner has played an invaluable role in telling the stories of exploration and development in Canada and around the world. On behalf of the Government of Canada, I salute the generations of prospectors, geologists, engineers, miners, financiers and suppliers who have built this thriving industry. We are proud to support the mining sector by keeping taxes low and modernizing the regulatory regime. May the next 100 years see continued prosperity for mining in Canada. The Honourable Greg Rickford Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources and Minister for the Federal Economic Development Initiative for Northern Ontario

Last weekend with appropriate ceremony, the magnificent new plant www.northernminer.com

Chapter 4 TNM 100th 1957to1964.indd 35

THE NORTHERN MINER 100TH ANNIVERSARY | 35

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•1957–1964• The announcement was made in New Brunswick last week by Premier Louis J. Robichaud, that New Brunswick M. & S. would get started this year on construction of a $50 million complex, entailing mine development and erection of a concentrator and lead smelter.

April 16, 1964

Texas Gulf Sulphur has chalked up a brilliant exploration success in its field program north of the Porcupine area. Following a visit to the discovery property, The Northern Miner can say that a major new zinc-copper-silver mine is definitely in the making, one that has all the earmarks of shaping into a substantial open-pit operation. Only a relative handful of holes has been completed since the discovery hole but on the basis of seven tests either completed or drilling it can be stated that a strike length of 600 ft. minimum has been established, showing an ore width of roughly 300 ft. which has been traced so far to a maximum vertical depth of 800 ft. So recent has been the discovery, and so urgent the effort to accelerate the drill program (four machines have been moved in since the discovery hole was completed), that assays have been completed on only the discovery. But this must be recorded as one of the most SERVING ITS MEMBERS FOR 40 YEARS

Airborne geophysical surveying.

impressive drill holes completed in modern times. For a core length of a shade better than 600 ft., the hole averaged in excess of 1% copper, 8% zinc and nearly four ounces of silver. And there are impressive, strong sections within this width which in themselves are quite spectacular. In the upper part of the hole, for example, a core length of 82 ft. ran 7.1% copper, 9.7% zinc and 2.4 oz. silver. This was followed by continuous values of ore tenor - deeper down, a 100 ft. section runs 0.33% copper, 0.8% lead, 14.3% zinc and 4.2 oz. silver. And still deeper, a strong zinc section of better than 100 ft. averaged out to in excess of seven ounces of silver in addition to ore-grade zinc values.

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36 | THE NORTHERN MINER 100TH ANNIVERSARY

Chapter 4 TNM 100th 1957to1964.indd 36

History will mark it as the “whirleybird” staking rush — without the helicopter, the biggest outburst of staking in many a year would have been impossible, but with as many as eight or nine machines flying from sunrise to sundown, The Northern Miner can say that upwards of six thousand claims have now been staked in the rush accompanying Texas Gulf Sulphur’s new find north of the Porcupine gold belt.

Aug. 6, 1964

The Canadian mining world was rocked by the announcement late last week that no commercial assays had been encountered in the first hole drilled by Windfall Oils & Mines. The statement by George A. MacMillan, president, was marked for release at 6:30 p.m., July 30. This ended almost a month of speculation during which time the financial district seethed with rumors and in frantic trading the company’s shares rose from 56¢ to a high of $5.70. On the last trading day prior to the announcement the stock traded in a range from $3.05 to $4.25 and closed at $4.15 per share. The following morning, after a delayed opening, the first sales were at 80¢. A complete investigation into the affairs of Windfall has been ordered by Ontario Attorney-General Wishart. (This investigation, which had been ordered prior to the release of the Windfall results, was broadened to include investigation of Bunker Hill Extension Mines and Glenn Uranium Mines). TNM www.northernminer.com

15-04-27 10:38 AM

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15-04-27 Seiter&Miller 001223 Pub. The Northern Miner – 100th Anniversary Size. 8.125 x 10.75 Issue 05/11/2015

Chapter 4 TNM 100th 1957to1964.indd 37

10:38 AM

•1957–1964•

Norman B. Keevil:

A LIFETIME OF ACHIEVEMENT AT TECK In 1979 The Northern Miner named Norman B. Keevil its Mining Man of the Year, citing the impressive string of mine constructions he presided over in the 1970s. Since winning that award Dr. Keevil went on to ensure Teck was part of some of the biggest mining projects over the next 30 years, such as Hemlo, Voisey’s Bay and Antamina. At the same time Dr. Keevil and his team were building Teck into one of the world’s largest producers of metallurgical coal. For this unparalleled track record and for his unchallenged reputation for honesty, fair dealing and supportiveness, on the occasion of its 100th anniversary, the Miner can find no person more deserving than Dr. Norman B. Keevil to be the recipient of its Lifetime Achievement Award. By Anthony Vaccaro

In 1939, scientists Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard sent a letter to U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt after three German scientists in Berlin split the atom. The experiment put the Nazis on a path to building the atomic bomb, and knowing this, Einstein and Szilard compelled Roosevelt to counterpunch — with the Manhattan Project. The point man for the project was to be Harold Urey, the leading scientist on isotope separation. One of Urey’s first tasks was to assemble a team of leading scientists to help beat the Germans in the race for the atomic bomb. “No one knew much about uranium back then,” Teck Resources chairman Dr. Norman B. Keevil Jr. says. “But my father knew something, because he worked on radioactive dating.” And so the Manhattan Project, which aimed to end a World War, would also shape Canadian mining history. Urey asked a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one Norman Keevil Sr., to join the Manhattan Project. Dr. Keevil agreed — until it became clear that being Canadian meant it would take a year to get security clearance. Rather than wait, Keevil turned down the

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Chapter 4 TNM 100th 1957to1964.indd 38

offer and came back to Canada. Norman Keevil Sr. was 38 years old when he returned to his homeland to teach at the University of Toronto, and his son, Norman B. Keevil, Jr., was just six months old.

The call of Temagami Norman B. Keevil’s first exposure to geology came a decade later, while spending time with his father on the waters in and around Lake Temagami near North Bay, Ont. The Keevil family had a cottage there, and canoe rides along 3,000 miles of shoreline — with its striking bays and wild islands — instilled in the family a deep respect for the land and excited a natural curiosity for the rocks that formed the landscape. “We used to go down the west shore of Lake Temagami, mainly for a canoe ride, but if we saw a stream, we’d sample the sediments,” Dr. Keevil says. “Occasionally we’d get high amounts of copper, but as it turned out that had nothing to do with [what would become the Temagami mine], since we weren’t working in the area around Temagami Island itself.”

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Chapter 4 TNM 100th 1957to1964.indd 39

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•1957–1964•

Norman B. Keevil

copper ore in the world, and turned out 80 million lb. copper, 230,028 oz. silver and 13,271 oz. gold. “We didn’t even need a mill at first, since the deposit was grading 28% copper,” Dr. Keevil explains.

Almost an Academic

High-grade copper at Temagami mine.

By the time the junior Keevil was 16, in 1954, Temagami Island would play host to the first key asset in the Keevil mining dynasty — the Temagami copper mine. “The lore is that a large magnetic anomaly

brought my father to Temagami,” Dr. Keevil says. “But I think it was just because it’s a really nice lake,” he adds with a hearty chuckle. Whatever the case may be, the Temagami mine produced some of the highest-grade

While Temagami was being proven up, Norman B. Keevil Jr. was a student at Lorne Park Secondary School. From there it was off to U of T to study geological engineering, from which he graduated in 1959. Having decided to do his PhD in the States, the next step was to secure the funds to support his young family while completing his studies. “I applied to Harvard, Berkeley, Stanford, Chicago and MIT … and I asked for work as a research or teaching

Focused

on delivering successful projects across the entire mining value chain.

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www.northernminer.com

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•1957–1964•

Norman B. Keevil

assistant,” he explains with a smile. “Four of those schools offered $125 a month and Berkeley offered $150 a month, that’s why I went to Berkeley … It’s tempting to say I chose Berkeley because they have more Nobel prize winners than any other university in the world, but that wasn’t it.” The school also attracted some of the top minds in mining — one of whom was Stan Ward, considered by many to be the top geophysicist at the time. Ward would become mentor to Keevil. But Ward wasn’t the only influence on the young Keevil’s mind. Part of his doctorate at Berkeley required him to go up to Merritt, B.C., to work for Placer Development, the predecessor to Placer Dome, for his thesis. So with his wife and three children, the Keevils shuffled between Berkeley and Merritt for three years — gaining valuable corporate insights as he did. “I became really impressed with Placer Development,” he says. “It was, in my opinion then — and I have had no reason to change my opinion since — the best mining company in Canada. Maybe the world.” Keevil gives much of the credit to the company’s former CEO John Simpson, and credits Simpson as a key inspiration on the corporate side of how to run a mining company. But despite Simpson’s influence, the pull of Utah was proving strong. “At that time I was planning to teach geophysics at the University of Utah,” he says. “Stan Ward got me an offer to set up the department of geophysics, and I was all set to take it … I probably would have become a great skier.” Another force, however, emanated from back in Toronto, and it would prove powerful enough to thwart Dr. Keevil’s academic aspirations. “My father never pushed me to come back. But my mother called, and said: ‘You have got to come back because he wants you to come back,’” Dr. Keevil recalls. “I said, ‘Well, he hasn’t asked me.’ And she said: ‘He’s not going to ask you, but he needs you.’” Dr. Keevil returned to Canada and to Teck in 1963 to serve as vice-president of

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Chapter 4 TNM 100th 1957to1964.indd 41

exploration. He was just 25 years old.

On to Afton Through the 1960s, Keevil’s corporate abilities

shone through. His years at Placer taught him the importance of finding the right assets, and his years of study, along with his father’s ingenuity, gave him access to some of the

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A Century On The Level Sustainability can mean many different things in the mining industry. In business it is about making a positive contribution over the long haul. From the silver fields of Cobalt to one of the most respected international news sources for the mining industry today, The Northern Miner has stood the test of time. Congratulations Northern Miner on your 100th anniversary.

www.cementation.com Development • Mining • Shaft Sinking • Mechanized Raising Raise Boring • UG Construction • Engineering

THE NORTHERN MINER 100TH ANNIVERSARY | 41

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•1957–1964•

Afton mine opening in 1978.

best geophysical tools and people to help find them. At this age Keevil already had a handle on a mindset that would lead to the future Teck being heralded as ‘one of the great diversified mining companies.’ “The reason we’re diversified is because we’re prepared to be — we want to be. Not for diversification’s sake, but we want to be able to go and pick the best opportunities,”

Norman B. Keevil

he explains. “If you want to be in nothing but gold, you’re going to have a very small number of opportunities to look at.” This quality-driven, opportunistic mindset was on display in an early Teck acquisition that Dr. Keevil had a hand in executing. The story begins with Chester Millar, who would go on to found Glamis Gold. Millar was a diamond driller in the late 1960s, but on days off would take his diamond drill beyond the highway near Kamloops and drill. He discovered the Afton deposit, which, as a mine, would define Dr. Keevil’s tenure at Teck. “People thought it wasn’t economic because it was all native copper, not the chalcopyrite most Canadians were familiar with,” Keevil says. “The story in some parts of the business was that you can’t mill native copper, ignoring that the first copper

FROM EXPLORATION TO CLOSURE. JUST ASK GOLDER. For over 50 years Golder has been helping our clients move their projects from concept to reality. Our engineering and environmental professionals deliver sound solutions for even the toughest challenges. From open-pit to underground mining, we help our clients maximize value and minimize risk. Congratulations to the Northern Miner for 100 years of service as a valuable source for on-site reporting and global mining news Engineering Earth’s Development, Preserving Earth’s Integrity.

mines in North America were native copper. You can mill it.” Dr. Keevil didn’t go out to find a copper deposit when he became aware of Afton, but he recognized its potential, along with his vice-president of mining Bob Hallbauer — whom Keevil had known in his days at Placer Development, and had managed to poach from the company. Millar, however, rebuffed Keevil and Hallbauer’s overtures, saying he didn’t have the appetite to do the “ultimate” deal yet. Instead he advised that the two simply buy shares in the open market. At the time Teck had a $30-million position in Mattagami Lake Mines, so Dr. Keevil and Hallbauer devised a strategy whereby they’d sell their non-controlling position in Mattagami and use the funds to gain a controlling position in Afton. “I’ll never forget, Bob and I came back and tried to talk Dad into doing it,” Keevil says. “It was not an easy sell: he had just finally assembled all the outside shares in Mattagami, and Noranda had finally invited him on board. Before then he had no involvement at all. So he’s really happy about it, and then we come in and say: ‘We’ve got to sell it!’ It had all the earmarks of a non-starter.” It took some convincing, but the senior Keevil finally bit the bullet. With that, Keevil Jr. and Hallbauer got to work, and in just three and a half days they bought 51% of the company — 45% of which was acquired in the open market. “We went to see Chester again,” Keevil begins. “We said, ‘We have a fairly good position.’ He didn’t know it was us, but he knew something was up.” While Afton would later bring in Placer as a tactic to dilute away Teck’s controlling position, Teck eventually bought Placer out, and in 1978, Afton went into production and became a key Teck asset.

Move to Vancouver Canada + 800 414-8314 miningsolutions@golder.com www.golder.com

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The Afton deal not only secured for Teck a solid copper asset, it also crystallized a growing feeling in the company’s executive suite that Vancouver would be the best place

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•1957–1964•

Norman B. Keevil

for Teck’s head office to be. Moving out west also soothed things over on the social side for Keevil senior. “Dad was going through — well, he and I are both sort of serial monogamists, and he was going through one of his transition periods, and felt that getting out of town was a good idea.” But the transition across the country came with its own unforeseen hiccups. “In early 1972 we announced we might move, and we arranged a press conference. It was our first press conference, and it was almost our last,” Keevil recalls. The conference was arranged through the same PR person that worked for the B.C. Premier William “Wacky” Bennett — who called an election soon after Teck announced it would move. “We had never met Wacky before or after, but everyone assumed that since we had the same PR guy we were in cahoots with him, which was fine,” he says. “He had won six elections in a row, and he was a good guy, I suppose.” Good guy or not, Wacky had a unique style, and he would often go into the interior of B.C. without tipping off the press — a habit that made his return to the capital a bigger event. For reasons unknown to Dr. Keevil, their shared PR person announced that Bennett would be at Teck’s press conference, turning a humble affair into a press scrum, with 40 press members hollering for Bennett — who was nowhere to be found. The situation overshadowed Teck’s announcement, and furthered the impression that Teck was connected to Bennett in some way. So when Bennett lost the election to Dave Barrett, things became complicated for the company. “We were working on a coal property in B.C. at the time,” Keevil remembers. “And the first thing Barrett does is call Bob Hallbauer and me over, and says ‘I want your coal.’” The government put a $20-million offer on the table for Teck’s Sukunka coal project in the province’s northeaste — an offer that Keevil now sees as reasonable, due to the fact that Sukunka has yet to be put into production.

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But at the time Teck had no interest in selling, and the government took strong-arm tactics to force Teck into a deal. The deal, however, ultimately fell through when the B.C. cabinet said it would drop its option and not buy it. “Now it wasn’t an option, but that was OK — we hadn’t wanted to sell anyway,” he says. “And we got it back.”

Elkview coal operations in B.C.

Coal Sukunka wouldn’t become a mine, but it kept Teck in the coal business, and just five years after the ordeal with the B.C. premier, Teck had another coal project in the northeast that would launch Teck into the coal space in a big way. The Bullmoose project was discovered in 1977, and Keevil says it was clear early on that it had an open-pit coal mine on its hands. Built between 1981 and 1983, Bullmoose and Teck’s later string of coal acquisitions marked a chapter in its corporate history that almost didn’t get off the ground, due to the emergence of a recession and tight capital markets. “If we hadn’t refinanced Bullmoose in the teeth of the recession gale, it would have been us that got executed, and not us that was doing the executing,” he says, referring to Teck’s major financial restructuring and debt control just before the 1981 recession. Teck pulled off the restructuring in large part because of its recent operational success. The company came out of a string of winners after building Newfoundland Zinc in 1975, Niobec Niobium in 1976 and the Afton copper-gold mine and smelter in 1978. All were completed on time and on budget. “We ended up building Bullmoose 15% under budget, which was a combination of a solid budget to start with, and the fact that the recession meant the trades were hungry for work,” Dr. Keevil says. “It was a great

time to build if you could get it financed.” By executing on Bullmoose the company could invest in the old Balmer mine, which became the Elkview mine. After Elkview the company took over Fording Canadian Coal Trust’s coal assets and put all the Canadian metallurgical coal mines together into one partnership. “So aside from being a great investment,” Keevil says, “Bullmoose got us into coal, and now we’re the second biggest shipper of seaborne metallurgical coal in world … we’re second only to the BHP Billiton-Mitsubishi partnership in Australia.”

Hemlo But the Teck story isn’t just about copper and coal. The company also helped build one of Canada’s great gold mines: the David Bell mine at Hemlo. Hemlo was discovered in May 1981 by Murray Pezim’s International Corona Resources. Teck and Long Lac Minerals were quick to try to strike a deal with Pezim, but “Pez” wasn’t having any of it. Fast forward to November. Markets were suffering from a recession that was as severe as the 2008 recession, and Pezim found himself in a selling mood. “Murray being what Murray is — a selfadmitted manic depressive who was on medication to control it — he would have his ups, blowing money right and left, and then raising it, and he would have his downs,” Keevil says. “On one of his down days he calls me up and says, ‘Norm, I’ve got to do a deal

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•1957–1964•

Friedland, Keevil and Boulle at Voisey’s Bay.

on Hemlo right now. So I said: ‘Would you like me to come over to your office? We were virtually across the street from him. He said, ‘No, I’ll come over to your office,’ and in five minutes we were done the deal.” Pezim called Keevil almost first, which speaks to both his and Teck’s reputation for dealing fairly and squarely with companies — often giving Teck the first crack at emerging discoveries throughout its history. The quickly agreed upon deal gave Teck 55% of Corona’s shares if Teck put the mine into production. But after coming to terms, Keevil tabled a plan to refine it a little more. He proposed that rather than have Teck acquire 55% of Corona, it could acquire 55% of the property, leaving Corona as an independent company and making the deal more tax efficient in the process. “It was very smart at the time, but it didn’t work out,” Keevil says. “The reason it didn’t work out was that in the end Corona got taken over by other people, so we were no longer dealing with Murray. In hindsight if we would have had 55% of Corona, we would have had the whole thing, because we would have brought it all in at some point. I was probably a little too smart for my own good.”

Diamond Fields of Nickel Teck had not been overly keen on nickel in the years leading into Robert Friedland’s Diamond Fields Resources’ discovery of Voisey’s Bay in Labrador, but the discovery was of such magnitude that it caught Keevil’s interest — although consummating a deal came only after Keevil offered some non-self serving advice. “Robert came to me more as a friend and asked: ‘What would you do if you were me?’ I

Norman B. Keevil

said, ‘I’d keep on drilling, and not think of the ultimate deal just yet.’” Keevil recalls. “If he was prepared to do the ultimate deal I would have done it, but he wasn’t, so I thought I’d give him some good advice.” Rather than push for the big deal, Keevil offered to take a 5–10% equity position in Diamond Fields, along with engineering and feasibility study assistance. Once the two agreed in principle, it was passed on to their respective legal teams. “The lawyers were negotiating the details and our lawyer came in and said: ‘Norm, we’ve got a problem.’ I figured, ‘Oh no, it’s all gone wrong.’ He says: ‘You have to tell me if it’s five or if it’s ten percent.’ So I said, “Well, better make it ten percent.” That casual, almost off-the-cuff statement ended up netting Teck hundreds of millions of dollars. Teck wound up paying $110 million for that 10% stake — a large amount at that time for a non-controlling interest in a discovery. But it didn’t feel like a capital crunch at the time, as it closed a bought deal to replace $100 million of that capital just a month after the investment. “What that meant was that when we did sell our stake in Diamond Fields for $480 million 16 months later. It wasn’t less the $100 million, we suddenly had $480 million in cash that we didn’t have before … and that’s when we went on to Antamina,” he says.

Antamina When Teck made its big move on Antamina, copper prices were low, the overall market was in the dumps owing to the Asian crisis, and the mine was seen as a black hole for capital due to its high elevation. Put it all together, and you had a great buying opportunity, from Teck’s perspective. Teck and Noranda bought Inmet Mining’s 50% stake in Antamina for $70 million in cash. The deal left Teck, Noranda and Inmet’s former partner at Antamina, Rio Algom, with a 33% stake each, and a combined commitment to spend $2.5 billion on the project. That stipulation had the market fretting not only about the 4,300-metre

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elevation, but also the financing of such a large amount. It was a big bet to make during the Asian crisis, and one that Teck likely wouldn’t have made if it weren’t flush with cash from the Diamond Fields transaction. “We had some experience by building the Quebrada Blanca mine in Chile at a similar elevation,” Keevil says. “And while that project did have cost overruns, the experience taught us what to do differently.” The market stayed negative on Teck more than three years after the Antamina acquisition, but time has a way of showing the wisdom of once unfashionable decisions. The mine became one of Teck’s all-time returns on a large investment, and Teck’s share price reflected Antamina’s contribution in the early part of the last decade. “It was one of the best things we did, but we got crucified for it by the market at the time,” Dr. Keevil remembers. “It was three years in the penalty box. Even Tie Domi didn’t get that much.”

Words of Wisdom Dr. Keevil sits in a privileged position, having steered Teck through the ups and downs of commodity cycles over many decades. For anyone looking to glean some of the wisdom he has earned over that time, Dr. Keevil offers the following: “The ideal way to play the game — but it’s not easy to do — is to not be so enthusiastic at the top of the cycle that you blow everything, and then at the bottom to have the wherewithal to acquire things. Because obviously, that’s when we got Hemlo, and it’s when we got Antamina.” For juniors — which Teck has a sterling reputation for supporting — Keevil offers a simple way to raise capital in the current spate of market turbulence. “Give us a call,” he says with gentle laugh. “Send us your best and your finest orebodies.” Sounds simple enough. But as Dr. Keevil has proven throughout his illustrious career, success lies in the ability to execute — and avoid being executed. TNM

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conquering THE

HBM&S’s stack at Flin Flon, Man., in 1973.

