OBITUARY — Paul Penna

Paul Penna, chief executive officer and president of Agnico-Eagle Mines, has died. He was 73.

The head of Agnico-Eagle for 33 years, Mr. Penna began his career as a seller of penny-stock on Bay Street in Toronto. Not long afterwards, he and his brother struck out on their own, in the mid-1960s, to gain control of Agnico Mines, a struggling producer of silver and cobalt near Cobalt, Ont.

Over the next 25 years, the company produced 30 million oz. silver, helping finance Mr. Penna’s expanding business ventures. A proponent of homegrown mining projects, Mr. Penna was interested exclusively in the silver and gold camps of northern Ontario and Quebec.

Toward that end, Agnico, in 1972, merged with Eagle Gold Mines, which held properties near Joutel, Que. Mr. Penna then bought 32 additional claims adjacent to those properties, mortgaging his house to do so.

The Cobalt-area silver mines closed in the 1980s, whereupon Mr. Penna acquired Dumagami Mines, a low-price, open-pit gold operation in Quebec. He was a firm believer that mines are made, not found, and proved the validity of that adage by turning Dumagami (since renamed LaRonde) into the jewel of Agnico-Eagle’s crown. Since 1988, when Dumagami entered production, Agnico-Eagle has outlined seven additional deposits, and reserves are nearing 30 million tons. Production last year reached 167,00s0 oz., and Agnico-Eagle also realized its lowest operating costs ever, bottoming out at US$152 per oz.

Agnico-Eagle also holds interests in several other mining and exploration companies, including Mentor Exploration & Development, Silver Century Explorations, Sudbury Contact Mines and Legacy Explorations.

Mr. Penna’s savvy in elevating Agnico-Eagle to low-cost gold producer from small-scale silver producer earned him the honor of being named Mining Man of the Year by The Northern Miner in 1985. He was also the first recipient of the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada’s Developers Award in 1985, and was inducted into the Mining Hall of Fame in January 1996.

Mr. Penna is survived by Lorraine, his wife of 43 years.