LETTERS TO THE EDITOR An American’s farewell to mines

I am not renewing my subscription after more than 20 years as my “ore” zone is depleted, and no “new exploration” is anticipated. No new financing, either. I’ve always been interested in the mining scene you cover though I really don’t know why. It has been like loving the wrong woman; one knows it, but can’t stop.

Sure, the cream of investments does come to the top: Placer Dome and other great firms. But the true glamor belongs to the juniors trying to promote their existence, to finance, make a buck and become viable. It’s what happens in that struggle that a Vancouver exchange can stir up the dreams of gold, silver, oil, uranium and loving “speculators” like me.

But it has been fun. The 2-cent dividends, the 1-for-10 stock splits. The amalgamations, the infrequent “big strikes,” the court trials, claim jumping, dust-ridden trails and those ever ebullient “core” reports from the engineering department of a “Misty Rose,” or “Treasure Glo,” or some other romantic mine’s name, named by poets, I’m sure.

So goodbye Canadian stocks. I’ll always treasure my Maple Leaf memories and the continuing mystique of Canada’s mines.

Goodbye to the articles you’ll print on Cobalt and Haileybury, Ont.; the north of your great Northern Miner.

As Robert Service said: “Yet it isn’t the gold that I’m wanting so much as just finding the gold.” William Feldhus Lyons, Kan.