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Chapter 5 TNM 100th 1965-1981.indd 45

new frontiers (1965–1981)

he ascendancy of airborne geophysical surveying in the late 1960s brought a flurry of mineral discoveries and mine developments in some of the world’s most inhospitable places — from the remote Arctic to mountain peaks, and tropical jungles. It’s in this era when we see mines built in some of Canada’s most forbidding northern locales, from Cominco’s Polaris zinc mine on Little Cornwallis Island some 1,120 km north of the Arctic Circle, Breakwater Resources’ Nanisivik zinc-lead mine in northern Baffin Island and Anvil Mining’s lead-zinc-silver Faro mine in central Yukon. The big-three Canadian hard-rock nickel miners — Inco, Falconbridge and Sherritt International — used the late 1960s and 1970s to explore for and develop nickel laterite assets in warmer climes such as Indonesia, New Caledonia, the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Guatemala. The late 1960s also saw the first production from the Alberta oilsands by Great Canadian Oil Sands, a development that took a quantum leap in importance following the October 1973 global oil crisis, when oil prices quadrupled to US$12 per barrel. That first oil price shock also gave new significance to the discovery in the late 1960s of uranium in northern Saskatchewan’s Athabasca basin — which would become by far the highest-grading large uranium deposits found anywhere in the world. Discovering uranium in northern Saskatchewan helped diversify the province’s mining sector beyond its world-class potash sector in the south, which became a political hot potato in the mid-1970s when mines were “nationalized” by the provincial government, and placed into a company that is a precursor to today’s Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan. The Northern Miner meanwhile had settled into its newest offices in Cabbagetown in 1966, while its printing presses had already moved to old brewery buildings at 7 Labatt Avenue in the late 1950s. TNM

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•1965–1981• Feb. 24, 1966

Initial drilling has enabled Brenda Mines to increase substantially the tonnage estimates for its large, low-grade, copper-molybdenum property, about 14 miles west of Peachland in the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia. Based on the first five drill holes from which complete assays have been returned, a total of 5,703,000 tons averaging 0.25% copper 0.08% molybdenum has been indicated, according to a report by the company’s consultants, Chapman, Wood and Griswold. Average vertical depth of the five holes is 383 ft. Each hole represents over one million tons.

March 23, 1967

Following an intensive engineering and feasibility study, decision has been reached to bring to production the highly regarded lead-zinc-silver property of Anvil Mining Corp. Anvil of course, is in the familiar Vangorda Creek district of the central Yukon, and was formed by Cyprus Mines Corp., 60%, and Dynasty Explorations, 40%. Capital cost estimates for the project are approximately $60 million, with the objective being to have the mine in operation in 1969.

Oct. 5, 1967

The fabulous Athabasca tar sands, which contain the world’s largest

Texas Gulf Sulphur’s Kidd Creek discovery in 1965.

known reserves of oil as well as vast tonnages of sulphur, have finally been tapped. In a new unique mining-processing undertaking that holds tremendous economic implications for the whole Canadian economy, the $235 million complex of Great Canadian Oil Sands was formally ushered into production over the weekend.

Feb. 1, 1968

Possible development of Indonesia’s vast nickel reserves moved a stage forward Monday with the signing of an exploration agreement between International Nickel Co. of Canada and the Indonesian government. Inco will now go ahead as rapidly as possible with a comprehensive exploration program, states H. S. Wingate, Inco’s chairman and chief officer. If results justify, the company will undertake metallurgical and other work. The nickel deposits to be explored are located on the Island of Sulawesi (Celebes) in a remote, jungle area.

Feb. 29, 1968

Production for the famed Hollinger gold mine at Timmins will cease at the end of March. Final ore exhaustion comes after more than 57 years of operation, during which time the mine set Canadian records in bullion production of approximately $600,000,000.

Dec. 5, 1968

Gulf Minerals Co., wholly owned subsidiary of Gulf Oil Corp., has obtained “highly significant” results from an exploratory drill hole on a project in the Athabasca sandstone on its Northern Saskatchewan property in the Wollaston Lake area. The location is some 200 miles southeast of the uranium mines in the Beaverlodge area on the north shore of Lake Saskatchewan. Assay results indicate uranium mineralization of a grade equal to

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•1965–1981• Beaverlodge uranium values and several times better than the grade of ore in Elliot Lake uranium area in Ontario. Uranium mineralization was located through an extensive radiometric survey carried out over a large area during the past 18 months.

April 10, 1969

Canada’s metal mining industry is roving the world for new important ore deposits. International in scope for some years, the industry’s interest has never been as great as it is today in the mineral potentialities in other lands. Its investment in foreign countries in the next few years will boom by approximately $450 million, and, if all projects in view are brought to fruition, the total could rise by $750 million.

Jan. 29, 1970

Loading iron ore in Sept-Iles in 1974.

Ceremonies this week mark the formal opening of Anvil Mining Corp.’s big lead-zinc-silver project at Faro, about 135 miles northeast of Whitehorse, Yukon. The $64 million facility, a joint undertaking of Cyprus Mines Corp. (60%) of Los Angeles, Calif., and Dynasty Explorations (40%) of Vancouver, made it first ocean shipment of concentrates on Dec. 8, for ports in Japan. This event was the climax of a program that began six years earlier when Dynasty Explorations was formed in 1964 to undertake an extensive exploration campaign in the Yukon.

The Pearces in 1965, from left: Norman, Dick, Richard, Tom, Jack and Bill.

While much too soon to discuss the economics of the situation, because of the limited results so far as well as the remote location, the findings are nevertheless regarded as being of potential importance and most encouraging.

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Aug. 12, 1971

Cominco Ltd. in diamond drilling on the original Polaris property of Bankeno Mines on Little Cornwallis Island, in Canada’s Arctic Islands, has come up with several significant zinc-lead intersections, The Northern Miner can report following conversations with company officials. Cominco has had the property under an option agreement since 1964 and has a 75% interest in the ground, with Bankeno retaining a 25% carried interest. www.northernminer.com

Chapter 5 TNM 100th 1965-1981.indd 47

DSI Mining Canada 199 Mumford Rd. Unit C & D Lively, ON P3Y 1L2 Canada Phone: 705-692-6100 www.dsiunderground.com

Saskatoon, SK Sudbury, ON Sturgeon Falls, ON Rouyn-Noranda, QC Whitehorse, YT

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•1965–1981• Diamond drill hole No. 1 has returned as the main intersection a core length of 85 ft. averaging 24.7% zinc and 5.1% lead, for a combined average of 29.8%. This is in a vertical hole and extended from 414 to 499 ft. Preceding the main section was a core section of 39 ft. averaging 3.1% zinc and 0.8% lead from 375 to 414 ft. A deeper intersection also was encountered showing 20 ft. averaging 8.9% zinc and 5.3% lead from 615-635 ft. in the hole.

Sept. 16, 1971

The Highland Valley area, the valley of the giants, is shaping up as one of the world’s major copper producing centres. Projects proceeding, planned, and in the cards add up to approximately $385 million in capital expenditures and one can visualize that within three or four years the area’s mines, altogether, will be handling at least 135,000 tons of ore a day for an annual production in the vicinity of $200 million. They will provide permanent jobs for more than 2,000 persons. Approximately 1,900 men are already working in mining operations or on projects in the area, but the large majority is engaged in construction and may be expected to leave the area upon completion of their work. The Highland Valley district embraces the copper-molybdenum deposits of Bethlehem Copper, Lornex Mining, Highmont Mining, Valley Copper Mines and Alwin Mining. Lornex is 50% owned by Rio Algom Mines and 20% by Yukon Consolidated Gold, and Valley Copper owned 69% by Cominco. Teck Corp. has a 45% interest in the mineral rights of Highmont.

June 29, 1972

Falconbridge Nickel Mines has brought into production it first laterite nickel operation. And, it’s a honey. Make no mistake about that, it’s going to contribute handsomely to the company’s profits. Of course, there is the matter of $185 million in loan capital that will have to be retired, but that should be managed with no great difficulty. The new mining and metallurgical complex is presently running at about two thirds capacity, The Northern Miner learned on attending the colorful opening ceremonies here last week. Later this year, by the fourth quarter at least, the plant will be operating at its rated annual capacity of some 63,000,000 lb. nickel in ferronickel (40% nickel).

Aug. 24, 1972

Next week The Northern Miner will have a new look. We are going to change to the web offset printing process. The page size will be smaller, the type face larger and the paper will no longer reflect light into your eyes. Also, we’ll combine our customary two sections into one larger one. All our regular features and news reports will be continued, of course.

April 12, 1973

Gold mining in this country is making quite a comeback. At least a dozen long dormant mines will be reopened this year, with many more planning to resume exploration, The Northern Miner finds. www.northernminer.com

Chapter 5 TNM 100th 1965-1981.indd 49

Mining beach diamonds in Namibia in 1970.

It’s a scene that hasn’t been witnessed here for many a year and is, of course, a direct reflection of the much higher price that gold commands. Even the most highly skeptical are finally conceding that the rise is real and is “for keeps.” A prominent Canadian mining executive who has just returned from a trip to Switzerland where he discussed the gold question with prominent world bankers in that country was told that “there is no way” that gold will ever again sell under $80 an ounce.

Aug. 16, 1973

Further recent underground drilling of the new E zone of Canada Tungsten Mining Corp. now shows beyond question that this company has come up with a major ore discovery at its Flat River area property near the N.W.T.-Yukon border. In fact, it is already making a preliminary estimate of 4,000,000 averaging 1.60% WO3 and 0.22% copper. Still wide open, this is even now sufficient to supply the mill at its current rate for 20 years.

July 18, 1974

Working quietly for the past few months, Sheridan Geophysics Ltd. has its teeth into what officials feel is an important palladium-platinum deposit. It is at McKernan Lake in the Lac des Îles area, 55 miles northwest of Thunder Bay, Northwestern Ontario. The property, which at one stage was held by Gunnex Ltd., was recently staked by two Lakehead prospectors when the claims apparently inadvertently fell open. It was subsequently acquired by the Sheridan group who quickly moved in a diamond drill. The ground has now been turned over to Boston Bay Mines, a recent VSE listing with some $250,000 in its treasury. Boston Bay, in turn, is controlled by Belleterre Quebec Mines which holds something in excess of 600,000 shares. Both Belleterre and Boston are in the Sheridan camp.

March 6, 1975

Amoco Canada Petroleum Co. has confirmed that its Mining Division has indeed come up with a gold discovery in Northeastern Ontario, close by the Quebec boundary, where it has staked upwards of 1,000 claims. THE NORTHERN MINER 100TH ANNIVERSARY | 49

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•1965–1981• 3,000 year-old Olmec rain god found using magnetometer.

The discovery is located about 125 miles northeast of Timmins or about 30 miles due west of the big new base metals discovery of Selco and Pickands Mather reported in this paper last week.

Nov. 20, 1975

The Saskatchewan New Democratic government has decided to buck the legal battle now going on between itself and the potash industry with plans to take over some or all the 10 potash mines now operating in that province. Typically, the takeover comes when the industry is in its peak period, well established after millions in private capital have been invested, and justified with the meaningless slogan, “It belongs to the people.” (So what else is new?)

One of the few brand new gold finds to be made in this country since the rise in the price of the yellow metal, it could be an important one, for it obviously holds tonnage potential. The company, a subsidiary of Standard Oil Company (Indiana), had been exploring the area for base metals.

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June 23, 1977

Despite its remote location on the southern tip of Baffin Island in Canada’s high Arctic, Nanisivik Mines is shaping up as one of the most efficient underground mining operations in the country. The mine, a zinc-lead-silver producer that came into production only last fall, is now milling at the rate of 2,200 tons daily — a figure well in excess of the designed plant capacity of 1,500 tons. Furthermore, this 2,200 tons of ore is being obtained with a total underground work force of only 30 which should certainly make this mine a candidate for the highest productivity per man shift for any underground base metal operation in Canada.

Dec. 22, 1977

In the largest ever uranium sale by a Canadian or world producer, Denison Mines has contracted with Ontario Hydro for the supply of 126 million lb. uranium oxide between 1980 and 2011. The value of the contract has not been disclosed, but pricing arrangements provide that the prices to be paid by Hydro will be determined periodically according to a formula based on production costs, an agreed profit margin for Denison and the prevailing world uranium price.

April 13, 1978

With 35 drill holes now completed, it is becoming abundantly clear that Imperial Oil’s Saskatchewan uranium discovery at Midwest Lake is indeed a major one. As previously reported, this is a joint venture with Imperial’s Esso Minerals Canada, Numac Oil and Gas and Bow Valley Industries et al. The zone now has a length 2,800 ft. and still open. Widths range from less than 100 ft. to over www.northernminer.com

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•1965–1981• 200 ft., but data available will not permit further precision, officials say. Average grade of the 19 sampled sections from 13 holes for which assays are available is slightly under 2% U3O8, in addition to which there are “significant” values in both nickel and silver. Drilling will soon be temporarily suspended but will resume immediately after breakup.

Vancouver Stock Exchange floor in 1981.

April 20, 1978

This year marks more than 100 years of commercial production of asbestos in Quebec’s Eastern Townships. While there is some question over who discovered the mineral in the district, it is generally agreed that it was first found in the Thetford Mines area in 1875. In that year, Andrew Johnson, a timber merchant who was active in the area, determined the nature of the rock. It is believed that first commercial extraction of asbestos ore by hand-cobbing occurred in 1876. Commercial production of asbestos ore in the Thetford Mines area was followed soon by production at Asbestos. Currently, the Quebec asbestos industry accounts for some 81%82% of domestic primary production and between 23–27% of world mine output. Asbestos represents the most significant non-metallic mineral produced in Canada and, within Quebec, primary asbestos production accounts for approximately one-third of provincial mineral output value.

long overdue but even a US$200–300 correction in the price of gold will leave that metal at extremely attractive prices. Even at US$500 gold and a discounted Canadian dollar, Canadian gold producers should have a banner year and the search for new mines should still accelerate. TNM

Jan. 24, 1980

The soaring price of gold and silver took a deep breath at midweek after shooting to still another record high on Monday, Jan. 21. That afternoon’s London gold fixing was at US$850 per ounce...just a shade below $1,000 in Canadian funds. Silver topped at US$49 per ounce. However, mid-week, the metals had pulled back to around US$670 and US$42. This indicates that gold has come off an astounding US$180 per oz., but one must remember that the latest price is still some US$14 above that which prevailed only a week earlier. It’s all so relative ... and in another way, irrelevant. It was not too long ago when a weekly price change of 80¢, or 90¢, was considered significant. Perhaps more than anything else, the wild break out of precious metal prices has underscored the fast diminishing value of our currencies. Even more dangerous is the psychological damage to the extent that the general public shrugs off even greater price increases while, at the same time, raising compensation expectations. A consolidation in precious metal prices is www.northernminer.com

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•1965–1981•

Mining Person of the Year Each year since 1977, The Northern Miner has chosen one person or a small group of people as our “Mining Man of the Year” — and then later “Mining Person of the Year” — in recognition of an outstanding accomplishment.

MINING MAN OF THE YEAR 1977 STEPHEN ROMAN, Denison Mines 1978 JOHN GALLAGHER, Dome Petroleum 1979 NORMAN KEEVIL JR., Teck Corp. 1980 DONALD SCHMITT, Noranda 1981 PETER ALLAN, Little Long Lac Group 1982 CLIFFORD FRAME, Denison; ROBERT HALLBAUER, Teck 1983 HENRY BREHAUT, Dome Group 1984 JOHN ZIGARLICK, Echo Bay Mines 1985 PAUL PENNA, Agnico-Eagle Mines 1986 PATRICK MACCULLOCH, Selco BP Canada 1987 CLIFFORD FRAME, Curragh Resources 1988 JOHN HANSULD, Canamax Resources 1989 JAMES GILL, Aur Resources 1990 CHET IDZISZEK AND MURRAY PEZIM, Prime Resources 1991 MARGARET (PEGGY) WITTE, Royal Oak Mines 1992 CHARLES (CHUCK) FIPKE, Dia Met Minerals 1993 PETER MUNK AND ROBERT SMITH, Barrick Gold 1994 LOUIS GIGNAC, Cambior 1995 ALBERT CHISLETT AND CHRISTOPHER VERBISKI, Diamond Fields Resources 1996 DAVID WALSH AND JOHN FELDERHOF, Bre-X Minerals 1997 PIERRE LASSONDE, SEYMOUR SCHULICH, Franco-Nevada Mining and Euro-Nevada Mining 1998 HUGO T. DUMMETT, BHP 1999 CATHERINE MCLEOD-SELTZER AND DAVID LOWELL, Arequipa Resources 2000 KEITH MINTY, North American Palladium 2001 GREN THOMAS, Aber Diamond 2002 ROBERT MCEWEN, Goldcorp 2003 (HIATUS) 2004 (HIATUS)

Mining Person of the Year

MINING PERSON OF THE YEAR 2005 ANDRÉ GAUMOND, Virginia Mines 2006 ROBERT FRIEDLAND, Ivanhoe Mines 2007 SEAN BOYD AND EBERHARD (EBE) SCHERKUS, Agnico-Eagle Mines 2008 PATRICK ANDERSON, KEITH BARRON AND STEPHEN LEARY, Aurelian Resources 2009 SEAN ROOSEN, JOHN BURZYNSKI AND ROBERT WARES, Osisko Mining 2010 SHAWN RYAN AND CATHY WOOD, Ryanwood Exploration 2011 ROSS BEATY, Pan American Silver and others 2012 DAVID GAROFALO, Hudbay Minerals 2013 ROSS MCELROY AND DEV RANDHAWA, Fission Uranium 2014 DAVID PALMER, Probe Mines

Not every reader has been happy with our choices, or even the very name of the award … LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Jan. 13, 1992

‘MAN OF THE YEAR’ MONIKER ‘OUTRAGEOUS’ Regarding your editorial “Man of the year?” (T.N.M., Dec. 30/91), you did have a choice and you still do. To suggest, as you do, that the title “Mining Man of the Year” is gender neutral is outrageous. By your actions, you are implying that Margaret Witte’s significant accomplishments befit a man, not a woman, and that this anomaly (can it be anything else, you ask?) isn’t likely to happen again. Your argument that any other designation would involve “awkward constructions artificially created” is time-worn and banal. There is a perfectly good word, with a respectable Latin root and applicable to all: person. Try it. SALEY LAWTON Toronto

Jan. 20, 1992

BRAVE DECISION At the risk of being forever condemned to the ranks of the “unpolitically correct,” may I offer my heartiest congratulations to the editors for their brave decision to retain the title “Mining Man of the Year” (T.N.M., Dec. 30/91), while recognizing that “the best man for the job is a woman.”

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•1965–1981•

Mining Person of the Year

I am heartily sick of the current plethora of attempts to legislate our vocabulary by people whose knowledge of the English language is clearly limited. To have changed the traditional title at this stage would have detracted from Margaret Witte’s very real achievements. Keep up the good work and stick to your guns. MARY-CLAIRE WARD, Senior Geologist Watts, Griffis and McOuat Toronto

Feb. 24, 1992

RESPECTABLE GERMANIC ROOTS I have enjoyed your newspaper for more than 30 years, but never, I grant you, have I seen feminist linguistic engineering such as Saley Lawton’s letter to the editor (T.N.M., Jan. 13/92), regarding your choice of Mining Man of the Year. “Man” is a generic term and in its generic sense means a human being. As a generic term, it is completely neutral. It could not be anything else. Man is a perfectly good word, with a respectable Germanic root applicable to all mankind. ROBERT MARVIN Jamaica

June 23, 1997

CRITERIA FOR `MAN OF THE YEAR’ QUESTIONED I have been an avid reader of your newspaper for approximately 14 years and it is my opinion that The Northern Miner is an open, unbiased chronicler of the junior exploration and mining scene. Whether the news is positive or negative, it is reported. Your publication has helped bring Canadian explorers and developers to the forefront of the world mineral exploration scene. As a professional miner, however, I have one major concern. Let’s review some of The Northern Miner’s recent choices for Mining Man of the Year. � David Walsh of Bre-X Minerals, to my knowledge and according to my search of public record, never mined a ton. Bre-X Minerals was recently delisted. � Robert Friedland went looking for diamonds where none had been found. He got lucky when two smart geologists stopped a helicopter (when they weren’t supposed to) at Voisey’s Bay, Labrador. What Friedland mined was at the Summitville gold mine in Colorado, which is now a US$150-Million Superfund site. Galactic Resources was delisted. � Peggy Witte, as president of Royal Oak Mines, was involved in the most violent labor dispute in modern Canadian history at the Giant gold mine in the Northwest Territories. Nine good men were killed

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there. The ounces Royal Oak budgeted for were seldom achieved. � Clifford Frame was with Curraugh Resources when 26 men, some of whom I knew, were killed at the Westray coal mine in Nova Scotia. In addition, the Yukon and federal governments were left on the hook for ongoing mitigation requirements for acid rock drainage at Curraugh’s Faro lead-zinc operation in the Yukon. Curraugh Resources was delisted. I have decided that one of two things must happen. You must either change the title of the award to Promoter of the Year (and leave the selection criteria the same) or change the criteria and present the award to the Real Miner of the Year. I would like to nominate the underground supervisor of the Con mine in the Northwest Territories, who discovered one of his men in the chains of a mill hole on his second pre-shift inspection (one is the statutory requirement). Although badly injured, the man was extracted by rescue personnel. I do not know who that supervisor is, but I would be proud to meet an individual of such character and sense of duty to his fellow man. Should neither of the above occur, I will be forced by conscience or democratic integrity to cancel my subscription. GREG MACMASTER Calgary, Alta. (Editor’s note: The Northern Miner did not name Robert Friedland “Man of the Year” for the Voisey’s Bay discovery, nor at any other time. Instead, we gave the award that year to prospectors Albert Chislett and Chris Verbiski, who made the nickel discovery. And Peggy Witte did not kill those nine miners at Giant; another miner did. However, your point is well-taken, and, in future, the criteria for the award will be more stringent by closer examination of the overall track record of the individual being considered.)

