PDAC honors five with awards

The Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) has named Neil Hillhouse “Prospector of the Year.”

Other award winners, who will be honored at the March 7 banquet of this year’s PDAC convention, are:

* Margaret Witte — Viola R. MacMillan Developer’s award

* John Sullivan — Distinguished Service award

* Walter Segsworth — Distinguished Service award (posthumous) * Hudson Bay Mining & Smelting — Environmental award.

The PDAC described Hillhouse, who has visited deposits the world over, as the “perfect example of the professional world prospector.”

Hillhouse spent 26 years with Placer Dome and is currently president of Orvana Minerals, a junior with gold prospects in Montana, Bolivia and Jamaica. The PDAC’s Developer’s award was re-named to honor a former president of the association, Viola MacMillan, who died last year. Witte, this year’s recipient, is president of Royal Oak Mines.

A metallurgist who was named Mining Man of the Year by The Northern Miner for 1991, Witte heads a fast-growing, gold mining company. Acquisitions in recent years have included the Pamour and Giant Yellowknife operations, the Hope Brook mine, and the Colomac project in the Northwest Territories which is set to re-open this spring.

Sullivan, a native of Australia, is being honored for his farsightedness in the use of regional, geochemical surveys and for his leadership of a team responsible for numerous discoveries.

Segsworth, who died in 1945, is being recognized for the role he played in the formation (in 1932) of the Ontario Prospectors and Developers Association, which became the PDAC. A Toronto native and a graduate of the Michigan College of Mines, Segsworth became a pioneer of the Cobalt mining district.

HudBay, which mines and processes metals — primarily copper, zinc, gold and silver — in northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan, is being honored for the commitment it is showing to protecting the natural environment. Last year, the company opened a modern zinc plant to replace one constructed in the 1920s. It has also developed a program of decommissioning for old mining properties; to date, four sites have been completely decommissioned and seven others are being worked on. HudBay is also involved in a venture to grow plants underground, at its Flin Flon copper mine, where a subterranean “greenhouse” is reported to be flourishing.