Jan. 26, 1998

CAPTION ‘INACCURATE’ The caption accompanying the front-page photograph on your Jan. 12 issue is inaccurate at best, and downright vindictive at worst. If John Felderhof was unaware of the salting scam at Busang, the worst he could be accused of is being proud that his theory of gold mineralization had been proven correct. If, on the other hand, he was aware of the salting scheme, it is the analysts and reporters who are the naive ones for believing in something that seemed too good to be true. I would tend to think that The Northern Miner, after declaring David Walsh and John Felderhof Mining Men of the Year [for 1996], should look in the nearest mirror before calling anybody naive. GEORGE WERNIUK Toronto THE NORTHERN MINER 100TH ANNIVERSARY | 55

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•1965–1981•

A salute to the Odds ‘n’ Sods column By Donald J. Worth

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Remembrance

A subscription to The Northern Miner has always been a must for people following developments in our industry. Decisions as to whether to buy or sell often hinged on the tone of a writeup in the Miner. I must admit, however, that there was a period in the 1970s and 1980s when I would skip the serious stuff and go directly to page 4 and enjoy a column entitled “Odds and Sods.” For this column, the Miner relies on contributions from loyal subscribers. David Rankin comes first to mind. He had just retired from Mine Equipment Ltd., and one of his stories concerned the challenges of packing a suitcase for a winter sales trip that would start by attending a fancy mining convention in sunny Arizona to be followed by a visit to frigid Flin Flon, Man., to sell a mucking maPanning an 8-oz. gold nugget. chine. Ray Jones returned to Horsefly, B.C., after an illustrious career at Steep Rock Iron and Texas Gulf Sulphur. His articles often dealt with the challenges of adapting to retired life. Mr. A.E. McAlpine was a frequent contributor from his retirement home in Pennsylvania. One of his columns was labelled “Cobalt-style Wedding for the McQuarries.” To be sure, it was not your typical wedding ceremony. He contributed another one which was captioned “Spragging a Christmas Tree at Aunor,” which involved drilling a hole through the living room floor of a company-owned residence. Merv Webb wrote of an adventure he survived when he was a young drill bit salesman headquartered in Timmins. To service the Renabie Mine account he had to drive to Sudbury, board the train for Missinabie Station, where a mine truck would take him some 30 miles to the mine. To avoid this arduous trip Merv hired a small airplane. Unfortunately the pilot had to make a forced landing because of a bad snowstorm, and Merv and the pilot spent the night in the bush. Fortunately they heated up the engine block with a blowtorch the next morning, and made their way to the mine. Carl Beck was probably the last of that era to contribute to Odds ‘n’ Sods. He wrote about his experiences as a mine manager at various locations. On the occasion of its 100th Anniversary, my thanks go out to The Northern Miner for carrying these stories. — Based in Toronto, Donald J. Worth was the Mining Specialist at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce from 1964–84, and vice-president of CIBC’s Global Mining Group from 1984–97, and has been a director of many junior mining companies.

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Remembrance

Mining and Moon walks By Nean Allman

•1965–1981• Daniel’s Harbour in Newfoundland, and from Kalgoorlie and Mt. Isa in Australia to lead-zinc mines in Ireland, tin mines in Cornwall, England and the Hemerdon tungsten property in Devon, only now nearing production. At the time of my visit, Hemerdon was a pet project of the eccentric Canadian prospector Bill Richardson. The story goes he paid for a Northern Miner subscription to be sent to the Duke of Edinburgh at Buckingham Palace. I never managed to check delivery there in person, but the sight of half a dozen copies of the Miner on the mail table in the staff house at Mt. Isa Mines brought home the global reach and significance of the paper’s role in providing reliable information about the Canadian and world mining industry. TNM

My first day on the editorial staff of The Northern Miner was May 1, 1967, when the dust was still settling from the excitement of the 1964 Texas Gulf discovery near Timmins. Editor John W. Carrington took something of a gamble in hiring me, as I believe I was the first geologist, and female, reporter on the staff. I guess I filled a niche between the mining engineers on staff — editor Carrington and assistant editors, the irrepressible Mort Brown, Sid Teare and Johnny Miller — and the cohort of reporters who had — Norah J. “Nean” Allman was Editorial Assistant, Features Editor and Field Editor from 1967–80. come from other newspapers. After three weeks learning the ropes at my desk, I was dispatched to cover a junior company’s annual meeting: “At XYZ Exploration’s annual meeting, business was routine. Directors were re-elected.” That was more or less the story I filed. I might well have added: “The AGM was attended by directors and The Northern Miner, and no one else.” Not exactly earth-shattering news, but I was wildly excited at my first words in print. From then on the fun began in earnest. I remember covering the 1967 Canadian Centennial Conference on Mining and Congratulations to The Northern Miner for providing Groundwater Geophysics, held at Niagara Falls. 100 YEARS OF GLOBAL MINING NEWS! It would grow into today’s Decennial Mineral Exploration Conferences. Delivering the scoop Orix Geoscience Inc. provides on the original meeting meant typing out my Digital Libraries story on a portable typewriter, and at 1:30 a.m. 2D and 3D compilation, Data Entry at the Niagara Falls bus stop handing it to the interpretation, modelling and Database Auditing driver of a Coach bus bound for Toronto. field services for exploration Field Work I was assigned to cover man’s first moon and mining companies that need Compilation walk in July 1969, not from any official press to better understand the geology Interpretation gallery but in the comfort of PJs at home at and exploration potential of night in front of the television. The challenge Modelling was to find something original to say, since the projects, deposits and mines. Targeting weekly Miner appeared a few days after the mind-boggling event. ORGANIZE RETHINK INTERPRET EXPLORE Above all, visits to prospects and mines were definite highlights. “When The Northern Miner www.orixgeo.com • 416-477-1971 • info@orixgeo.com visited the property …” meant trips across Canada, from Whitehorse Copper in Yukon to

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•1965–1981•

Remembrance

The author at Pine Creek placer gold mine near Atlin, B.C.

Those were the Days By David Duval

An early seventies pop singer, Mary Hopkin, recorded a chart-topping ballad called “Those were the days, my friend,” which always reminds me of my decade as The Northern Miner’s Western Editor. Mort Brown had just been appointed editor when I came to Toronto for a job interview in April 1979. Before closing the offer

he asked for one reference and, as fate perhaps would have it, the best one I had was a former high school classmate, a University of Toronto professor (of which Mort was an alumnus) who just happened to live a few doors down from him. If there ever was a time when the stars were perfectly aligned in the heavens for me that was probably it.

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For around six months I worked out of The Miner’s head office on 50 Labatt Ave. — a former brewery just a short “hop” east of Yonge and Dundas — when a position came open in Vancouver where I’d worked for a short period in the mid-1970s. Being single it was an inexpensive move for the paper and its cost-conscious owners, the Pearce family. Driving across Canada with my girlfriend and future wife, I arrived in early December as the gold price reached record highs and the Vancouver Stock Exchange was on a tear. Over the next decade I would have the opportunity to meet some incredibly interesting people, including CEOs, engineers, geologists, mine developers, prospectors, promoters and confidence men (and women), representing a virtual microcosm of the Canadian and international mining community. At its peak the Vancouver Stock Exchange had more than 2,000 listings, the majority of which were junior mining companies. There were so many shady deals that the Vancouver Sun had a dedicated reporter, David Baines, covering the exchange. I encountered my fair share of shady operators too, although I tended to look critically at the technical merits of a company’s projects, along with their economic potential, rather than the personalities involved. Sitting at the mining table at the old Engineers Club in downturn Vancouver, I was fortunate to have access to hundreds of years of industry experience to help me formulate my editorial opinions. One thing that always puzzled me about the VSE was its lack of “street smarts.” You could talk to any reputable industry person on the street and he or she would tell you what was a scam and what wasn’t. In many respects, the industry was self-policing. Yet the exchange never listened to the street. As a result, its executive management team was constantly pilloried in the press, and the credibility of the exchange suffered from one scandal to the next. Among the most memorable stories I covered was Skyline Exploration’s Johnny Mountain gold project near Stewart, B.C., run by mining promoter Reg Davis. Something just didn’t seem quite right about the project and

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•1965–1981• my editorial commentary reflected that concern, raising the ire of the rough-and-tumble Davis and his even tougher wife. On one occasion I was part of an analyst

Remembrance

tour to Johnny Mountain and Davis wouldn’t let me off the aircraft to see the operation. (However, they were nice enough to provide me with coffee and a sandwich while I waited

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three hours on the plane). Talk about a surefired way to get some bad press. Ultimately, it achieved commercial production but closed shortly thereafter, leaving a major investor to take over the company after incurring tens of millions in paper losses. Getting into mountainous terrain like Johnny Mountain was often quite hazardous, whether you were flying fixed wing or helicopter. Towards the end of the 1980s, I made a list of around a dozen helicopter pilots I had flown with, and 40% of them had been killed in accidents. Murray Pezim was the dominant promoter in Vancouver during the 1980s. After the Windfall Mines scandal in the 1960s, promoters like Pezim found themselves unwelcome on the Toronto Stock Exchange and headed west. Pezim was the driving force behind International Corona, which on hole 58, I believe, made the huge gold discovery at Hemlo, 350 km east of Thunder Bay, Ont. At one time he was a director in over 55 listed companies, and when he was out of town, trading volume on the VSE would easily drop 20–25%. We flew to Hemlo one weekend on a chartered Lear Jet and he had two boxes of Sony Walkmans to hand out to the project’s exploration staff. I quite liked “The Pez,” who was usually surrounded by a coterie of hangers on and other not-so-reputable characters. The oft-married Pezim was complaining one time about the cost of dealing with so many exwives when I suggested he should at least get credit for believing in the institution of marriage. His reply: “Yeah right buddy, I should be locked up in an institution.” Despite the shenanigans going on during this period, it produced some major discoveries at Hemlo, Eskay Creek and not long after at Voisey’s Bay (nickel) in Labrador — and of course the world-class diamond discoveries in the NWT. Nothing of this scale has been discovered in Canada since, that I’m aware of, which I feel speaks to the overregulation and excessive compliance costs we see in Canadian resource markets today. Perhaps less regulation and more “you do the crime, you do the time” policies might be an appropriate response to

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•1965–1981•

Remembrance

The author in B.C.’s Border Lake region.

this serious problem. In my experience criminal penalties for any level of market- related malfeasance have been few and far between.

After turning down a transfer to Toronto in 1989, I decided to head for greener pastures. Vivian Danielson, whom I had hired a few years earlier, took over my position and eventually moved to Toronto as Editor. I always found it amusing that between the two of us we almost had 10 kids (four for me, five for her). We produced a lot of copy, too! She always remembered me saying to her: “If you aren’t pissing people off, you aren’t doing your job,” which she soon took to heart! The Miner was a great place to work, especially for a person like Mort Brown, who was always enthusiastic and generous with his praise. His wife Margaret was a treasure in her own right. Frank Bowles, president of Northern Miner Press Ltd., was a tough but fair boss. And while The Miner had often been accused by the dailies of being somewhat “provincial” in those days, they always treated their staff with respect and valued your contribution. You were never a number. On the 100th anniversary of this Canadian mining industry icon, I wish it every success in adapting to the ever-changing and always exciting digital age! — David K. Duval was Western Editor from 1979–89.

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he 1980s will be remembered as the decade that powerful computers first penetrated every aspect of heavy industry, and mining was no different. The two oil shocks of the 1970s sent oil prices permanently higher and created incentives for miners to squeeze every last operational efficiency and worker productivity achievable with computers. For Canadian explorers, the defining event was the Hemlo gold discovery by prospectors John Larch, Don McKinnon and Richard Hughes, along with promoter Murray Pezim’s International Corona Resources. It was found in 1981 in an unlikely geological setting just steps from the Trans-Canada Highway on the North Shore of Lake Superior, and it led to a furious staking rush. Three mines were quickly built and they turned Hemlo into Canada’s top gold-production centre. Lawsuits over ownership flared, and were only settled in the Supreme Court of Canada in 1989. Cominco discovered the Red Dog zinc deposit in a remote stretch of northwesternmost Alaska, and brought it into production as the richest zinc mine in the world, with head grades around 17% zinc and 5% lead. But Cominco was laden with debt, and saw its eight-decade relationship with Canadian Pacific severed in 1986, as the rail giant sold its controlling interest for $472 million. Buyers included Teck, which picked up 31% for a controlling interest. Teck president Norman Keevil Jr. told The Northern Miner at the time that “we think we can turn Cominco around.” The mid-1980s saw American Barrick Resources — today’s Barrick Gold — make its company-building discovery at Goldstrike in Nevada’s Carlin Trend. And in one of mining history’s most lucrative royalty deals, Franco Nevada had earlier purchased a 4% net smelter return royalty and a 5% net profit interest at Goldstrike, turning a $2-million investment into more than $700 million in royalty payments as of 2013. TNM

Drilling at Nanisivik in the Canadian Arctic.

more discoveries (1982–1989)

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•1982–1989•

Kidd Creek copper-zinc mine in Ontario.

Jan. 25, 1982

Excitement is mounting as observers absorb the significance of the recent announcement by Cominco Ltd. that the company is studying the feasibility of a huge zinc-lead-silver deposit in Alaska. Called the Red Dog, it is estimated to contain some 85 million tons of 17.1% zinc, 5.0% lead, and 2.4 oz. silver per ton, inferred from 14,700 ft. of drilling in 39 holes. The 2-year study carried out by Cominco subsidiary Cominco American Inc., under an agreement with Alaska’s Nana Regional Corp. The latter is owned by about 4,600 Inuit shareholders. The deposit is already being described as one of the biggest and richest anywhere in the world.

April 22, 1982

Kerr Addison Mines here, 25 miles east of Kirkland Lake, has become only the fifth single gold mine in North America to produce 10,000,000 oz. of the yellow metal. The milestone was reached with the ceremonial pouring of an 870oz. brick in the mine’s refinery, containing the 10,000,000th oz. The pour was started by Kerr Addison’s chairman of the board, W. S. Row, manager of the mine when it began production back in 1938 and the man still known as “Mr. Kerr Addison.” According to Kerr mine manager D. S. Douglass, only four other single mines in North America have so far reached or exceeded the www.northernminer.com

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10,000,000-oz. plateau. Three of these are Canadian — the Dome, Hollinger, and McIntyre mines, all in the famed Porcupine camp. The fourth, and biggest of them all is the Homestake mine in South Dakota.

Aug. 26, 1982

Exploration will soon be taking place at a frantic pace in the Hemlo gold area discovered last year by International Corona Resources. The number of active companies in the area means that by next summer, there could be as many as 20 separate drilling programs completed or under way. That the Hemlo area is the most exciting new gold scene to hit Canada in recent years is now without a doubt. Out of two drilling programs conducted during the past 18 months three important gold deposits have been discovered. The Corona find, since confirmed by Teck Corp., consists of two deposits grading 0.30 oz. and 0.186 oz. gold per ton in reserves of 1,300,000 and 380,000 tons. So far indicated on the adjoining Long Lac Mineral Exploration claims are 1.8 million tons grading 0.175 oz. per ton. This auspicious record has prompted speculation that Hemlo could be the first new gold camp in the country since the Red Lake area during the depression. And because of the number of companies now planning substantial exploration programs, the area will likely develop a lot faster. THE NORTHERN MINER 100TH ANNIVERSARY | 63

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•1982–1989• March 23, 1987

belt area of Nevada by operator American Barrick Resources. This hole which intersected gold continuously from 1,110 ft to 1,730 ft and averages 0.3

A terrific hole, all in sulphide ore, of 620 ft grading 0.3 oz gold per ton has been pulled on the Goldstrike property in the Carlin gold

12.0

Carbon

12.0

Carbon

DIAMONDS*

55.8

Iron

Newspaper ink*

Metal Tools*

ROCK? PAPER? SCISSORS? 3 OUT OF 3 AIN’T BAD.

Oct. 26, 1987

Nobody — but nobody — in the entire financial community has ever witnessed anything quite like the market debacle and bloodletting that has taken place on leading stock exchanges around the world this week — the rewards of a five-year bull market wiped out in a single day. The panic selling and resultant losses far exceed that of 1929 which led to the Great Depression. Nor at this stage does anyone know for sure just what it all means. Is the frightful market crash simply a long overdue correction or an ominous prediction that the global economy is about to slide into another deep recession — or depression? The overnight wipeout of hundreds of billions of dollars here and in the U.S.A. is

Canada is blessed with an abundance of resources that are in demand all around the world. Canada is one of the world’s top mining countries, and our minerals and metals are found in products of all kinds. The Mining Association of Canada salutes The Northern Miner on its 100th Anniversary. *Diamonds contain carbon, as does newspaper ink. Your garden shears are made of iron.

MINING.CA

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oz. is the prime cause of American Barrick’s share price to race up $3.13 to $39.25 a new high o n the Toronto Stock Exchange in the past several days. At press-time the shares were at the $38 level. This hole has meant good news also for Franco Nevada Mining Corp. which receives a 4% net smelter royalty and a 5% net profit interest on the property, which has been in continuous operation since 1979 at a rate of 44,000 oz. gold a year. Franco shares ran up $3.38 to $8.38, a new high. At presstime Franco Nevada was trading at $8.25. The hole is part of an exploration drilling program at depth at the property. The drilling has indicated a number of significant intersections of sulphide gold mineralization below a depth of about 1,000 ft. Above that depth, “we are dealing with an oxide deposit close to the surface which has proven and probable reserves in the area of 12 million tons grading 0.05 oz. gold per ton,” explains Robert M. Smith, chief operating officer for American Barrick. Barrick has budgeted between $4 and $5 million on drilling the Goldstrike property this year. The funds will go towards fully outlining the shallower oxide reserves, as well as the deeper sulphide gold mineralization between the 1,000 ft to 1,700-ft. depths. “After that we may go deeper,” says Mr Smith.

NORTHERN MINER

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2015

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•1982–1989• bound to affect the whole economy. Yet politicians remain sanguine, pointing out that the drastic collapse of share prices is out of step with advances in the economy both here and in the U.S. That may or may not be so. Hadn’t we been assured that built-in market safeguards precluded anything like the October ’29 massacre?

Aug. 21, 1989

The largest underground gold mine in Canada belongs to Corona Corp., the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled. The court upheld a decision rendered in 1986, which awarded the Williams mine in the Hemlo area of northern Ontario developed by LAC Minerals, to Corona upon payment of $154 million plus interest. (That payment is now worth about $210 million.) The conclusion of the legal battle which began almost eight years ago marks the transformation of a junior mining company known as International Corona Resources into a major North American gold producer. TNM

Noranda/Hemlo gold mine in Ontario.

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•1982–1989•

Facts ‘n’ Figures

Illustration: Isa Cunanan

Then & Now In many ways the world of a century ago was a very different place than it is today. In 1915 a copy of The Northern Miner was 5¢ and a one-year subscription cost $1.50, or half a single issue in 2015. An ounce of gold sold for US$20.72 and the world was embroiled in a global conflict. One constant throughout the decades, though, has been Canada’s role as a mining nation. A hundred years ago, spurred on by First World War needs, miners in the Dominion ramped up production to the highest levels yet achieved in the land. The year saw gold and other metallic minerals record double-digit increases in production with nickel (+50%) and copper (+35%) leading the pack, while the capacity of Canadian steel furnaces was taxed to the limit to meet the demand for shell steel. Miners dug deeper into their deposits, restarted old mines and went on the hunt for more minerals. In the ensuing hundred years, Canadian mining has grown exponentially in both scale and sophistication. TNM

CANADIAN MINE PRODUCTION Asbestos Coal Copper

Then Now* Change 124,141 t

12,035,641 t

-100%

69,116,000 t

+474% +1,396%

45,715 t

684,003 t

Gold

918,056 oz

5,321,147 oz

Iron Ore

+480%

361,161 t

44,196,000 t

Lead

21,009 t

3,714 t

-82%

Nickel

28,716 t

220,850 t

+669%

PGMs

1,075 oz

Potash Silver

945,328 oz

0 0

Zinc

7 t

+87,838%

11,345,000 t

26,625,960 oz

Uranium

+12,137%

—

16,649,310 oz

-38%

10,037 t 329,396 t

— +4,705,557%

Sources: National Resources Canada, Dominion Bureau of Statistics, The Canada Year Book 1915. *Most recent estimates from 2014

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•1982–1989•

Remembrance

The author and Miner staff in 1999.

Reminiscences of The Miner

Creek, Lac de Gras and Voisey’s Bay, among others — and emerging opportunities in foreign lands. The paper became global in scope and the travel budget grew from mostly relying on the kindness of promoters to a respectable amount thanks to publishers John Cooke and Doug Donnelly, who understood the importance of on-site reporting at home and abroad. Other benefits of my years with The Miner were travelling the world, meeting prospectors and promoters, royalty and revolutionaries, and more than 50 mine finders, company builders, financiers and technical innovators presently enshrined in the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame. I met a few rogues too, but enough about Bre-X. (A side benefit of this sad saga was that The Miner was one of the first print papers to have a daily news website.) As for politicians, my experience was that the ones who knew the least about economics and science were always the ones most eager to churn out bad mining policies. I still can’t believe they locked Windy Craggy up in a park, but enough about lost causes. So thanks for the memories, especially to the Pearce family and the incredible people who kept The Miner alive for 75 years, and those who power the paper into the next century. It was a privilege to work with many of them. TNM — Vivian Danielson was a Staff Writer from 1988–89,Western Editor from 1989–94 and Editor from 1994–01.

By Vivian Danielson

Among the fondest memories of my early years at The Miner was “paper day,” when the latest issue arrived in the Vancouver bureau and at city news stands. Before the Internet, people would stream in to pick up the paper and pass along industry gossip. As a staff writer, I often dealt with visitors as Dave Duval, then western editor, spent much of “paper day” on the phone, questioning head office about the editing/ content/placement of stories or fielding complaints from local promoters who felt their projects were not getting the attention they deserved. One day Robert Friedland dropped in to challenge a story about his Summitville gold mine. Dave was unapologetic and called Friedland’s promotion a “mile-high disaster.” Friedland lost his cool and I feared things might come to blows. After Robert left in a huff (and in one piece), Dave said: “If everyone likes you, you’re not doing your job.” The responsibility to readers hit home when Olav Svela assigned me to cover a multi-million ounce gold project in Oregon, a scam based on phony assays. I will never forget the young broker who rushed into my office, frantic because he had raised $5 million for the project, mostly from family and friends. As western editor and later as editor, I stuck to a policy that mineral exploration was risky enough without reinventing basic rules. I was fortunate to cover many world-class discoveries — Eskay

www.northernminer.com

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The Honourable Bill Bennett, Minister of Energy and Mines – The Province of British Columbia I’d like to congratulate The Northern Miner on its 100th Anniversary, and for continuing to provide Canadians with insightful news about the mineral exploration and mining industry. As British Columbia’s mining industry continues to grow and to sustain and develop communities while providing families with meaningful jobs across the province, The Northern Miner will continue to play an important role in the public dialogue on this critical industry for our province and our country.

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he 1990s ushered in a brand new luxury commodity to Canadian mining and mineral exploration circles: diamonds. Chuck Fipke’s Dia Met Minerals led the charge with its discovery in 1991 of diamond-bearing kimberlite on the shore of Lac de Gras in the Northwest Territories — the culmination of a decade of lonely, painstaking work sifting through endless bags of glacial till to track the trail of diamond-indicator minerals to their source. BHP partnered up with Dia Met, and ultimately developed the Ekati mine. The discovery spurred a massive staking rush northeast of Yellowknife that led to the discovery by Aber Resources and its partners of what in time would become the Diavik mine. Two decades later, Canada would rank behind only Botswana in terms of value of annual diamond production. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 opened up an array of unusual business opportunities in the 1990s for Western miners in the former communist countries of Europe and Asia. The 1990s also saw the flowering of the global environmental movement, with the most notable setback for B.C. mining being the expropriation in 1993 of the Windy Craggy copper-cobalt-gold deposit to build a provincial park. Canadian explorers didn’t miss a beat, though, delivering up Prime Resources’ exceptional Eskay Creek gold discovery in B.C. and Diamond Fields Resources’ Voisey’s Bay nickel discovery in Labrador, which Robert Friedland cannily used to provoke a multi-billion dollar bidding war between Inco and Falconbridge. And then we come to March 1997, when Bre-X Minerals’ 50 million oz. Busang gold deposit in Indonesia was proved to be an elaborate fraud, wiping out $6 billion in market cap. Robert Friedland meanwhile, took the money from the sale of Voisey’s Bay and reinvented himself as an expert in Mongolia, guiding Ivanhoe Mines in its discovery of the colossal Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold porphyry deposit in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert. TNM

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Bre-X Minerals crew at Busang in Indonesia in 1996, from left: Jerry Alo, John Felderhof, Michael de Guzman, and Cesar Puspos. Photo by Vivian Danielson.

canada’s diamond AGE (1990–2004)

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•1990–2004• Dec. 9, 1991

Diamond fever has hit the residents of Yellowknife, N.W.T., since Dia Met Minerals announced results from its Point Lake kimberlite prospect, 300 km north of the capital city (T.N.M., Nov. 11/91). Sources say that four or five crews are actively staking around the junior’s 850,000-acre property and that “millions” of acres have already been claimed. Every helicopter and plane is booked solid. The announcement stated that 81 small diamonds, all measuring less than two millimetres in diameter, had been recovered from a 59-kg sample made up of fresh kimberlite core. The core length, sampled from 140 metres to the end of the hole at 180 metres, is the richest-ever intersected in Canada. But because the sample is statistically so small, the joint venture has chosen not to release carat weights and gem quality figures at this stage. “It’s unheard of to have so many diamonds in such a small sample,” said DiaMet Chairman Charles Fipke. “But a 200-tonne sample should be done before weight and gem quality are mentioned.”

That list does not include the majors that have recently opened exploration offices in response to new foreign investment rules that allow them to control local projects for up to 12 years from the date of initial production. When The Northern Miner toured Mexico recently, officials from Colorado gold mining giant Newmont Mining were preparing to join Amax and Noranda by setting up base in Mexico. “As North American governments raise taxes and introduce tougher regulations, what we are seeing is a natural migration to real good geology,” said Russ Babcock, chief geologist at Utah-based Kennecott.

May 18, 1992

Although Curragh Resources will likely survive the Westray coalmine disaster in Nova Scotia, it will emerge from the wreckage with a severely damaged reputation in the eyes of investors and creditors alike, some analysts say. Even if the lead-zinc producer’s name is cleared after what is expected to be a lengthy inquiry into the accident, Curragh officials will have a hard time explaining why they got involved in a project that was thought to be both hazardous and politically motivated.

May 25, 1992

Gem-quality diamonds recovered from a kimberlite pipe in the Lac de Gras region of the Northwest Territories indicate that Dia Met Minerals and BHP-Utah Mines may be sitting on Canada’s first diamond mine. Diamonds in a 160-ton bulk sample from the Dia Met property collectively weigh at least 90 carats, according to BHP-Utah, which is doing the processing at its diamond recovery plant near Ft. Collins, Colo. Investors who have been waiting eagerly for that news rushed Diamond sorting in Namibia.

March 16, 1992

A brief ceremony March 11 in Elliot Lake, Ont., marked the end of 35 years of uranium mining by Denison Mines in the northern Ontario community. President Bill James presided at the mainly symbolic ceremony, capping “the lid on the last barrel of U3O8” to be produced at what the company described as the largest underground uranium mine in Canada.

March 23, 1992

As the bigger companies downsize their exploration efforts in North America, the emphasis on Mexico has mushroomed to the point where there are now at least 74 Canadian and a handful of U.S. firms conducting activity there. www.northernminer.com

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•1990–2004• Dec.14, 1992

Is flow-through funding the magic formula that led to the discovery of billions of dollars worth of ore or another government scheme plundered for the benefit of the few? Once again the pros and cons are being debated. This time the “pros” are given fresh ammunition in a report produced by Fenton Scott, president of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC). The report provides an invigorating analysis of how the mining industry and government have reaped a rich harvest. The bottom line of Scott’s analysis shows a net cost to governments during the seven-year flow-through period of 1984–90 of $460 million. It also shows a net estimated return to governments from the 29 flow-through mines started up, or announced prior to 1991, of $4.5 billion. These figures give a 10-to-1 return on government investment.

into the market and sent Dia Met shares rocketing to $13.50 from $8.13 after 249,822 shares had changed hands May 20, the date of the announcement. Results from Colorado also sparked heavy trading in other Lac de Gras area property holders including Aber Resources, which gained 55 cents on a volume of 1.1 million. Argus Resources moved up 9 cents to 47 cents on 587,600 shares. BHP said a preliminary examination reveals that about one-quarter of the diamonds found in the sample are likely to be of gem quality and a few of the stones are in the 1-3-carat range. The sample was shipped out two months ago after Dia Met reported finding 81 small diamonds, some of gem quality and all less than two millimetres in diameter from a 465-ft. core sample of kimberlite.

Oct. 19, 1992

Recent drilling on ground held by partners Aber Resources, Commonwealth Gold and SouthernEra Resources has blown holes in the theory that the BHP-Dia Met claim block holds the only potential for economic diamond discoveries in the Northwest Territories. Testing its first target, the joint venture intersected a kimberlite intrusion on the south side of Lac de Gras, about 16 km south southwest of Dia Met’s diamond-bearing Point Lake pipe. Kennecott Canada is financing the program. “It looks like the Fipke curse that all the ground outside of the Dia Met block is worthless may have been broken,” says John Kaiser, an analyst with Vancouver-based Pacific International. Amid frenetic staking by a number of diamond seekers earlier this year, Dia Met Chairman Charles Fipke said results from his years of sampling in the Territories had ruled out the possibility of economic kimberlite finds outside the Dia Met-BHP landholdings. His brother, Wayne Fipke, added fuel to the fire by labelling all rival claims “moose pasture.” Their proximity suggests the likelihood that the Aber find and the Point Lake pipe are members of the same cluster, says Grenville Thomas, president of Aber. Worldwide, kimberlite pipes tend to occur in clusters averaging 50 km in diameter.

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June 28, 1993

The owners of the Windy Craggy deposit in northwestern B.C. will be demanding compensation of several hundred million dollars from the provincial government. Last week, the government expropriated the project to make it part of a provincial park encompassing the entire Haines Triangle. Waving placards and wearing black arm bands, a noisy group of Vancouver mining representatives turned out in force to protest the decision announced last week by Premier Michael Harcourt. The New Democratic Party (NDP) premier was booed and heckled by a visibly angry delegation of mining executives, geologists, engineers, mine suppliers and Howe Street investment brokers. The protest was reminiscent of the controversy that erupted when, in 1974, the previous NDP government introduced onerous legislation that drove mining companies out of the province. Many of the placards read: “Super-Royalty 1974, Windy Craggy 1993 — We will never forget.”

Sept. 12, 1994

The takeover battle for gold-producer Lac Minerals has come to a satisfactory conclusion for American Barrick Resources. Barrick acquired more than 80% of Lac’s common shares on a fully diluted basis in a vote by Lac shareholders. The offer was conditional on the acceptance of at least 66.6% of Lac’s shares being tendered. Barrick’s main rival for Lac was Royal Oak Mines, which was the first to take a run at Lac earlier this summer. Barrick quickly followed suit. Other suitors made noises but made no formal offers. The turning point came when Lac management endorsed a revised offer by Barrick. With the acquisition of Lac, Toronto-based Barrick becomes the third-largest gold producer in the world. The total output of the combined operations of both companies in 1993 was about 2.7 million oz. gold.

Nov. 28, 1994

A staking rush is taking place on the east coast of Labrador, triggered by drill results that have confirmed a significant nickel-copper-cobalt www.northernminer.com

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•1990–2004•

Navidad silver discovery in Patagonia.

discovery on Diamond Fields Resources’ Voisey’s Bay project, 35 km southwest of Nain. The most impressive results were from hole 2, which intercepted 71 metres (232 ft.) of base metal mineralization grading 2.23% nickel, 1.47% copper and 0.123% cobalt. This includes a 33.2-metre (108-ft.) massive sulphide (95%) zone. “This is a significant discovery, just 10 km from deep tidewater, with open-pit potential,” says Diamond Fields President Jean-Raymond Boulle. The company is already gearing up for an expanded stepout drill program in conjunction with additional ground geophysics. The discovery was big news in St. John’s, Nfld., where companies and individuals must register their claims. “We are in the middle of a staking rush,” asserts Noel Gover, mineral claims recorder. “Over 5,000 claims were staked by the 21st, and we’ve handled another 1,000 this morning. Labrador will never be the same.”

amond Fields Resources wedding. Whether Falconbridge will rise to the challenge or be left alone at the altar remains to be seen. Inco has calculated the value of its recent offer to be $43.50 per Diamond Fields share, or approximately $4.5 billion, making it half a billion dollars richer than the offer made by Falconbridge in February. Inco is offering 0.557 of an Inco common share per Diamond Fields share, valuing Diamond Fields at $26.39 per share and Inco at $47.375 per share. Inco would also issue to Diamond Fields shareholders a new series of convertible preferred shares, which would allow them to retain a 25% interest in the Voisey’s Bay nickel-copper-cobalt deposit in Labrador. Finally, each Diamond Fields share would entitle the bearer to one share in Diamondco (Diamond Fields’ diamond business). Inco has set a cash limit of $350 million for its bid, and plans to issue about 51 million Inco common shares if that number is reached. The deal would increase Inco’s effective interest in the Voisey’s Bay nickel-copper-cobalt deposit to 75%, and would allow it to cancel, without additional cost, the US$387 million of Series D convertible preferred shares it issued in June 1995 to acquire its initial interest in the deposit.

April 7, 1997

A month ago, it was reputed to be sitting on the largest gold find of the century, but the ground is now shaking beneath Bre-X Minerals, operator of the Busang gold project in eastern Kalimantan, Indonesia. Due diligence investigations by Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold and a technical audit by respected consulting firm Strathcona Mineral Services have uncovered evidence that the drill program at the Busang deposit may be invalid and that the deposit may have sub-

Feb. 27, 1995

The Eskay Creek gold mine in northwestern British Columbia is up and running. The initial shipment of crushed and blended ore, destined for smelters in Japan and eastern Canada, was made earlier this year. Owner Prime Resources Group estimates that total capital cost will be about $73 million, which is 3% below the feasibility study estimate of $75 million. Of this total, $55.6 million was spent in 1994. This year, the remaining $17.2 million will be used to buy underground mining equipment, upgrade the access road and provide additional working capital.

April 1, 1996

A rival suitor has crashed the Falconbridge-Diwww.northernminer.com

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•1990–2004• stantially less gold than had been estimated — that, in the worst case, it may have no economic mineralization at all. Freeport, which had started its field work by drilling four twin holes — holes collared about 1.5 metres from earlier Bre-X holes, and aimed in the same orientation — found that core samples carried “insignificant” concentrations of gold; over lengths comparable to mineralized intersections in the Bre-X holes, assays never exceeded 0.06 gram per tonne. When the results were made public on March 27, Bre-X shares fell a drastic $13 on the Toronto Stock Exchange and speculation that Bre-X was not an elephant but, rather, a giant pillar of salt, began to take over the market. Bre-X disclosed on March 26 that it had been advised by Strathcona Mineral Services, which it had retained in the previous week, that “there appears to be a strong possibility that the potential gold resources have been overstated, because of invalid samples and assaying of those samples” (T.N.M., March 31/97). Freeport added its own release, saying analyses of cores from its confirmatory holes had, up to that time, indicated “insignificant amounts of gold.” Bre-X’s mineral resource consultants, Kilborn SNC-Lavalin, issued a statement clarifying that it had been retained only to perform resource calculations based on data supplied by Bre-X, and that the calculations depended “on the validity of samples and assaying.” That an established mining consultancy such as Kilborn felt obliged to issue such a clarification underscored the unease that many were beginning to feel about Busang. The news shocked the market, but with trading in Bre-X halted the funds could do little but sell other speculative junior exploration stocks and break open a box of red pens.

Unloading Creepy Crawler in Cape Town.

March 16, 1998

Aber Resources and Diavik Diamond Mines, a division of Rio Tinto, unveiled a $875-million plan to build Canada’s second diamond mine. The mine site is situated 300 km northwest of Yellowknife, N.W.T., and 35 km southeast of the Ekati project of BHP and Dia Met Minerals. The mining plan calls for a 2-million-tonne-per-year processing plant that will handle production from four kimberlite pipes: A-418, A-154S, A-154N and A-21. The plant will utilize heavy medium separation with x-ray diamond recovery. The operation is expected to yield 6 to 8 million carats of diamonds per year, with a total projected mine life of 16 to 22 years. After year 15, the rate of production would drop to between 3 and 4 million carats per year. A preliminary reserve estimate, calculated by Diavik, weighs in at 37 million tonnes grading 3.3 carats per tonne (or 123 million carats). To date, 83% of the resource, (104 million carats), falls into the total minable reserves category. The average diamond price is estimated to be US$56 per carat. The companies expect that more than 90%, by value, of the diamonds produced will be gem quality. A prefeasibility estimate pegs the project’s capital cost at $875 million, plus or minus 25%. The final feasibility study is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 1998. Current estimates suggest that production could commence as early as 2001.

May 4, 1998

Falconbridge reports that its Raglan nickel mine on northern Quebec’s Ungava Peninsula is expected to reach its rated capacity of 21,000 tonnes of contained nickel by mid-1998. The $570-million operation produced its first nickel-copper conwww.northernminer.com

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•1990–2004•

Antamina copper-zinc mine in Peru.

centrates late last year, three months ahead of schedule. The concentrates will be shipped this summer to Deception Bay and then Quebec City, where they will be transported by rail to Falco’s smelter at Sudbury for conversion into matte. The matte will then be sent by rail back to Quebec City, for shipment to Falco’s refinery in Norway. At last report, proven and probable reserves stood at 14.4 million tonnes averaging 3.17% nickel and 0.88% copper, plus possible reserves of 6.1 million tonnes averaging 2.97% nickel and 0.88% copper. Falco describes Raglan as having “great expansion potential.” Based on recent exploration successes, the company figures it can expand production to 30,000 tonnes of contained nickel annually.

Oct. 26, 1998

The recent submission to the federal government of an environmental assessment for the proposed Diavik mine in the Northwest

Territories sets in motion the permitting process for what will be, in all likelihood, Canada’s second diamond mine. Situated 300 km northeast of Yellowknife and 35 km southeast of the producing Ekati diamond mine, the Diavik project is owned 60% by Yellowknife-based Diavik Diamond Mines, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Rio Tinto, and 40% by Aber Resources.

Dec. 7, 1998

Placer Dome has reached an agreement with Johannesburg-based Western Areas to acquire a 50% operating interest in a property in the Witwatersrand district of South Africa. The property contains a proven and probable reserve of 235 million tonnes grading 7.8 grams gold per tonne, equivalent to 59.3 million contained ounces gold. Of this, a deposit known as South Deep accounts for 52 million oz. The calculations are based on a gold price of US$260 per

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•1990–2004• oz. and a cutoff grade of 4.2 grams. The total mine life is estimated at 79 years. Placer Dome must pay Western Areas US$235 million upfront and make additional payments over the life of the mine.

Jan. 4, 1999

A new era in Canadian mining dawned in October as the nation joined the ranks of the world’s diamond producers. Situated 300 km northeast of Yellowknife, N.W.T., in the sub-Arctic barren lands, the Ekati mine is operated by 51%-owner by BHP Diamonds, a division of Broken Hill Proprietary, Australia’s largest in-dustrial and natural resources company. Dia Met Minerals owns a 29% share of the mine, while Dia Met founder Charles Fipke and his former prospecting partner, Stewart Blusson, each hold 10%. At an expected capital cost of $699.4 million, construction was completed on time and $15 million below budget. Ekati will produce between 3.5 million and 4.5 million carats of diamonds annually, representing 4% of the world’s current production by weight and 6% by value.

April 17, 2000

Economically interesting de-posits of platinum group metals (PGMs) are few and far between on planet earth, with more than 90% of the world’s supply coming from only three mining camps: Bushveld in South Africa, Noril’sk in Russia and Stillwater in the U.S. What’s more, the deposits tend to be lean and metallurgically complex, further reducing their appeal as exploration targets. Notwithstanding these real and considerable challenges, Ontario is increasingly viewed as prime hunting ground for PGM deposits. It has the right geology — as evidenced by the Lac des Îles palladium-platinum mine, north of Thunder Bay (Canada’s only primary PGM producer) and new PGM discoveries within the River Valley Intrusive near Sudbury — and access to nearby metallurgical complexes that potentially could handle downstream processing of concentrates. To top it all off, two of South Africa’s largest PGM producers have made deals with juniors actively exploring for the noble metals in the province. Indeed, PGM exploration in Ontario is one of the few bright spots on the Canadian exploration scene. The sustained rally in platinum and palladium prices has allowed juniors handily to raise funds for their exploration efforts, and prompted others to cut their traditional ties to gold and jump on the PGM bandwagon.

Oct. 30, 2000

It began life in 1948 as Dickenson Mines’ Arthur White gold mine and went on to produce more than 3.1 million oz. without interruption until a strike forced a shutdown in 1996. Recently, under the ownership of Goldcorp, the mine was reborn as one of the highest-grade underground gold producers in the world. The re-christened Red Lake operation, situated in the Kenora district of northern Ontario, started up in August, since which time more than 35,000 oz. gold have been poured. In October, the mine was officially re-opened in a ribbon-cutting ceremony attended by The Northwww.northernminer.com

Chapter 7 TNM 100th 1990to2004.indd 75

ern Miner and various other guests. Goldcorp acquired the mine when it amalgamated with Dickenson Mines in 1994. In April 1998, Bruce Humphrey, Goldcorp’s vice-president of operations, visited the site for the first time. “I had been warned that the property was a little run-down and needed some work,” he says. “That was an understatement: this truly was a 50-year-old facility that had been undercapitalized for many years. But it’s not the same mine anymore. It not only looks different; in may ways, it really is different.” The new mine is wired for fibre-optic communications and video, and all areas, including the head office in Toronto, are linked via computer networks. These and other modifications are key to Goldcorp’s full-production target of 240,000 oz. per year, which was to have been achieved by presstime. Cash costs are estimated at US$88 per oz., with the total after-tax cost pegged at US$213 per oz.

Jan. 1, 2001

Aber Diamond has agreed to sell its 32.24% interest in the promising Snap Lake project to South Africa’s De Beers Consolidated Mines for $173 million. The move came just days after London-based Rio Tinto approved an accelerated construction schedule for the $1.3-billion Diavik mine project in the Northwest Territories. Diavik Diamond Mines, a wholly owned subsidiary of Rio, is the operator and 60%-owner of the joint-venture project. Aber holds the remaining 40%. The Diavik project lies 300 km northeast of Yellowknife and 30 km southeast of the producing Ekati diamond mine.

Dec. 24, 2001

Convinced that its Turquoise Hill copper-gold porphyry discovery in southern Mongolia has the tonnage potential to rival that of the huge Grasberg deposit in Indonesia, Robert Friedland’s Ivanhoe Mines has raised some US$16.7 million in recent months and embarked on an aggressive winter drilling campaign. During a recent site visit to Turquoise Hill (or Oyu Tolgoi, as it is known in Mongolia), The Northern Miner learned that another two drill rigs are being added to the four that are currently positioned over the Southwest Oyu discovery zone. Southwest Oyu is one of four distinct targets occurring in an area measuring 3 by 2 km. This past summer, Ivanhoe discovered a gold-enriched zone of hypogene copper mineralization after testing the depth potential of an earlier hole drilled by BHP Billiton near the northeastern edge of the Southwest Oyu zone. BHP had intersected a 74-metre-thick zone of sheeted quartz stockwork rich in bornite, chalcopyrite and magnetite grading 1.6% copper and 0.18 gram gold per tonne from 54 to 126 metres of depth, followed by 80 metres of 0.52% copper. BHP had drilled three other holes, spaced 400 metres apart into Southwest Oyu, as well as a large, northeasterly trending induced-polarization (IP) chargeability anomaly and a coinciding magnetic anomaly. These holes returned intervals of 140 metres grading 0.56% THE NORTHERN MINER 100TH ANNIVERSARY | 75

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•1990–2004• copper and 0.46 gram gold from 82 to 224 metres of depth, 218 metres of 0.5% copper and 0.4 gram gold from 24 to 242 metres, and 36 metres of 0.69% copper and 1.16 grams

gold, starting at 113 metres of depth in the footwall of a dipping syenitic intrusion. Ivanhoe’s discovery hole, OTD-150, was collared at minus 55° and directed toward

Charles Fipke.

the northeast. The hole reached a down-hole depth of 591 metres and averaged 0.81% copper and 1.17 grams gold over 508 metres, from 70 to 578 metres of depth. The 508-metre-long intercept included an upper 54 metres grading 0.51% copper and 0.45 gram gold, followed further down-hole by a 278-metre zone grading 1.02% copper and 1.6 grams gold between 188 and 466 metres. “We knew instantly we had a significant deposit,” Douglas Kirwin, Ivanhoe’s senior vice-president of exploration, told The Northern Miner. “It was tremendously satisfying. Every field geologist spends his entire career trying to find something like this.” Kirwin gives full credit for the discovery to BHP’s geologists in Mongolia, who were opposed to BHP’s dropping this project.

Dec. 24, 2001

In mid-December, shareholders of Homestake Mining gathered in Walnut Creek, Calif., for the final meeting in the company’s 124-year history and overwhelmingly approved merging with Barrick Gold. Under the terms first offered by Barrick in June, each Homestake share was converted into 0.53 of a Barrick share, so that former Homestake shareholders now own about 26% of Barrick’s 536 million outstanding shares. With holders of Homestake stock, Homestake Canada ex-changeable shares and Homestake CHESS depository interests eligible to vote at the meeting, the company reports that 95.7% of votes cast were in favour of the merger, representing 64.7% of all Homestake’s outstanding shares. (Barrick shareholders were not required to vote on the merger.)

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•1990–2004•

Design-Build Experts Innovative Solutions for Building Value!

Based on Barrick’s closing share price of US$15.67 on Dec. 13, the deal valued each Homestake share at US$8.31, giving the acquisition a value of US$2.2 billion and boosting Barrick’s market capitalization to US$9 billion. The acquisition of Homestake brings Barrick 12 major mines in four countries, hosting combined reserves of 20.8 million oz. Last year, these mines produced 2.2 million oz. for Homestake at a total cash cost of US$174 per oz.

Jan. 7, 2002

Confirmation that two “kimberlitic” discoveries in the Otish Mountains region of north-central Quebec are diamondiferous has focused attention on the area. Prior to the Christmas holidays, Ashton Mining of Canada reported the microdiamond counts from two kimberlitic bodies discovered during a first pass of drilling last fall.

March 22, 2004

With two diamond mines already established and three projects at the permitting stages, Canada will surpass South Africa this year in terms of diamond production value and move into third place, behind Botswana and Russia. The Ekati and Diavik diamond mines in the Northwest Territories accounted for 11% of the world’s diamond production by value in 2003. What’s more, Canada’s share is expected to increase to more than 15% in the next five years as De Beers’ Snap Lake and Victor projects come on-stream, along with Tahera’s Jericho project. Owing to their high gem quality, coupled with a clean and pristine image, Canadian diamonds are commanding a premium in the rough and retail markets, and have among the highest average value per carat in the world.

May 31, 2004

IMA Exploration’s Galena Hill discovery in southern Argentina has a resource equivalent to more than 200 million oz. silver, according to an independent estimate. Assay results from 37 holes drilled on roughly 80- to 100-metre centres point to an indicated resource of 63.6 million tonnes grading 101 grams silver per tonne (2.9 oz. per ton) and 1.76% lead, equivalent to 207 million oz. silver and 1.1 million tonnes lead. The estimate, provided by Snowdon Mining Industry Consultants, is based on a cutoff grade of 50 grams silver-equivalent.

Oct. 18, 2004

The Manitoba-based operations of Hudson Bay Mining & Smelting could be sold to tiny Venture-listed OntZinc if a new deal with Hudson Bay’s parent goes through. South African mining house Anglo American has agreed to a deal to sell the assets to OntZinc for $325 million, following a quiet auction for the assets. TNM www.northernminer.com

Chapter 7 TNM 100th 1990to2004.indd 77

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•1990–2004•

Canadian Mining Hall of Fame

Birth of the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame

At a CMHF dinner, from left: Mort Brown, James Borland, Alfred Powis, Pat Sheridan, Bill James, Olav Svela, John Cooke and Steven Roman.

Society of economic GeoloGiStS

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JOIN NOW online at www.segweb.org

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SEMAIL OPHIOLITE REGION,

www.segweb.org VOLUME 109 / NUMBER

OMAN 58.0°

56.5°

Post obduction sediments

VMS ± Gossan deposits 3

Gold-poor Unmined Mined

Semail Ophiolite Nappe Volcanic sequence Peridotite, gabbro, dolerite

Discovery Advancing Science and 40 km

24.5°

10 11

Deposits

JANUARY 2015 23.0°

1 Khaznah 2 Aswad 3 Shinas 4 Hatta 5 Mandoos 6 Safwa 7 Bayda 8 Aarja 9 Lasail 10 Zuha 11 Maqail South 12 Mahab 4 13 Ghuzayn 14 Al Bishara 15 Rakah 16 Daris 3A-5 17 Daris East

Gold-bearing Unmined Gossan mined Sulfide mined

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IN THIS ISSUE Deposit, Western Turkey • Küçükdag˘ Au-Ag-Cu Zn-Pb Deposit, Ireland • Sphalerite in Navan Hamersley, Australia • Paraburdoo Fe Deposit, Deposit, NW China • Heishan JANUARY 2015 Ni-Cu-(PGE) Ophiolite, Oman • VMS Deposits, Semail Canada Mine, Newfoundland, • 1806 Zone, Ming VMS

Quebec, Canada • REE in the Misery Syenite, Arizona Patagonia Mountains, • Ore Deposits in the Sangihe Island, Indonesia • Epithermal Au (Ag-Cu), Deposit, Peru • Yanque Nonsulfide Zn-Pb Emeishan LIP, China • Fe-Ti-V Oxide Deposits, NW China • W-Sn Deposits, Baiganhu,

0 er 10100 bNUMBER

Num Footprints: Hydrothermal Alteration and Geochemical Dispersion Around Porphyry Copper Deposits

Scott Halley, Mineral Mapping Pty Ltd., 24 Webb Street, Rossmoyne, WA 6148, Australia, John H. Dilles, Oregon State University, College of Earth, Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences,104 CEOAS Administrative Building, Corvallis, OR 97331, United States, and Richard M. Tosdal,† PicachoEx LLC, 21 Quince Mill Court, North Potomac, MD 20878, United States

ABSTRACT Whole-rock lithogeochemical analyses combined with short-wave infrared (SWIR) spectroscopy provide a rapid and cost-effective method for prospecting for porphyry-type hydrothermal systems. Lithogeochemistry detects trace metals to average crustal abundance levels and allows vectoring via gradients of chalcophile and lithophile elements transported by magmatic-hydrothermal ore and external circulating fluids that are dispersed and trapped in altered rocks. Of particular use are alkalis in sericite and metals such as Mo, W, Se, Te, Bi, As, and Sb, which form stable oxides that remain in weathered rocks and soils. SWIR mapping of shifts in the 2,200-nm Al-OH absorption feature in sericite define paleofluid pH gradients useful for vectoring toward the center of the buoyant metalbearing magmatic-hydrothermal plume.

a.) Hydrothermal alteration assemblages Illite-chl-smect -relic fspar

Corresponding author: e-mail, rtosdal@gmail.com

†

ADVANCED ARGILLIC pyroph-alun ±topaz

2210 nm 2205 nm 2200 nm

0 NUMBER r 10100 N u mbe

SERICITIC PHYLLIC INTERMEDIATE te spec. hemat i ARGILLIC

Py±Cp± Sl±Ga

epid-chl Wavelength of white -act-fspar mica SWIR (2200)

INTRODUCTION Porphyry and related epithermal Au-Ag ores are the world’s most important ore deposits outside of iron and aluminum mines, produce most of the Cu and Mo, and are the largest producers of Au and Ag globally. It has been known for over a century that metals in porphyry Cu deposits are zoned, with a central to page 12 . . .

Illite-chl -relic fspar

musc phengitic musc-chlrelic fspar

ids tic flu gma -ma

Keep informed of SEG news and events by following us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

BULLETIN OF THE SOCIETY OF ECONOMIC GEOLOGISTS

2014

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PROPYLITIC

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ry Since 1905

Advancing Science and Discove

Economic Geology

chl-fspar ±calc/epid-hem

0 NUMBER r 10100 N u mbe

Cp-Py

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Cu > 0.2wt% (±Mo±Au)

FIGURE 1. a.) Vertical cross section of a typical porphyry Cu deposit showing distribution of hydrothermal alteration and sulfide minerals. Also shown are generalized contours of the 2,200-nm peak measured in SWIR instruments.

SEG 2015

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World-Class Ore Deposits: Discovery to Recovery

September 27–30, 2015 Hobart, TAS, Australia

www.seg2015.org

www.northernminer.com

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•1990–2004•

Canadian Mining Hall of Fame

The following editorial is a glimpse into the creation of the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame in 1988 by The Northern Miner and cofounding sponsors Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada, Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum, and the Mining Association of Canada. The four sponsors are supported by five associate organizations: Association for Mineral Exploration British Columbia, Mining Association of British Columbia, Ontario Mining Association, Quebec Mining Association and Saskatchewan Mining Association. Located today in the Teck Suite of Galleries at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame Gallery showcases the biographies and personal stories of more than 160 Hall of Fame inductees through a bilingual interactive video wall that also explains how mining touches every part of our lives. Please visit the Hall online at www.mininghalloffame.ca. Dec. 14, 1987 Editorial: Mining Hall of Fame Just the other day, at a meeting of the Toronto Geological Discussion Group, the publisher of The Northern Miner, Maurice R. Brown, proposed establishment of a Mining Hall of Fame. This, like sports Halls of Fame in Canada, would permanently enshrine those individuals who have made great and lasting contributions in their particular fields of endeavor. We think it’s a challenging idea, with a great deal of merit, and not at all impossible of achievement. There is no reason why mine discoverers and developers, like hockey and football players, should not be accorded something of the public honor that election to a Hall of Fame entails. In fact, the mining industry is long overdue in attempting to make its accomplishments more widely known, in this case through those remarkable individuals who would merit inclusion in a Mining Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame concept is not at all new, though it is when applied to an industry segment, rather than to sports. There are literally dozens of Halls of Fame across www.northernminer.com

Chapter 7 TNM 100th 1990to2004.indd 79

Canada in the sports arena, but none we’re aware of that apply to a particular Canadian industry. The mining industry itself already accords special honors to mining achievers, through such bodies, for instance, as the Prospectors and Developers Association and its Prospector-of-the-Year award, and the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, with its various annual awards. This paper, too, we believe makes a significant contribution to the honors list with its own annual selection of Mining Man of the Year. But one problem with all of these awards is that they generally make limited outside public impact. The industry itself knows of and appreciates them, but few others will be even aware of them. A Mining Hall of Fame, supported by the industry and locat-

ed in a permanent home available for public visitation, we think, could considerably enhance the opportunities to make mining’s accomplishments, and the names of the men who achieve them, better known to all Canadians. A Mining Hall of Fame is just an idea, at this stage. But it is at least a possibility, with the backing and financial support of the industry from top to bottom (not just the seniors, the big players, but right down to the smaller companies in the junior resource sector). We suggest as a starter, that industry associations, particularly the national groups, include the idea on their public relations agendas for discussion. Meantime we’d like to hear from anyone who feels he or she could contribute to a dialogue on the proposal. TNM

Congratulations to the Northern Miner on 100 years of reporting global mining news.

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•1990–2004• Diavik diamond mine in N.W.T.

Remembrance

Queen of Diamonds By Virginia Heffernan

The press release announcing Canada’s first major diamond discovery in November 1991 was intentionally spare. You had to know something about diamond exploration to appreciate its significance. Only a handful of Canadians fit this description, and none happened to work for The Northern Miner. So when editor Jim Borland handed me the faxed release, I composed a small item about a 59 kg sample of kimberlite from the Northwest Territories that yielded 81 tiny diamonds for partners Dia Met Minerals and BHP-Utah Mines, and didn’t give it another thought — until the news won bold headlines in Britain and Australia, and shares of Dia Met skyrocketed. As awareness grew, people knowledgeable about diamond exploration emerged to explain the find’s significance. South African-trained geologist Christopher Jennings, who for years had been trying to convince his superiors that Canada’s ancient cratons probably hosted diamonds, likened it to a 1 oz. per ton gold discovery over a considerable thickness. Suddenly, everyone was talking diamonds and their indicator minerals. A frenzied and ultimately successful race to prove up economic kimberlite pipes took hold. The Point Lake discovery was The Northern Miner’s most exciting story since the Hemlo gold find, and I had randomly been given the privilege of covering it. As the beat exploded, fellow staff took to calling me the “queen of diamonds.” Eventually dozens of companies — a few legitimate but most closeologists — were in on the chase and the play was spreading to other parts of the country including Alberta, Saskatchewan and even an unlikely area of Montreal that hosted kimberlitic intrusions. By midday, every day, my inbox would fill with news of claims staked, kimberlites uncovered or G10 garnets sampled. It was my job to distinguish the charlatans from the legitimate explorers, but sometimes the sheer volume of information would make my head spin. This girl’s best friend was becoming high maintenance. I finally cracked and, scattering faxes in my wake, stormed into the office of then-editor Olav Svela, insisting on a visit to Point Lake to see the $2.4-billion play unfolding for myself. I think he laughed, but I was only half joking. Shortly after that encounter, an opportunity to pursue a masters degree at U of T arose and I took it. My parting gift from the newspaper? A faux diamond ring. I’ll cherish it always. TNM — Virginia Heffernan of www.geopen.com was a Staff Writer from 1990 to 1993, and is a regular freelance contributor.

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•1990–2004•

Remembrance

A great privilege By John Cumming

Like most who have worked in the editorial department of The Northern Miner, the site visits to exotic locales in Canada and around the world really stand out as highlights of my time here. People in this industry lead some of the most adventurous lives, and they have been such generous and insightful hosts for our writers on these tours. It’s been a great privilege to have my boots on the ground in so many of the classic geological settings I had previously only read about in textbooks, including the Sudbury basin and the Abitibi; the Basin and Range province of the U.S. Southwest; Russian gold and diamond centres; Tanzania’s Lake Victoria Goldfields; the diamond pipes of Kimberley and the Bushveld Complex in South Africa; a plethora of Andean and Patagonian gold camps; the Guiana Shield under the Amazon jungle; epithermal gold-silver belts in Central America; gold deposits in the thrust-faulted foothills of the Himalayas; the astound-

The author at a diamond mine in China.

ing mineralizing systems of the Philippines; the venerable VMS camps of southwestern Spain; nickel laterites in Western Australia; historic gold belts in Turkey; and so many more. My first and maybe best foreign visit for the Miner was a rollicking, vodka-fuelled, three-week tour across Russia with a bunch of Australians in the summer of 1997 via a huge private jet from Moscow to Magadan and back again, dropping in on gold and diamond deposits along the way. It was a journey “Through the Looking Glass,” at a more innocent time when everyone was still making sense of the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union, and were a lot more optimistic about doing business there. My first face-to-face interview was with Virginia Mines’ André Gaumond. I was so impressed by his energy, canny corporate strategy and solid grasp of all aspects of the industry, and thought as he was leaving our office, “Keep an eye on this guy, he’s going places.” It was an honour and pleasure to bestow André with our “Mining Person of the Year” award for the Éléonore gold discovery in my first year as editor nearly a decade later. As a child of the Cold War, it’s also been heart-warming for me to visit so many places that had been the scenes of conflict or repression during my childhood, but are now at peace or at least more peaceful. The remarkable expansion of Canadian mining and mineral exploration overseas in the 1990s coincided with the great opening up of business opportunities in lands that were once forbidden polit-

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ically or too dangerous, from the former hardline communist countries of Eastern Europe, Central Asia and East Asia; to former war-torn countries of Africa and so many countries in Latin America that were convulsed by the nastiest civil wars, or battened down under military dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s. The worst conflicts that happened while I was a Miner staff writer were the descents into hell that Sierra Leone, Angola and the DRC made in the late 1990s, which I learned about from diamond miners active in those countries who told me the chilling stories of extreme brutality they’d witnessed first-hand. But probably the most indelible and haunting memory from my travels for the Miner came from a poor and dangerous artisanal gold miners’ camp in Venezuela’s southeastern El Callao district, where I stood beside a grandfather and father using a crude wooden winch to lower by rope a boy of perhaps 10 in a bucket down a hand-dug shaft extending about 30 metres into the deeply weathered and inherently unstable tropical soil to chase on his hands and knees after remnant gold-bearing quartz veins. To me, it’s a visual shorthand of the desperation, squalor and poverty that gets passed down from generation to generation of far too many people on this planet, and that modern and equitable mining can help alleviate when done right. TNM — John Cumming started as a Staff Writer at The Northern Miner in 1996, became Assistant Editor in 2001, and has been Editor-in-chief since 2005.

To the staff of The Northern Miner: On behalf of the Province of Nova Scotia, my congratulations to The Northern Miner for 100 years of reporting and service to Canada’s mining industry. The Northern Miner continues to be an indispensable publication in the Department of Natural Resources Library in Halifax for our staff and industry clients. Nova Scotia salutes the generations of prospectors, geologists and engineers which have appeared in your newspaper for the past 100 years. Best of luck to The Northern Miner for your next century. Sincerely, Zach Churchill Minister of Natural Resources Nova Scotia

THE NORTHERN MINER 100TH ANNIVERSARY | 81

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•On Assignment• Travels by Northern Miner writers over the last two decades.

Matthew Keevil Corcoesto (gold) 2013

Adrian Pocobelli Deer Trail (silver) 2013

LEGEND

Trish Saywell Serra Pelada (gold) 2008

Salma Tarikh Cerro Ccopane (iron ore) 2012

Location visited

Alisha Hiyate Tendal (VMS) 2008

Favorite spot John Cumming Ollachea (gold) 2011

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MapPages.indd 82

Trish Saywell Taca Taca (copper) 2012

Salma Tarikh Cauchari-Olaroz (lithium) 2010

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Anthony Vaccaro Oyu Tolgoi (copper-gold) 2007

John Cumming Tac-Corak (gold) 2007

Matthew Keevil Molo (graphite) 2007

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Drilling in Alaska.

hina’s ascendancy as an world economic power and the resulting rise in commodities prices through the early years of the new millennium sparked mining’s largest-ever mergers and acquisitions deals, and created a handful of super-majors. In the gold sector, Barrick Gold followed up its acquisition of the venerable Homestake Mining with a hostile takeover of Placer Dome in 2006 to create the world’s biggest gold miner by production and market capitalization. Ian Telfer took the small but highly profitable Goldcorp on a wild string of high-priced acquisitions that, in time, would propel the company to gold major status and eventually the crown as largest gold miner by market cap. But the real action was in the base metals, particularly in iron ore. BHP merged with Billiton and went on to become the world’s largest mining company. From his base in Switzerland, Mick Davis drove a small company called Xstrata on a M&A binge that would include buying Canada’s Noranda, which had already merged with Falconbridge. Rio Tinto also bulked up, including the purchase of Canada’s Alcan, while Vale notably acquired Inco to complement its iron ore business. The Anglo American group of companies was also active with elaborate corporate maneuvers, including merging AngloGold with Ashanti Goldfields. Arguably the best discovery of the past decade has been Aurelian Resources’ Fruta del Norte find in the Ecuadorian jungle. The fact it’s undeveloped a decade after its discovery is emblematic of the souring of many relationships between Western miners and the governments of developing countries such as Bolivia, Costa Rica, Mongolia and Venezuela. Mining took a rare place in the global spotlight in October 2010, as a billion people tuned in to watch 33 miners be rescued from the collapsed San Jose mine in Chile, after they spent a harrowing 69 days 631 metres underground. TNM

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era OF THE

megamerger (2005–2015)

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•2005–2015• Jan 30, 2006

Barrick Gold’s quest to become the world’s biggest gold miner is all but complete with the acquisition of an 81% stake in rival Placer Dome. Barrick said that as of Jan. 19, some 358 million Placer shares had been tendered to its US$10.4-billion offer, or 81% of Placer’s common shares. The acquisition is accompanied by a change of control at Placer, where chief executive Peter Tomsett has resigned; Barrick president and CEO Greg Wilkins is his replacement. Eight other Placer officers also left. The three holdovers from the old Placer board include the company’s former chairman, Robert Franklin.

Yukon prospector at his discovery outcrop.

March 6, 2006

Malartic, Que. — When James Norrie sent his steam drills up the trails from the railway line in the 1930s, the only exploration model in his head was the wildcatter’s principle: drill it and see. Seventy years later you still have to drill, but ideas about where gold can be found in the Abitibi are much more plentiful. What marks out a difference in Malartic-area explorers Northern Star Mining and Osisko Exploration is that they are following some new trails into the bush, cut by a different understanding of the local geology. At the old Malartic Goldfields property — which produced about 1.7 million oz. gold between 1939 and 1965 — Northern Star has drilled off new mineralization well south of old stopes, confirming a suspicion that the mineralized structures there are part of a much wider deformation zone. Meanwhile, about 9 km west at Canadian Malartic — a million-ounce producer between 1935 and 1965 — Osisko has reinterpreted the deposit as a porphyry system, with porphyry-style low grades and large tonnages.

June 26, 2006

How do you top “great” drill results that have included 8.4 grams gold per tonne uncut across 205 metres from a new grassroots discovery in the jungle of southeastern Ecuador? You follow it up with an even better 189 metres averaging 24 grams uncut. Aurelian Resources leaped to over $18 per share in heavy trading after announcing results from hole 57, its latest on the Fruta del Norte (FDN) gold discovery on its wholly owned La Zarza concession, part of the Condor project. “This represents one of the best drill holes we have seen in a very long time frame (past decade),” wrote Graeme Currie of Canaccord Adams in a recent update. “The FDN discovery is very quickly taking on world-class potential, with significant higher-grade areas.” The Toronto-based junior has so far announced results for nine holes that have tested a 400-metre strike length of the new discovery, which remains wide open.

Oct. 23, 2006

While Rob McEwen and Ian Telfer are two of mining’s most successful CEOs, you couldn’t get more pronounced differences in personality and style, with McEwen, the obsessive maverick, embodying the clas-

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sic value investor and Telfer, the breezy dealmaker, epitomizing the wily momentum investor. As a result, the smiles and champagne that characterized the merger between McEwen’s Goldcorp and Telfer’s Wheaton River Minerals only 18 months ago have already been replaced by cheap shots and rancour as the two publicly feud over Goldcorp’s future. Things came to a head on Aug. 31, when Goldcorp, now led by CEO Telfer, offered 1.69 shares for every Glamis Gold share — a whopping 32.7% premium at the moment it was announced. It valued Glamis at US$8.4 billion at the time of the offer, or US$6.4 billion at press time.

Nov. 12, 2007

Noront Resources grabbed investors’ attention in September when it announced results from its first hole at Double Eagle in northern Ontario, which cut 36 metres assaying 1.53% copper, 1.84% nickel, 1.04 grams platinum per tonne and 2.87 grams palladium starting from 56 metres below surface. That hole lies directly south of the claims joint ventured to WSR Gold. Both claims sit within what is being dubbed the “ring of fire” — a large basin-like structure in which mineralization seems to be occurring in clusters. “This could really be the next major resource area in Canada,” Nemis says of the area. “I was there for two to three years, always looking for a VMS deposit, and I was looking for magnetic lows — everyone was looking for lows,” Nemis says. That first hole was based on a target registering a magnetic high, and now Nemis believes such highs hold the key to unlocking mineralization.

Jan. 7, 2008

The battle over the Navidad silver project, in Argentina, is finally at an end. The Supreme Court of Canada has dismissed IMA Exploration’s leave to appeal a previous lower court decision. Aquiline Resources is now officially the sole owner of the project, though the company has controlled Navidad since October 2006. IMA staked Navidad in southern Chubut province, in late 2000. At the time, IMA and Aquiline were in talks with Newmont Mining THE NORTHERN MINER 100TH ANNIVERSARY | 85

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•2005–2015• about the sale of the nearby Calcatreu project, and both were given stream-sediment sample data for the surrounding area controlled by confidentiality agreements. Aquiline bought Calcatreu in 2002 and on examining the sample data a short while later, it decided to stake the area around what is now Navidad, but found IMA already there. Aquiline sued IMA in March 2004, charging IMA staked Navidad based on confidential data. An updated resource estimate for Navidad shows that the project has grown into one of the largest silver deposits in the world.

Jan 7, 2008

Long-ignored uranium spent the first half of the year as the surprising new darling of the metals sector. After trading for many years around US$10 per lb. U3O8, spot uranium prices began a relentless climb in mid-2003, closing out 2006 at US$72. But that was just a taste of things to come, as prices kept on climbing, peaking at an all-time record US$136 per lb. in June 2007, and looks to be closing out 2007 at US$90 per lb. The growing number of uranium junior explorers spent the year

scrambling to find experienced staff and revive oftentimes marginal uranium deposits drilled out during the last boom in the 1970s.

Jan. 7, 2008

For the many reasons you’ve been reading about all year, including the latest subprime mortgage woes, the U.S. dollar’s decline translated into strong rises in all sorts of commodities, from oil and agricultural products, to gold, nickel, zinc and platinum. The loonie also took flight, up from a trough of US62¢ in 2002 to a 1-day peak of US$1.10 in November 2007.

Jan. 5, 2009

The fall in commodity prices since mid-year has been sudden and devastating for many miners. Gold held up best of all, hitting its alltime nominal high of US$1,023.50 per oz. in a London AM fix on March 17, and reaching a low for 2008 of US$692.50 on Oct. 24. Oil cracked US$100 per barrel for the first time ever on Feb. 19, touched an all-time high of US$147.27 per barrel on July 11, and traded below US$40 at presstime. The collapse in base metals prices and the credit crunch led to a flurry of mine closures around the world, particularly in zinc and nickel, and brought to an end the mega-mergers of recent years, with BHP Billiton withdrawing its bid for Rio Tinto, Vale walking away from Xstrata, and Xstrata saying goodbye to Lonmin. Teck’s B shares touched a new low of $3.35 before rebounding and settling above $4 — a tenth of the share price in early September. Teck’s high-profile belly flop stems from the US$9.8 billion in debt the company took on in order to buy the assets of Fording Canadian Coal Trust. The deal was cooked up in July, when Teck thought the sky was the limit for metallurgical coal prices.

Jan. 19, 2010

The week was highlighted by a large, spontaneous act of charity on the part of about 400 executives at some of Canada’s biggest and most successful mining and mining-related companies. These executives opened their wallets to help with Haitian earthquake relief, raising $900,000 from individuals during the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame’s induction ceremony, held before a crowd of 800 in Toronto on Jan. 14. — little more than 48 hours after the deadly quake to destroyed much of Port-au-Prince and its environs. Hall of Fame director Ed Thompson came up with the idea a day before the event and ran it past the Pierre Lassonde, master of ceremonies and

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•2005–2015• chairman of Franco-Nevada Corp., deciding the funds could be handled by the Red Cross. They also decided to keep the donations capped at $25,000 per person and together kicked in the first $50,000. Thompson said the money raised at the event could have been higher, but some execs had already made donations earlier in the day.

June 7, 2010

The end of the Inco era became official in the last week of May, as Vale announced it is killing the name “Vale Inco” for its nickel business. It will now simply be called “Vale.” Rio de Janeiro-based iron ore powerhouse Companhia Vale do Rio Doce acquired Inco in late 2006, and created a new nickel business named “Vale Inco” and headquartered in Toronto. The CVRD mothership then rebranded itself as “Vale” in a global marketing campaign in 2007.

Aug. 9, 2010

For the past five years, Nautilus Minerals has been working to bring undersea mining from the theoretical realm to the practical. Now, there are only two things standing between Nautilus and opening the new frontier of deep-sea mining: a mining licence for its Solwara 1 seafloor massive sulphide project from the government of Papua New Guinea, and the cash to proceed with its unique plan. Many investors dismissed Nautilus as a quirky curiosity when it had its initial public offering on the TSX Venture Exchange in May 2006, despite a partnership at the time with Placer Dome, which picked up the early exploration costs at Solwara 1. But some analysts say the company could commission the first-ever subsea hardrock mining operation as soon as mid-2013.

ing with excitement and joy.” However, the miners may still remain underground for up to another four months, as rescuers work on drilling a hole wide enough to lift the miners back to the surface. The narrow

METALS FOR THE FUTURE TANTALUM

NIOBIUM AND RARE EARTH ELEMENTS

Aug. 30, 2010

After 17 days trapped 688 metres below the surface, a group of Chilean miners announced they are alive by attaching a note to a probe that was pulled to the surface through a freshly drilled narrow shaft, as reported in the Globe and Mail. “All 33 of us are fine in the shelter,” read the note in large red letters. Following the good news, Chilean President Sebastian Piñera said: “Today all of Chile is crywww.northernminer.com

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Be a part of the team

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R&R in Mongolia.

hole will be used to send food, water and oxygen down to the miners as they await rescue in the San Esteban gold-copper mine, 850 km north of the capital, Santiago.

Oct. 18, 2010

The amazing story of 33 miners rescued from the San Jose copper-gold mine near Copiapo, Chile, captured the hearts of millions around the world since the mine workings around them collapsed on Aug. 5, leaving them stranded 631 metres underground. After 69 days underground, the men emerged in great shape considering the circumstances, walking confidently, smiling their biggest smiles and hugging tearful family members. Until Oct. 12, no one in a modern mining scenario had ever been trapped underground for so long and emerged alive. The story struck a chord that resonated with people around the world. Copiapo and the mine site were converged upon by more than 1,200 reporters, photographers and camera operators from more than 300 media organizations from 40 nations. The rescuers’ activities and miners’ personal life stories were reported upon in great detail, and the final days’ activities were streamed live on the internet, with some 1 billion people worldwide tuning in to watch the final moments of the rescue on TV. At presstime, 19 of the 33 miners had been brought to surface. Throughout the ordeal the men kept a logbook — originally started to let loved ones know how they lived their last hours — that will now form the basis of a book they will write together. The drilling company Center Rock of Berlin, Pa., was called upon by the Chileans for its advanced drill bits and drilling technology. Center Rock CEO and founder Brandon Fisher was onsite to direct the drilling efforts, the first task of which was the drilling of a 12-inchwide pilot hole into the area where the men were trapped. Drilled at an incline in order to avoid drilling through existing mine workings, the first small-bore hole, which reached the men 17 days into their ordeal, was used to pass nourishment, medicine and other life essentials below, including messages from loved ones and video cameras for return messages. Center Rock then drilled a much wider diameter rescue borehole,

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which was lined with 56 metres of protective steel. Center Rock, which built the drills used in the rescue, describes them as using a pneumatic-driven air-compression drilling system that used four hammers instead of just one. It called the Chilean mine rescue a “difficult project in extremely hard rock.” The rescue had more than just a feeling of a space expedition to it: Chilean authorities also welcomed a contribution by NASA engineers from the U.S. to work with the Chilean navy to build a 1-man steel rescue pod from scratch. Dubbed the “Phoenix” and painted in the colours of the Chilean flag, the capsule weighs 420 kg and is 1.9 metres long. It comes with an oxygen supply, communications equipment, an escape hatch and retractable wheels. It has been lowered and raised through the escape shaft using a giant crane mounted on a nearby hill.

Nov. 22, 2010

BHP Billiton has formally withdrawn its hostile, US$40-billion cash offer for Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan after the Canadian government rejected it two weeks earlier on the grounds that it did not provide a “net benefit” to Canadians, heeding the loud protestations of Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall and a groundswell of opposition in the province. Of paramount concern to the provincial government was BHP Billiton’s indifference to the long-established Canpotex export-sales cartel, and the company’s willingness to drive down potash prices as it maximized mine output. Clearly, BHP Billiton execs spent too much time with their noses in their spreadsheets and were unable to grasp the enduring strength of Prairie populism in Canada. And BHP paid a full price for its lesson, tallying US$350 million in transaction costs for the failed bid.

Dec. 27, 2010

Kicked off thanks to years of diligent work by Yukon prospectors and our new Mining Persons of the Year, Shawn Ryan and Cathy Wood, the new Yukon gold rush is now in full swing. While Kinross bought leading Yukon explorer Underworld Resources and its White Gold deposit in March for $138 million, that was only the start of the excitement, with compelling new gold results coming from Kaminak Gold’s Coffee project and Atac Resources’ Rau project.

March 21, 2011

On March 11, in a defining day of the new decade, residents of Japan’s northeast coastal region were hit by a deadly triple whammy of a 9.0-magnitude earthquake, a resulting tsunami with waves reaching 10 metres in height, and a growing threat of nuclear meltdown in damaged civilian reactors. The earthquake, Japan’s largest on record, happened at 2:46 p.m. local time, with the hypocenter reported to be at a depth of 24.4 km, off the Oshika peninsula on the east coast of Tohoku. With widespread power outages, severe damage to local infrastructure, and a nuclear crisis that grows worse by the day, a full reckoning of the damage and www.northernminer.com

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•2005–2015• death toll — likely above 10,000 — is not yet available. The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant located 240 km northeast of Tokyo was critically damaged, and technicians have been scrambling to maintain control over fission activity in four overheating reactors. There have already been several explosions and fires at the reactors, with military helicopters dropping seawater onto the reactors to cool them.

May 2, 2011

Barrick Gold surprised the market on April 25, with a friendly, all-cash $8.15-per-share bid for Equinox, zooming past Minmetals Resources’ hostile $7-per-share all-cash bid, which was tabled in early April and then terminated on April 27. Minmetals’ bid, in turn, had killed Equinox’s hostile bid for Lundin Mining, which had once planned its own merger of equals with Inmet Mining. If successful in its $7.3-billion bid, Barrick will get Equinox’s wholly owned, three-year-old, low-grade Lumwana copper mine in Zambia. Barrick’s bid for Equinox has a rushed feel to it, and perhaps it was in order to be ready for the AGM. Barrick personnel were only on the ground at Lumwana for a couple of days and didn’t even visit Equinox’s little-known Jabal Sayid in Saudi Arabia.

Nov. 14, 2011

The decisive, US$5-billion exit of the storied Oppenheimer family from its 40% controlling interest in De Beers brings to a close a century of history in the global diamond trade. The family’s unique position atop the lucrative and secretive diamond world got its start with Ernest Oppenheimer, a middle-class German Jew who travelled to South Africa in 1902 to work as a diamond buyer in the emerging diamond fields of Kimberley. By 1927, he had gained control of Cecil Rhodes’ nearly 40-year-old De Beers diamond company, further building up the company until his death in 1957. By mid-century, De Beers had established a worldwide reputation for cornering the diamond market using ruthlessness, price-fixing and anti-trust behaviour. But De Beers always countered, with some justification, that diamonds are a luxury good no one needs, and so any monopolistic behaviour was of little importance in the grand scheme of things. Harry’s son Nicky Oppenheimer also took to the diamond trade with gusto, becoming deputy chairman of Anglo American in 1983 and De Beers’ chairman in 1998. Nicky ushered in De Beers’ modern “kinder, gentler” era, settling long-standing anti-trust issues that kept the company out of the U.S., dealing with “blood diamonds” issues and launching the company’s now extensive retail operations. The next generation of Oppenheimers after Nicky never showed much interest in the high-stakes and harsh game of mining.

Oct. 29, 2010

Canadians are widely known as some of the best miners in the world, and the Chinese as some of the worst. Just how bad? Since the turn of the millennium, more than 50,000 miners have been killed in China’s www.northernminer.com

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coal mines — easily the highest death count in global mining. And so the emerging plan to bring Chinese miners to work in B.C.’s coal fields doesn’t quite pass the smell test. There are $1.4 billion in Chinese investments due to be made in B.C.’s coal sector, with four new mines set to be developed in the province. But these investors are planning to bring up to 2,000 low-paid Chinese miners to carry out most of the work. Let’s be clear: this would be well-heeled Chinese investors putting up the money and serving as lead managers, migrant Chinese workers flown in to do the heavy lifting, with the coal product shipped to China and corporate profits staying in Chinese hands. It’s hard to see how Canadians could benefit any less from the exploitation of mineral resources under their feet. Some 200 Chinese are due to arrive in B.C. in the coming weeks to take a 100,000-tonne bulk sample at HD Mining International’s Murray River longwall underground coal mine project, part of the larger Tumbler Ridge project in eastern B.C.

July 2, 2012

Have you ever felt the whole game was rigged? Well, there’s some justification for that feeling, as the month of June closed out with British banking giant Barclays doing the perp walk and agreeing to pay out a relatively miniscule US$453 million in penalties to U.S. and U.K. regulators to settle their joint investigation into whether Barclays employees were manipulating the iconic London interbank offered rate (Libor). Specifically, the CFTC finds that Barclays attempted to manipulate and made false reports concerning two global benchmark interest rates, Libor and Euribor (the analogous interest-rate benchmark used by the European Banking Federation with reference to the eurozone), “on numerous occasions and sometimes on a daily basis” over a fouryear period, starting as early as 2005.

Dec. 31, 2012

THE PHILIPPINES — John Felderhof looks much thinner than when we first met at the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada convention in 2010.

John Felderhof in the Philippines in 2012. Photo By Trish Saywell

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Credit: Rio Tinto.

Diavik miners underground.

$500,000 to recruit on-site project manager John Zhang to help him conceal the fraud and obstruct any investigators. After the scam broke, Southwestern went back and recalculated the gold resource at Boka, and it fell to just 337,000 oz. gold, down from 3 million oz. John Paterson also attempted suicide in 1999 over bad drill results prior to the Boka project, and has battled severe clinical depression throughout his adult life. After the Boka scam exploded, he was similarly institutionalized for clinical depression and anxiety attacks.

Jan. 23, 2013 The weight loss could be from the heat and humidity of the Philippines, where the 72-year-old lives in a house with a single beaten-up air conditioner in his bedroom. Or it could be the stress of writing his memoirs — a project he started about a year ago at the urging of a handful of his nieces and nephews. When we met in June he was about to start the Bre-X chapter — which he has left for last. Felderhof says it has taken him 15 years to figure out how the salting was done at the Busang deposit in the Indonesian jungle of Borneo (using gravity concentrate and not alluvial gold, contrary to published technical reports), and he believes he knows which of the company’s employees were behind it, but he refuses to make their names public. “I know what it’s like to be accused,” he tells me. “It’s easy to accuse and destroy a person’s life, but I have no proof, so I won’t accuse them. I’m not going to point fingers at anybody.” What he will say, and has said repeatedly since the beginning, is that Mike de Guzman — Bre-X’s chief geologist whose body was reportedly found in a swampy field after plunging from a helicopter — had nothing to do with it. And he still believes there is an economic gold deposit at Busang 1, and possibly in parts of Busang 2. “Busang is going to be mined by a company one day,” he says. “There’s no doubt about it.”

Jan. 23, 2013

Another sad chapter was written in the life of John Paterson in mid-January, with the 62-year-old disgraced founder and former CEO of Southwestern Resources receiving a sentence of six years in prison for creating hundreds of bogus assay results at the company’s Boka gold project in China’s Yunnan province, resulting in a string of 25 misleading press releases. Paterson’s scam helped make Southwestern one of the darlings of the Toronto Stock Exchange in the mid-2000s, propelling the company to a $200-million market capitalization before company directors finally caught wind of the scheme in July 2007 and the stock plunged. The courts determined Paterson was responsible for a loss of $55.5 million to Southwestern Resources and at least $205 million to investors in a deception that started small, but escalated over time. Of 446 assay results at Boka, Paterson had inflated 433, and then spent

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London-based mining giant Rio Tinto is haunted by the ghosts of past acquisitions, with the largest culprit being its US$38-billion takeover of Montreal-based aluminum major Alcan in 2007. On Jan. 17, the world’s second-largest mining company announced a US$14-billion writedown, including US$10 billion stemming from its ailing aluminum business, and US$3 billion related to Mozambique coal assets. During its 2011 annual report the company already tabled a US$8.9-billion impairment charge relating to its troubled Alcan assets, which contributed to a 59% drop in yearly net earnings and prompted Albanese to forfeit his annual bonus.

Dec. 18, 2013

Is Pretium sitting pretty? The Robert Quartermain-led junior provided the biggest emotional rollercoaster ride for investors this year, with exhilaration over its rapidly expanding high-grade reserves at its Brucejack gold project in B.C. giving way in October to nagging doubts and a plummeting share price over the quality of the reserve estimate after the resignation from the project of widely respected consultants Strathcona Mineral Services. Shares nearly doubled in November as a bulk sample turned out to be chock full of gold.

Jan. 1, 2014

How do you turn US$35 billion into less than US$400 million in 18 months? You have to spend a lot of money, to be sure. For starters, how about paying US$1.3 billion for an asset that other players were only willing to bid half that much or less to acquire? Then repeat that sort of maneuver several times over. Second, borrow money to develop those assets, leaving you with debt to service. Third, make sure the assets fail to live up to the value you promised. Finally, ensure most of your multi-billion dollar valuation stems from shares in companies making these economic errors. That way, when the market realizes the gambles have gone awry, those shares plummet in value, erasing your billions and forcing you to firesale everything from coal mines to luxury yachts. Welcome to the world of Eike Batista. Two short years ago Batista was the embodiment of Brazil’s burgeoning dreams, a diversified businessman climbing the ranks of the world’s wealthiest and building Brazil’s dreams of natural resource riches as he went. He was a poster boy for the new Brazil, until his track record of overpromising and underdelivering caught up with him. TNM www.northernminer.com

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Remembrance

The author at Batu Hijau.

Misadventures in Western Sumbawa, Indonesia

for me, as he agreed to take me to the mine community to have my nose inspected. Once the required paperwork was completed, we were waved through the heavily guarded gates and entered an enclave of American-style suburbia nestled in the hills of a lush tropical landscape. The services were impeccable: gymnasiums, schools, restaurants and even a nine-hole public golf course. But one hidden road leading from the community taunted me — it gave access to the second-largest, open-pit copper-gold mine in Indonesia. I was itching to see it. I begged my escort and was granted a visitor’s permit to tour the mine facilities. We carved our way through the jungle and ascended into the heart of the operation — only it wasn’t beating, it had flatlined. As far as the eye could see were massive haul trucks parked along the pit’s perimeter. Nothing moved in the hole. No noise came from the processing plant. We navigated through the empty facilities and our voices echoed as my escort spoke of how Newmont was busy working towards new agreements with the Indonesian government. As I returned home that day on my scooter, I imagined what life would be like for the local communities without the mine. Would malaria return? Would the pristine roads and irrigation facilities fall into disrepair? Would the local economy survive? In all my years of exploring Indonesia, I have never seen a community so well-supported in its infrastructure and services — thanks to the American-based miner. But life rebounds as it always does, and I was thankful for it. Newmont’s operations soon returned to normal. My nose healed. And considering I’m the new staff writer for The Northern Miner, my application had been well received. TNM

By Lesley Stokes

The Northern Miner was looking for a new staff writer, and having spent the past decade working as a geologist by trade and a writer by interest, I jumped at the opportunity. As part of my application, I submitted an article discussing the 2014 changes in Indonesian mining law. I had become familiar with the subject while travelling, somewhat aimlessly, around the island of Western Sumbawa with a broken nose. I’d been injured in a surfing accident. The locals told me of a doctor who worked at Newmont’s “tambang batu hijau” — the greenrock mine — who might be able to help. At the time, Indonesia’s government had just introduced export restrictions on all concentrate and Newmont enacted force majeure at its operations in the country. But I hopped on my scooter and searched for the doctor anyway. Misfortune followed. My scooter skidded out in two feet of bull dust along a staggering cattle trail in the middle of nowhere. Then, serendipitously, one of the managers from the mine happened to be walking the path and offered to give me a hand. I told him of my situation, and explained that I was a geologist and not just a bleached-blonde surfer covered in dirt. He must’ve felt sorry

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Idled trucks at Batu Hijau.

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Touching down in the Sahara

The author in Burkina Faso.

By Anthony Vaccaro

Burkina Faso’s Sahel is a dry, barren place, with nary a soul to see for miles and miles. I know this because on a long helicopter flight heading north of the capital Ouagadougou, we saw nothing below us except for scrub bush, sand and the occasional string of hills and low mountains. The vast stretch of land that surrounded the Bomboré deposit, now owned by Orezone Resources, was particularly desolate — until I noticed two faint lines, inching forward in the same direction as our helicopter. We were heading towards a lonely hill that stood maybe 50 feet high. As the pilot lowered the chopper towards the target, the two lines came into focus and we could see that they were, in fact, made up of people — children, teenagers and young adults — running in a single file towards the very hill that we were headed. Why they were doing so and where they were coming from wasn’t clear, but I remember the project geologist smiling and appearing relaxed, so I tried to follow his lead. The helicopter landed amidst the dusty rotor wash, and by the time the whirly bird’s top had stopped and the red dust settled, the first of the two lines emerged from over the ridge of the hill. Big smiles and warm eyes told me this was nothing to fear. We were part of a celebration. The welcoming committee was here, but what had motivated them to run out to us? Spontaneous enthusiasm for a new arrival? The miracle of helicopter flight? The chance to see a foreign

A tough business

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— Anthony Vaccaro was a Staff Writer at The Northern Miner from 2006 to 2014, and is the current Publisher.

By Ian Bickis

The mining industry is notoriously volatile, and while working at the Miner I got to experience just how extreme those swings can be. It was early 2010 when I joined on, and markets were booming. Money was pouring back into the industry after the crash of ’08 and everyone was spending on exploration, and promotion. One junior explorer decided to fly me first class to their project in the Philippines to see their early stage project.

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face? Those could all have been factors, but more than anything, we came to realize as we shook hands, high-fived and greeted one another that we were all happy because a gold mine could be on the horizon. Out of this very earth, a modern mine could one day turn rock into currency and provide jobs and a better way of life. The idea was intoxicating. We all hear stories about relationships with locals going bad, but less often are we privy to the shining moments where our industry is intimately in step with the hopes and aspirations of farflung communities. TNM

Another company flew me and a dozen analysts down to Mexico on a private jet, which prompted one of the analysts to declare that we’re definitely in a bull market. Most memorably, I spent a week touring much of the lower Yukon in a helicopter during the peak of the second Klondike rush in 2011. I saw a dozen projects, and everyone was drilling and spending as fast as they could, hoping to get in on the excitement. Everything from nails to bedding was hard to find in the Yukon that summer, and the potential seemed endless. But by then the markets were already unravelling, and before long the party was largely over. By the next year, exploration programs were significantly smaller, and nails were probably a lot easier to find. Mining’s a tough business, full of boom and bust. But that’s what made covering it for The Northern Miner so interesting. TNM — Ian Bickis was a Staff Writer in 2010–11.

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All access By Alisha Hiyate

One of the best things about being a Northern Miner staff writer is the access that it gets you. I often get to interview incredible and fascinating people — and there are many in the mining industry, a group known for their sense of adventure, entrepreneurship and determination. Sometimes, even the most famous and successful of them are surprisingly open and accessible. When I approached industry legend Pierre Lassonde for an interview for Diamonds in Canada a couple of years ago, he actually invited me to talk with him at his Toronto home! Mr. Lassonde — who answered his own door, by the way — graciously spent an hour with me in his beautiful home office/two-storey library. He even showed me some of his most treasured possessions, including a first-edition English translation of De Re Metallica — “On the Nature of Metals.” The 16th century Latin tome on mining and metallurgy tome was translated by his own hero, mining engineer and U.S. President Herbert Hoover and his wife, geologist and Latinist Lou Henry Hoover. Sometimes access has meant seeing remote, beautiful places that most people wouldn’t normally get a chance to see. I’ve been to Canada’s Arctic twice to visit diamond projects: both times it was

Memories By Trish Saywell

From my first site visit, which took me to Portugal to see one of Colt Resources’ gold properties (with a stop in the port wine district of the Douro River valley, where I sampled 100-year-old brandy and stood knee-deep in crushed grapes), to my most recent, an IBA signing ceremony between the Cree Nation of Nemaska in Quebec and Nemaska Lithium, southeast of James Bay (where I sampled moose stew, another first), my trips on Northern Miner business rarely have been dull. Some of the high notes have included: flying over the Gobi Desert after a mining conference in Ulaanbaatar to see Oyu Tolgoi; cradling my first gold bar at Jinshan Gold’s CSH 217 mine in China’s remote Inner Mongolia autonomous region, (and arm-twisted into toasts with Baijiu, a local spirit that is 40–60% alcohol by volume); and touring the site of the greatest gold rush in recent history at the Serra Pelada deposit in Brazil. Also noteworthy: overcoming my entirely rational fear of helicopters during a two-hour flight from Cusco to see Dynacorp’s Tumipampa project in Peru. The unforgettable views of the Andes, from an altitude of 4,600 metres, however, more than made up for the pit in my stomach. In the “hair-raising” vein, would be a trip to the Philippines to see Medusa Mining’s Co-O mine in southeastern Mindanao. Thoughts of being kidnapped by Abu Sayyaf guerrillas, communist rebels or the

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•2005–2015• in August, and both times, it was windy and cold enough that a winter coat was necessary (although that’s probably only news to “southerners”). I’ve also flown over the majestic, seemingly never-ending Andes Mountains on a chartered jet, driven hours into the mountains and stayed overnight in a remote exIn the Arctic. ploration camp in Argentina. I got a taste of what life in camp is like — including satellite TV (tuned perpetually to soccer matches, of course); hearty, meat-heavy meals (they served me enough food in one meal to last for three days), and a co-ed shower tent (the brisk wind that kept the entrance to the tent flapping open seemed to cancel out any benefits of warming up with a hot shower.) My bed chamber for the night was a tent that got so cold that even with seven or eight blankets and comforters piled on top of me, two heaters going (I’m not sure they worked, come to think of it) and a toque on my head, the air was still … refreshing. The bright sunshine and spectacular mountain scenery the next day, however, more than made up for any discomfort. TNM — Alisha Hiyate has been an editorial staff member, including Editor of Mining Markets and Diamonds in Canada, since 2005.

Moro Islamic Liberation Front, paled in comparison to the three-hour, white-knuckle road trip on a two-lane highway that I was convinced would end in either a car crash or running over the locals, who kept perilously close to the road’s edge. (The ride from the Davao airport kicked off with comments from a fund manager that this was one trip his partner had urged him to cancel...) Topping off the tour was my first brush with claustrophobia, as I descended in a shovel packed with two or three other people, including the mine manager, who stood one rung above me, and who tried to dispel my mounting panic with questions about life in Toronto. But if I had to pick my favourite trip, it would have to be spending three days with mining legend Ross Beaty, David Strang (a former middle-distance runner for Great Britain in the 1996 Olympic Games), and some of the industry’s top analysts, touring the Taca Taca copper project in Argentina’s Salta province. I’ll never forget Beaty’s boundless energy, enthusiasm and charisma, the beauty of the landscape, or the enormity of the project. — Trish Saywell has been a Senior Staff Writer with The Miner since 2007.

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The author panning for gold in the Yukon.

In the middle of Madagascar By Matthew Keevil

The Government of Ontario recognizes the proud history of mining in Ontario and is pleased to congratulate The Northern Miner on more than a century of publishing. For one hundred years readers have followed Ontario’s many exciting mineral discoveries in the pages of The Northern Miner. Cheers to another one hundred years of great reporting and wealth and growth in Ontario’s mining sector.

MICHAEL GRAVELLE, Minister of Northern Development and Mines

It’s been a whirlwind three-year run at The Northern Miner that has included exotic trips to the Spanish coastline, Peruvian Andes and African savanna. But my most memorable assignment was likely to Madagascar back in mid-2012. I was a greenhorn writer at the time, having been employed by the paper for around six months before embarking on the trip. At first I was a bit baffled as to why the opportunity fell to me when a number of the senior staff had the opportunity to take the assignment. It wasn’t until the flight itinerary landed on my desk that things became clear. The trip was highlighted by a marathon, 28-hour series of flights that featured a 12-hour layover in Frankfurt, Germany. Needless to say, the members of our tour group arrived fairly blurry-eyed and majorly out of sorts. The experience was even more unique due to the political climate in Madagascar at the time. The country was wrestling with the after-effects of a coup d’état in 2009. Government infrastructure and civil programs were still pretty much non-existent. I specifically recall our local tour guide informing me to “run” if we ended up in any sort of automotive incident on the way in from the airport. Madagascar was under the control of an “interim government” led by coup leader Andry Rajoelina, who locals referred to as the “former disc jockey.” Most foreign embassies in the capital of Antananarivo remained shuttered, while dark smoke from tire fires drifted through the air around city hall, stinging my eyes. The capital city still bustled with activity, however, and life continued unabated. It’s an extremely profound occurrence that those who haven’t been to conflict areas often don’t understand. We spent the night in Antananarivo before hopping a small, fixed-wing aircraft for a three-hour flight due south to the middle of nowhere. There was no government presence in that part of the country at the time, and the two young guys with AK-47s who checked our IDs upon arrival were apparently members of a local paramilitary group. It was the type of trip that highlights how mining capital can really impact the living conditions in remote areas of developing nations. The company had set up a cellphone tower and running water. A rough shanty town had sprung up at broken angles around the exploration camp, with many of the nomadic communities drawn to the area. There were still signs of the hunter-gather communities, as people with rawhide shields and long spears would pop up from seemingly nowhere despite a lack of bush cover or topographic relief. But as tends to be true with most developing countries, everyone was extremely kind. We received a performance from the local school choir, and drove along rows of Madagascar’s famous baobab trees. It was one of those experiences that really comes only once in a lifetime. But those are the pleasures of working at The Northern Miner: travelling to exotic places, documenting grassroots work globally and interacting with people around the world that you’d likely never meet otherwise. TNM — Matthew Keevil has been a Staff Writer since 2012.

94 | THE NORTHERN MINER 100TH ANNIVERSARY

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•2005–2015•

Remembrance

From Cusco to Istanbul By Salma Tarikh

Some of my highlights of working at The Northern Miner, apart from working with an amazing team of colleagues, include a few of the site visits I’ve been on over the years. That starts with my first site visit to Argentina in 2010 at Lithium Americas’ Cauchari lithium brine project in the Puna Plateau. The night before visiting the property, we stayed in a hotel in the town of Purmamarca that offered a great view of the surrounding mountains and served a variety of llama dishes. After sampling llama for dinner, I unpacked and realized I made the mistake of packing for the warmer Buenos Aires weather rather than for the significantly cooler and elevated Puna region. Early the next morning, wearing practically all the clothing I had brought with me, I joined the Lithium Americas team for the two-hour trek up the winding mountain roads to the Cauchari project. The property, covering miles and miles of sun-baked red clay, comprised a large part of two adjacent salars, Cauchari and Olaroz. What’s interesting about this project is that it was overlooked for decades, as it resembled a clay-filled basin. It wasn’t until the company — which at first searched for potash in 2007 — drilled the basin and discovered that hidden below 50 metres of clay, there was a salar with sandy units that contained lithium. This January, Lithium Americas reported it was ready to export 6 tonnes of lithium compound produced from a demonstration plant at Cauchari to Korea for final processing and packaging. In 2012, I had a chance to see Machu Picchu before visiting the Cerro Ccopane iron ore project near Cusco, Peru. The drive to Cerro Ccopane, sitting at an elevation of up to 4,600 metres, took six hours from Cusco, but provided an opportunity to take in the remote beauty of the Peruvian Andes.

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Chapter 8 TNM 100th 2005to2015.indd 95

Also that year, I visited Portugal to see two of Colt Resources’ projects, located on the opposite ends of the country. Despite losing my luggage at the airport and wearing the same clothes for nearIn Peru. ly three days, the trip was memorable, as it was the first time I visited an exploration project that had a vineyard, winery, convent and a variety of fruit trees on the property. Other notable events include taking a private jet from Denver to Agnico Eagle Mines’ La India gold mine in northern Mexico in 2013, where I spent part of a day on a secluded beach, before taking a helicopter tour over ad theartwork Sierra02_Layout Madre Mountains and theAM 1 15-04-14 9:51

property. The La India mine reached commercial production in February 2014, and from 2015 to 2017 could churn out 95,000 oz. gold a year. Later that year, I toured Eurasian Minerals’ Akarca gold-silver project, Balya royalty property and Alankoy gold-copper project in northwestern Turkey. Eurasian recently released year-end exploration results from the Akarca project, including an oxide drill intercept of 58.5 metres grading 2 gram gold per tonne. After the site visit, I spent a few days exploring the many attractions and restaurants in Istanbul. The only downside of that trip was that I came home more than a few pounds heavier. TNM — Salma Tarikh has been a Staff Writer since Page 2010. 1

Imperial celebrates the start-up of the Red Chris Mine in BC

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15-04-27 10:55 AM

•Photo Gallery• Clockwise from top left: South Africa, 1975; Canadian potash, 1970; Bougainville Copper apprentice, 1968; Port Cartier, Que., 1968; Sudbury miners, 1974; Inco board, 1964.

96 | THE NORTHERN MINER 100TH ANNIVERSARY

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•Photo Gallery• Clockwise from top left: Trail, B.C., 1925; Craelius drill, 1887; Swaziland miners, 1960; Sudbury potman, 1942; Niagara hydro tunnel, 1953; Atlas Copco fan drill at Kiruna, 1972.

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Trusted provider of global mining & exploration intelligence since 1915.

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Commentary

Rainforest reclamation done right in Brazil $3.50 • april 29-may 5, 2013 • VOl. 99, NO. 11 • SiNCE 1915

Barrick investors revolt against $11.9m bonus

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By Gwen Preston in vancouver

THE WORLD’S FIRST SATELLITE MESSENGER. www.findmespot.com and trish saywell in toronto

In the last year Barrick Gold (ABX-T, ABX-N) has announced a multi-billion dollar overrun at its flagship development project in Chile, MEXICO taken a $3.8-billion charge on a highly criticized acquisition, changed its chief executive officer share price sliced in 4 20 and seen its 11-15 half. So it was no great surprise that eight funds who are invested in the gold major formally protested the company’s decision to offer cochairman John Thornton an “unprecedented” signing bonus of $11.9 million. The group of seven Canadian pension funds and one international investment fund say the signing bonus, which would bring Thornton’s total compensation for 2012 to $17 million, is a Canadian record. “This compensation is inconsistent with the governance principle of pay-for-performance and is therefore disproportionand sets a troubling precethe past-producing pit at Paramount Gold and Silver’s Sleeper gold-silver project in ate Nevada. dent in Canadian capital marSleeper was one of the lowest-cost Sleeper lies within western kets,” thethegroup said in a Site ViSit gold mines in the world, and Para- reaches of the northern Nevada statement. Asthea Slumgroup these funds mount believes the old mine has a rift, specifically along By matthew keevil bering Hills, which consists of WINNEMUCCA, NEV. — For Nev- robust future. collectively manage over $900 Sipping coffee inside Para- Mesozoic meta-sedimentary rocks ada-based explorer Paramount the Auld Lang group and Gold and Silver (PZG-T, PZG-X), mount’s headquarters in the min- of billion inSyne assets.

Commentary

Rainforest reclamation done right in Brazil

El Tigre Silver

TSX-V:RRI

Pages

Newstrike

Knowledge is Golden™ www.rivres.com

11-15

Capital’s

Ana Paula

gold project

in Mexico’s

Four muy silver stockcaliente picks

Sees a bright future in old tailings

Guerrero

gold belt.

How Mexico mantle as a top reclaimed its mining nation April 29-May

BY ALISHA

To discern HIYATE the winners crowded Price target: field from holding of companiesa (Campbell) $3.55 (Doulis); mines projects and $4.25 Rating: in Mexico, development Miner The Northern SpeculativeOutperform asked (Doulis); lysts, Nicholastwo mining buy (Campbell) Recent price: naccord Campbell ana- ing $2.11; 52-week range: of CaDoulis Genuity and $1.55 to tradof $2.96 Christos for their Stonecap Both analysts Securities, country. best stock picked nior SilverCrest bets in resilient the While SVLC-X) juthe analysts’ Mines have all as one (SVL-V, price Mexico-focused of their because been lowered targets favourite The company stocks. recently metals of the drop heap-leach in precious prices, put the they believe picks will open-pit, Santa mine in their northwest Elena gold-silver companies.outperform state into their peer Mexico’s production Sonora This year, in July 2011. churn out SilverCrest expects 2.4 million silver (579,000 equivalent to oz. silver oz. gold) oz. and 33,500 per oz. at a cash cost silver, of US$8.50 with production creasing to 4.6 million inSee STOCK equivalent

5, 2013

NEWSTRIKE

CAPITAL

SilverCrest

Mines Analysts: Christos cap Securities; Doulis, StoneNicholas Canaccord Campbell, Genuity

$3.50 • april 29-may 5, 2013 • VOl. 99, NO. 11 • SiNCE 1915

Barrick investors revolt against $11.9m bonus By Gwen Preston in vancouver and trish saywell in toronto

In the last year Barrick Gold (ABX-T, ABX-N) has announced a multi-billion dollar overrun at its flagship development project in Chile, taken a $3.8-billion charge on a highly criticized acquisition, changed its chief executive officer and seen its share price sliced in half. So it was no great surprise that eight funds who are invested in the gold major formally protested the company’s decision to offer cochairman John Thornton an “unprecedented” signing bonus of $11.9 million. The group of seven Canadian pension funds and one international investment fund say the signing bonus, which would bring Thornton’s total compensation for 2012 to $17 million, is a Canadian record. “This compensation is inconsistent with the governance principle of pay-for-performance and is therefore disproportionate and sets a troubling precedent in Canadian capital markets,” the group said in a statement. As a group these funds collectively manage over $900 billion in assets.

Edgewater uncovers gold at Corcoesto in Galicia

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LA CORUÑA, GALICIA, SPAIN — It has been three years since Vancouver-based Edgewater Exploration (EDW-V) bought the Corcoesto gold project from Lundin Mining (LUN-T) and embarked upon a journey in northwesternmost Spain’s La Coruna province, where mining history dates back more than 4,000 years. Now Edgewater stands poised on the development threshold, having pulled together a gold re-

source in excess of 1 million oz. and putting the finishing touches on a feasibility study slated for release in the fourth quarter. Corcoesto lies at the end of a leisurely drive on well-maintained roads, 36 km southwest of the port city of La Coruna. The route traces alongside the deep blue of the Atlantic Ocean, and through seasonal sandy beach communities marked by the colourful hulls of fishing crafts that sway on the tide. Edgewater’s project sits around 10 km inland from any local agricultural or tourist activities, amongst green hills bristling with thin-trunked eucalyptus trees. “We have excellent government and community support,” comments vice-president exploration Greg Smith during the drive, pointing out that a local mayoral candidate recently won with a platform

Endeavour Bradford Silver’s shares his Cooke recipe

PICKS,

Page 14

A drill site at MAG Silver’s flagship Juanicipio silver property BY in Zacatecas “There VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN is state, Mexico. BY GWEN litically, support for VANCOUVER PRESTON more exploration the geology mining poMAG SILVER the people CEO of — any other is excellent, Endeavour spending EndeavourAs founder are incredibly and the and T, EXK-N), president try in 2012,Latin American than is food Silver ton are friendly likely a big part Godfrey WalWith theseis delicious.” according a company Bradford Cooke(EDR- Earlier counbased to come. producers SNL Metals to Halifaxsuperlatives, sulting that At least leads this year, of the answer. small, Group, geologist Miner — Fortuna three defunct has turned Mines Economics The Northern capturing consums up sat down two mines Peter (FVI-T, Mexican total about 6% an idea into with Cooke Capstone FSM-N), Silver in Mexicowhy he is still Megaw metalsworldwide silver of how erations large and profitable of the to a rural ton, working after in just per; and Mining (CS-T),silver; kid from get cades, explorationnon-ferrous op- izingAlta., became eight With the $21.5 billion. Hindespite almost four a leader cop(AEM-T, Agnico-Eagle budget Mexico’s purchase years. derelated derachieving in revitalAEM-N), of said violence frequent drugMines Mining silver sector. of a third protests. companies gold — and they are mine, un- ‘I plans to pected Endeavour have Megaw, anti-mining repeat got hooked’ panding considering to invest were International potentially the process president Mexico their In 1976, $7.6 billion ex- ects in 2012, — and Exploration Development of what Cooke in Mexico.portfolio of exsilver majorattract the attention in was of a B.Sc. projthey spentmore than double and co-founderand The attraction with its MAG in geology in his final year of a and high-potential ing to Silver growing in versity. result output is an expert (MAG-T, of ber. the Mexican 2010, accordis partly The marketsat Queen’s of So how land packages. Uniologists mining Recent the prices. strong precious on MexicanMVG-X), did Endeavour were hot. and has were in chammergers such success? Mexico tions been instrumental Ge- discovery near-term metal such demand geology and acquisitop s achieve ( is the Bradford il includedM & A ) a c t world’s job offers grads were flooded that posits Cooke of several cracked v e r p r o d u in the Primero i v i t y h a s and at Christmas. cer (P-T, PPP-N) the list there. silver with producing Mining’s of top-10, a n d de- Resources His colleagues takeover See ENDEAVOUR, goldfirst time countries must agree of Cerro in the (CJO-V) d’Alene Page 13 for the industry in 2011. prices and is worth that the security N) bestingMines (CDM-T,Coeur year, have fallen Although it. Mexico risk First CDEsilver hard (FR-T, attracted US$30 was tradingthis AG-N) Majestic Silver in Silver US$1,657per oz. and at (OK-V). its bid for Orko gold per oz. And more 2012, compared at the end at M&A of to US$17 See MEXICO, and

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in a Rising

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there’s a lot to be said for making something old new again. In mid2010 the company picked up the past-producing Sleeper gold-silver mine, which operated from 1986 to 1996, and produced roughly 1.65 million oz. gold and 2.3 million oz. silver during its mine life. At the time

ing town of Winnemucca, vicepresident of exploration Glen van Treek, who joined Paramount after a 10-year stint with Teck Resources, stands to present his geological model and outline Paramount’s exploration strategy going forward.

B2Gold hits new gold at developing Otjikoto mine By Gwen Preston

VANCOUVER — With its list of gold mines having just climbed from two to three following the takeover of CGA Mining and with a fourth mine under construction, B2Gold (BTO-T) expects to churn out more than half a million ounces of gold annually by 2015. It’s a feat that is earning the company growing praise from an industry happy to see an acquisition-based success story amidst so many overpriced and failed deals. And in its latest news B2Gold reports its drills are hitting highgrade gold at a satellite zone at Otjikoto — the mine under construction in Namibia — that could well add years and ounces to the operation. Otjikoto sits 300 km north of the Namibian capital of Windhoek. The project, which B2Gold holds a 92% stake in through a partnership with Namibian EVI Gold, is home

to 29.4 million probable tonnes of open-pit reserves grading 1.42 grams gold per tonne. Open-pit mine construction at Otjikoto kicked off in January, with initial gold production expected in late 2014. Otjikoto’s current reserves support 112,000 oz. gold production annually for 12 years. However, B2Gold believes there is much more gold to discover at the burgeoning mine. To that end, the company has already completed 47 drill holes at the project this year. Thirteen of those holes were collared within the planned Otjikoto open pit to better delineate certain ore shoots, while another six holes were drilled to inform civil engineering studies. The other 28 holes all probed Wolfshag, a known but little-explored gold zone, northeast of the planned pit. Using historic data and a few drill

Cretaceous granitic intrusions. Mineralization at Sleeper falls into four main categories, including: early quartz-pyrite-marcasite stockwork, intermediate silicapyrite-marcasite cemented breccias tied to zones of structural weakness, late-stage zones of highgrade banded quartz veins and post-alluvial, gold-silver deposits in Pliocene gravels. During previous operations all four types of mineralization were mined, with high-grade material passing through a milling circuit, while lower-grade ore was processed via heap leaching. What made Sleeper so strong initially

Edgewater uncovers gold at Corcoesto in Galicia Site ViSit

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Four muy silver stockcaliente picks Guerrero

PICKS,

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How Mexico mantle as a top reclaimed its mining nation April 29-May

5, 2013

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CAPITAL

11-15

SilverCrest

Mines Analysts: Christos cap Securities; Doulis, StoneNicholas Canaccord Campbell, Genuity

Endeavour Bradford Silver’s shares his Cooke recipe

Knowledge is Golden™ www.rivres.com

gold belt.

BY ALISHA

To discern HIYATE the winners crowded Price target: from field holding of companiesa (Campbell) $3.55 (Doulis); mines projects and $4.25 Rating: in Mexico, development Miner The Northern SpeculativeOutperform asked (Doulis); lysts, Nicholastwo mining buy (Campbell) Recent price: naccord Campbell ana- ing $2.11; 52-week range: of CaDoulis Genuity and $1.55 to tradof $2.96 Christos for their Stonecap Both analysts Securities, country. best stock picked nior SilverCrest bets in resilient the SVLC-X) While juthe analysts’ Mines have all as one (SVL-V, price Mexico-focused of their because been lowered targets favourite The company stocks. recently metals of the drop heap-leach in precious prices, put the they believe picks will open-pit, Santa mine in northwest Elena gold-silver their companies.outperform state into their peer Mexico’s production Sonora This year, in July 2011. churn out SilverCrest expects 2.4 million silver (579,000 equivalent to oz. silver oz. gold) oz. and 33,500 per oz. at a cash cost silver, of US$8.50 with production creasing to 4.6 million inequivalent See STOCK

Page 14

A drill site at MAG Silver’s flagship Juanicipio silver property BY in Zacatecas “There VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN is state, Mexico. BY GWEN litically, support for VANCOUVER PRESTON more exploration the geology mining poMAG SILVER the people CEO of — any other is excellent, Endeavour spending EndeavourAs founder are incredibly and the and T, EXK-N), president try in 2012,Latin American than is food Silver ton are friendly likely a big part Godfrey WalWith theseis delicious.” according a company Bradford Cooke(EDR- Earlier counbased to come. producers SNL Metals to Halifaxsuperlatives, sulting that At least leads this year, of the answer. small, Group, geologist Miner — Fortuna three defunct has turned Mines Economics The Northern concapturing sums up sat down two mines Peter Mexican (FVI-T, total an idea into with Cooke Capstone FSM-N), Silver in Mexicowhy he is still Megaw metalsworldwideabout 6% of the silver of how erations large and profitable to a rural ton, working after in just per; and Mining (CS-T),silver; kid from get cades, explorationnon-ferrous op- izingAlta., became eight With the $21.5 billion. Hindespite almost four a leader cop(AEM-T, Agnico-Eagle budget Mexico’s purchase years. derelated derachieving in revitalAEM-N), of said violence frequent drugMines Mining silver sector. of a third protests. and companies gold — they are mine, un- ‘I plans to pected Endeavour have Megaw, anti-mining repeat got hooked’ panding considering to invest were International potentially the process president Mexico their In 1976, $7.6 billion ex- ects in 2012, — and Exploration Development of what Cooke in Mexico.portfolio of exsilver majorattract the attention in was of a B.Sc. projthey spentmore than double and co-founderand The attraction with its MAG in geology in his final year of a and high-potential ing to Silver growing in versity. result output is an expert (MAG-T, of ber. the Mexican 2010, accordis partly The marketsat Queen’s Uniof So how land packages. ologists mining Recent the prices. strong precious on MexicanMVG-X), did Endeavour were hot. and has were in such success? chammergers Mexico tions been instrumental Genear-term metal such demand geology and acquisitop s achieve ( is the discovery Bradford il includedM & A ) a c t world’s job offers grads were flooded that posits Cooke of several cracked v e r p r o d u in the Primero i v i t y h a s and at Christmas. cer (P-T, PPP-N) the list there. with silver producing Mining’s of top-10, a n d de- Resources His colleagues See ENDEAVOUR, takeover goldfirst time countries of Cerro must agree in the (CJO-V) d’Alene Page 13 for the industry in 2011. prices and is worth that the security N) bestingMines (CDM-T,Coeur year, have fallen Although it. Mexico risk First CDEsilver hard (FR-T, attracted US$30 was tradingthis AG-N) Majestic Silver in Silver US$1,657per oz. and at (OK-V). its bid for Orko gold And more per oz. 2012, compared at the end at M&A of to US$17 See MEXICO, and

paramount orchestrates a golden revival at Sleeper An Evolution

in High-Grade

Silver

ExcellonResources.com

Mexico’s

• Market Excellon

TNM April

29 2013

Issue.indd

Yet to be

Resources

Inc. 20 Victoria

Street,

Valued

Suite 900,

Ag; 3.11%

Discovery

Toronto,

Ontario,

Highest

La Platosa

Grade

Mine

Silver

Pb; 1.69%

in a Rising

Canada

Producer

Zn; 0.075 g/t Au Silver Market

M5C 2N8

TSX:EXN

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Contact:

Brendan Cahill 416 info@excellonresources.com 364 1130

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Commentary

Rainforest reclamation done right in Brazil $3.50 • april 29-may 5, 2013 • VOl. 99, NO. 11 • SiNCE 1915

THE WORLD’S FIRST SATELLITE MESSENGER. www.findmespot.com

El Tigre Silver 4

Sees a bright future in old tailings

Pages Newstrike

MEXICO

11-15

Capital’s

Ana Paula

gold project

in Mexico’s

Four muy silver stockcaliente picks Guerrero

PICKS,

TSX-V:RRI

How Mexico mantle as a top reclaimed its mining nation April 29-May

5, 2013

NEWSTRIKE

CAPITAL

11-15

SilverCrest

Mines Analysts: Christos cap Securities; Doulis, StoneNicholas Canaccord Campbell, Genuity

Endeavour Bradford Silver’s shares his Cooke recipe

Knowledge is Golden™ www.rivres.com

gold belt.

BY ALISHA

To discern HIYATE the winners crowded Price target: field from holding of companiesa (Campbell) $3.55 (Doulis); mines projects and development $4.25 Rating: Miner in Mexico, The SpeculativeOutperform asked Northern (Doulis); lysts, Nicholastwo mining buy (Campbell) Recent price: naccord Campbell ana- ing $2.11; 52-week range: of CaDoulis Genuity and $1.55 to tradof $2.96 Christos for their Stonecap Both analysts Securities, country. best stock picked nior SilverCrest bets in resilient the SVLC-X) While juthe analysts’ Mines have all as one (SVL-V, price Mexico-focused of their because been lowered targets favourite The company stocks. recently metals of the drop heap-leach in precious prices, put the they believe picks will open-pit, Santa mine in northwest Elena gold-silver their companies.outperform state into their peer Mexico’s production Sonora This year, in July 2011. churn out SilverCrest expects 2.4 million silver (579,000 equivalent to oz. silver oz. gold) oz. and 33,500 per oz. at a cash cost silver, of US$8.50 with production creasing to 4.6 million inSee STOCK equivalent

Page 14

A drill site at MAG Silver’s flagship Juanicipio silver property BY in Zacatecas “There VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN is state, Mexico. BY GWEN litically, support for VANCOUVER PRESTON more exploration the geology mining poMAG SILVER the people CEO of — is excellent, any other Endeavour spending EndeavourAs founder are incredibly and the and T, EXK-N), president try in 2012,Latin American than Silver food ton are friendly is likely (EDRWith theseis delicious.” a big part Godfrey Wala company Bradford according counbased to come. Cooke Earlier producers SNL Metals to Halifaxsuperlatives, sulting that leads At least this year, of the answer. small, Group, geologist Miner — Fortuna defunct has turned three Mines Economics The Northern concapturing sums up sat down two mines Peter Mexican (FVI-T, total into an idea with Cooke Capstone worldwideabout 6% of FSM-N), Silver in Mexicowhy he is still Megaw silver of erations large and profitable metals the to get ton, Alta., how a rural kid working in just after per; and Mining (CS-T),silver; explorationnon-ferrous cades, eight opfrom Hinbecame With the $21.5 billion. despite almost four izing Mexico’s a leader cop(AEM-T, Agnico-Eagle budget purchase years. derelated derachieving in revitalof said violence frequent drugAEM-N), of a third silver sector. Mining Mines protests. and companies mine, plans to gold — un- ‘I they are pected Endeavour Megaw, anti-mining have repeat got hooked’ panding considering to invest International were potentially the process president Mexico their In 1976, $7.6 billion ex- ects in — and Exploration Development of Cooke in Mexico.portfolio of exsilver majorattract the attention what they 2012, more in was of a B.Sc. projthan double and co-founderand with its The attraction MAG spent in geology in his final year of a versity. and high-potential Silver growing ing in result output is an expert (MAG-T, of ber. to the Mexican 2010, accordThe marketsat Queen’s is partly of So how land packages. Uniologists mining Recent the on MexicanMVG-X), prices. strong precious did Endeavour were hot. and has were in such success? chammergers Mexico tions been instrumental Genear-term such demand metal geology and acquisitop s achieve (M&A discovery is the Bradford il ) act world’s job offers grads were flooded that posits Cooke of several in the included Primero cracked v e r p r o d u ivity and at Christmas. cer ha (P-T, PPP-N) the there. with silver Mining’ss producing list of top-10, a n d deHis colleagues See ENDEAVOUR, Resources takeover goldfirst time countries must agree of Cerro in the (CJO-V) Page 13 for the industry d’Alene in 2011. prices and is worth that the security N) bestingMines (CDM-T,Coeur year, have fallen Although it. Mexico risk First Majestic CDEsilver hard attracted (FR-T, AG-N) U S$ 30 was tradingthis Silver in Silver US$1,657p er oz . an (OK-V). its bid for Orko d go ld at And more per oz. 2012, compared at the end at M&A of to US$17 See MEXICO, and

Barrick investors revolt against $11.9m bonus

paramount orchestrates a golden revival at Sleeper An Evolution

in High-Grade

Silver

ExcellonResources.com

Mexico’s

• Market Excellon

TNM April

29 2013

Issue.indd

Yet to be

Resources

Inc. 20 Victoria

Street,

Valued

Suite 900,

Ag; 3.11%

Discovery

Toronto,

Ontario,

Highest

Page 12

La Platosa

Grade

Mine

Silver

Pb; 1.69%

in a Rising

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Producer

Zn; 0.075 g/t Au Silver Market

M5C 2N8

TSX:EXN

Contact:

Brendan Cahill 416 info@excellonresources.com 364 1130

13-04-24

5:28 PM

But Barrick founder and chairman Peter Munk vigorously defended Barrick’s decision at the company’s annual general meeting on April 24. “I convinced the board,” he told the standing-room-only crowd at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. “If you want to give anyone hell, give it to me.” Munk argued that the new paradigm of mounting resource nationalism requires a brand-new approach to government contacts. And he said that the challenges of protecting the company’s assets — “90% of which, to the tune of $40 billion, are in 23 Photo by MAtthew Keevil different countries” — meant that the past-producing pit at Paramount Gold and Silver’s Sleeper gold-silver project in Nevada. the company needed someone of Thornton’s exceptional calibre and “unique credentials,” leverSleeper was one of the lowest-cost Sleeper lies within the western Site ViSit age and access to some of the gold mines in the world, and Para- reaches of the northern Nevada world’s most important power mount believes the old mine has a rift, specifically along the SlumBy matthew keevil brokers. bering Hills, which consists of WINNEMUCCA, NEV. — For Nev- robust future. “We believe that pay should be ada-based explorer Paramount Sipping coffee inside Para- Mesozoic meta-sedimentary rocks tailored to achievements, that pay Gold and Silver (PZG-T, PZG-X), mount’s headquarters in the min- of the Auld Lang Syne group and should come after performance,” there’s a lot to be said for making ing town of Winnemucca, vice- Cretaceous granitic intrusions. Munk said. “It was hard to have something old new again. In mid- president of exploration Glen van Mineralization at Sleeper falls into someone paid on performance if he 2010 the company picked up the Treek, who joined Paramount four main categories, including: would not have been able to join to past-producing Sleeper gold-silver after a 10-year stint with Teck Re- early quartz-pyrite-marcasite perform. So we had a bit of a mine, which operated from 1986 to sources, stands to present his geo- stockwork, intermediate silicachicken and an egg situation . . . 1996, and produced roughly 1.65 mil- logical model and outline Para- pyrite-marcasite cemented brecsometimes you to do things Keevil lion oz. gold and 2.3 million oz. silver mount’s exploration strategy cias tied to zones of structural Photo byhave MAtthew weakness, late-stage zones of highduring its mine life. At the time going forward. See Barrick, Page 3 grade banded quartz veins and post-alluvial, gold-silver deposits in Pliocene gravels. During previous operations all four types of mineralization were mined, with high-grade material passing through a milling circuit, while lower-grade ore was processed via heap leaching. What made Sleeper so strong initially to 29.4 million probable tonnes of See ParaMount, Page 2 source in excess of 1 million oz. and By Gwen Preston Site ViSit putting the finishing touches on a VANCOUVER — With its list of open-pit reserves grading 1.42 feasibility study slated for release gold mines having just climbed grams gold per tonne. Open-pit PM40069240 – PAP Registration #09263 in the fourth quarter. from two to three following the mine construction at Otjikoto Corcoesto lies at the end of a lei- takeover of CGA Mining and with kicked off in January, with initial surely drive on well-maintained a fourth mine under construction, gold production expected in late roads, 36 km southwest of the port B2Gold (BTO-T) expects to churn 2014. Otjikoto’s current reserves supcity of La Coruna. out more than half a million ounces The route traces alongside the of gold annually by 2015. It’s a feat port 112,000 oz. gold production deep blue of the Atlantic Ocean, that is earning the company grow- annually for 12 years. However, and through seasonal sandy beach ing praise from an industry happy B2Gold believes there is much communities marked by the to see an acquisition-based success more gold to discover at the burBy matthew keevil colourful hulls of fishing crafts story amidst so many overpriced geoning mine. To that end, the company has already completed 47 and failed deals. LA CORUÑA, GALICIA, SPAIN — that sway on the tide. Edgewater’s project sits around And in its latest news B2Gold drill holes at the project this year. It has been three years since VanThirteen of those holes were colcouver-based Edgewater Explor- 10 km inland from any local agri- reports its drills are hitting highation (EDW-V) bought the cultural or tourist activities, grade gold at a satellite zone at lared within the planned Otjikoto Corcoesto gold project from Lun- amongst green hills bristling with Otjikoto — the mine under con- open pit to better delineate certain struction in Namibia — that could ore shoots, while another six holes din Mining (LUN-T) and em- thin-trunked eucalyptus trees. “We have excellent government well add years and ounces to the were drilled to inform civil engibarked upon a journey in northneering studies. The other 28 holes westernmost Spain’s La Coruna and community support,” com- operation. Otjikoto sits 300 km north of the all probed Wolfshag, a known but province, where mining history ments vice-president exploration dates back more than 4,000 years. Greg Smith during the drive, point- Namibian capital of Windhoek. little-explored gold zone, northNow Edgewater stands poised ing out that a local mayoral candi- The project, which B2Gold holds a east of the planned pit. Using historic data and a few drill on the development threshold, date recently won with a platform 92% stake in through a partnership with Namibian EVI Gold, is home having pulled together a gold reSee EdGEwatEr, Page 18 See B2GoLd, Page 3 By Gwen Preston in vancouver and trish saywell in toronto

the past-producing pit at Paramount Gold and Silver’s Sleeper gold-silver project in Nevada.

Edgewater uncovers gold at Corcoesto

Site ViSit By matthew keevil

WINNEMUCCA, NEV. — For Nevada-based explorer Paramount Gold and Silver (PZG-T, PZG-X), there’s a lot to be said for making something old new again. In mid2010 the company picked up the past-producing Sleeper gold-silver mine, which operated from 1986 to 1996, and produced roughly 1.65 million oz. gold and 2.3 million oz. silver during its mine life. At the time

Sleeper was one of the lowest-cost gold mines in the world, and Paramount believes the old mine has a robust future. Sipping coffee inside Paramount’s headquarters in the mining town of Winnemucca, vicepresident of exploration Glen van Treek, who joined Paramount after a 10-year stint with Teck Resources, stands to present his geological model and outline Paramount’s exploration strategy going forward.

B2Gold hits new gold at developing Otjikoto mine By Gwen Preston

B2Gold hits new gold at developing

in Galicia Sleeper lies within the western Otjikoto mine reaches of the northern Nevada rift, specifically along the Slumbering Hills, which consists of Mesozoic meta-sedimentary rocks of the Auld Lang Syne group and Cretaceous granitic intrusions. Mineralization at Sleeper falls into four main categories, including: early quartz-pyrite-marcasite stockwork, intermediate silicapyrite-marcasite cemented breccias tied to zones of structural weakness, late-stage zones of highgrade banded quartz veins and post-alluvial, gold-silver deposits in Pliocene gravels. During previous operations all four types of mineralization were mined, with high-grade material passing through a milling circuit, while lower-grade ore was processed via heap leaching. What made Sleeper so strong initially

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Barrick investors revolt against $11.9m bonus By Gwen Preston in vancouver and trish saywell in toronto

Site ViSit

By matthew keevil

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Sees a bright future in old tailings

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To discern HIYATE the winners crowded Price target: from field holding of companiesa (Campbell) $3.55 (Doulis); mines projects and development $4.25 Rating: Miner in Mexico, The SpeculativeOutperform asked Northern (Doulis); lysts, Nicholastwo mining buy (Campbell) Recent price: naccord Campbell ana- ing $2.11; 52-week range: of CaDoulis Genuity and $1.55 to tradof $2.96 Christos for their Stonecap Securities, Both analysts country. best stock picked nior SilverCrest bets in resilient the While SVLC-X) juthe analysts’ Mines have all as one (SVL-V, price Mexico-focused of their because been lowered targets favourite The company stocks. recently metals of the drop heap-leach in precious prices, put the picks will they believe open-pit, Santa mine in their northwest Elena gold-silver companies.outperform state into their peer Mexico’s production Sonora This year, in July 2011. churn out SilverCrest expects 2.4 million silver (579,000 equivalent to oz. silver oz. gold) oz. and 33,500 per oz. at a cash cost silver, of US$8.50 with production creasing to 4.6 million inSee STOCK equivalent

Page 14

A drill site at MAG Silver’s flagship Juanicipio silver property BY in Zacatecas “There VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN is state, Mexico. BY GWEN litically, support for VANCOUVER PRESTON the geology mining po- more exploration MAG SILVER the people CEO of — is excellent, any other Endeavour spending EndeavourAs founder are incredibly and the Latin American than and T, EXK-N), president food Silver ton are friendly try in 2012, is likely a big part Godfrey WalWith theseis delicious.” according a company Bradford Cooke(EDR- Earlier counbased to come. producers SNL Metals to Halifaxsuperlatives, sulting that At least leads this year, of the answer. small, Group, geologist Miner — Fortuna three defunct has turned Mines Economics The Northern capturing consums up sat down two mines Peter (FVI-T, Mexican total about 6% an idea into with Cooke Capstone FSM-N), Silver in Mexicowhy he is still Megaw metalsworldwide silver of how erations large and profitable of the to a rural ton, working in just after per; and Mining (CS-T),silver; explorationnon-ferrous kid from get cades, op- izingAlta., became eight With the $21.5 billion. Hindespite almost four copa leader (AEM-T, Agnico-Eagle budget Mexico’s purchase years. derelated derachieving in revitalAEM-N), of said Mines violence frequent drugMining silver sector. of a third protests. companies gold — and they are mine, unplans to ‘I got hooked’ have Endeavour Megaw, anti-mining pected to invest repeat panding considering were International potentially the process president Mexico their $7.6 billion ex- ects In 1976, in 2012, — and Exploration Development of what in Mexico.portfolio of exCooke silver majorattract the attention in was of a B.Sc. projthey spentmore than double and co-founderand The attraction with its MAG of a in geology in his final year and high-potential ing to growing Silver in versity. result output is an expert (MAG-T, is partly of ber. the Mexican 2010, accordThe marketsat Queen’s of So how land packages. Uniologists mining Recent the prices. strong precious on MexicanMVG-X), did Endeavour were hot. and has were in chammergers such success? Mexico tions been instrumental Ge- discovery metal near-term geology such demand and acquisitop s achieve ( is the Bradford il includedM & A ) a c t world’s job offers grads were flooded that posits Cooke of several cracked v e r p r o d u in the Primero i v i t y h a s and at Christmas. cer (P-T, PPP-N) the list there. silver with producing Mining’s of top-10, a n d de- Resources His colleagues takeover See ENDEAVOUR, goldfirst time countries of Cerro must agree in the (CJO-V) d’Alene for the Page 13 in 2011. industry prices and is worth that the security Although have N) bestingMines (CDM-T,Coeur y it. Mexico ear, silver fallen hard risk First CDE(FR-T, attracted this US$3 0 was t AG-N) Majestic Silver rading in pe Silver US$1,657 r o z. a nd at (OK-V). its bid for Orko gold And more per oz. 2012, compared at the end at M&A of to US$17 See MEXICO, and

paramount orchestrates a golden revival at Sleeper An Evolution

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ExcellonResources.com

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Page 12

La Platosa

Grade

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Pb; 1.69%

in a Rising

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Producer

Zn; 0.075 g/t Au Silver Market

M5C 2N8

TSX:EXN

Contact:

Brendan Cahill 416 info@excellonresources.com 364 1130

13-04-24

5:28 PM

But Barrick founder and chairman Peter Munk vigorously defended Barrick’s decision at the company’s annual general meeting on April 24. “I convinced the board

the past-producing pit at Paramount Gold and Silver’s Sleeper gold-silver project in Nevada.

Site ViSit By matthew keevil

Edgewater uncovers gold at Corcoesto in Galicia source in excess of 1 million oz. and putting the finishing touches on a feasibility study slated for release in the fourth quarter. Corcoesto lies at the end of a leisurely drive on well-maintained roads, 36 km southwest of the port city of La Coruna. The route traces alongside the deep blue of the Atlantic Ocean, and through seasonal sandy beach communities marked by the colourful hulls of fishing crafts that sway on the tide. Edgewater’s project sits around 10 km inland from any local agricultural or tourist activities, amongst green hills bristling with thin-trunked eucalyptus trees. “We have excellent government and community support,” comments vice-president exploration Greg Smith during the drive, pointing out that a local mayoral candidate recently won with a platform See EdGEwatEr, Page 18

B2Gold hits new gold at developing Otjikoto mine By Gwen Preston

Photo by MAtthew Keevil

Sleeper lies within the western reaches of the northern Nevada rift, specifically along the Slumbering Hills, which consists of Mesozoic meta-sedimentary rocks of the Auld Lang Syne group and Cretaceous granitic intrusions. Mineralization at Sleeper falls into four main categories, including: early quartz-pyrite-marcasite stockwork, intermediate silicapyrite-marcasite cemented breccias tied to zones of structural weakness, late-stage zones of highgrade banded quartz veins and post-alluvial, gold-silver deposits in Pliocene gravels. During previous operations all four types of mineralization were mined, with high-grade material passing through a milling circuit, while lower-grade ore was processed via heap leaching. What made Sleeper so strong initially See ParaMount, Page 2 PM40069240 – PAP Registration #09263

See B2GoLd, Page 3

See ParaMount, Page 2 PM40069240 – PAP Registration #09263

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