Canadian Mining Hall Of Fame Inducts 7 More

The Canadian Mining Hall of Fame will induct four new individual members and a group nominee at its 22nd annual dinner and induction ceremony to be held Jan. 14, 2010, in Toronto.

This year’s inductees are Graham Farquharson, Victor Wansbrough, Peter Brown, Hugo Dummett and the Timmins mine finders/builders Benjamin Hollinger, Sandy McIntyre and John (Jack) Wilson.

Graham Farquharson (b. 1940)

Graham Farquharson has earned a reputation as one of the industry’s most prominent consultants through a commitment to integrity, fairness, technical excellence and risk-taking throughout his career.

In addition to being one of the founders of consulting firm Strathcona Mineral Services in 1974, he also developed and managed Canada’s first mine north of the Arctic Circle, and debunked an Indonesian property once believed to host the world’s largest gold deposit.

Born in Timmins, Ont., to a mining engineer, Farquharson spent his early years in the mining towns of Val-d’Or and Malartic, in Quebec, and Bathurst, N. B., before attending the University of New Brunswick. In 1960, his mining career began at a copper mine near Tilt Cove, Nfld. He went on to work throughout Canada. After graduating as a mining engineer from the University of Alberta in 1964, he spent four years in Africa at Kilembe in Uganda and Tsumeb in Namibia. Following an MBA at Queen’s University, he joined Watts, Griffis and McOuat before founding Strathcona.

Soon after, he was hired by Mineral Resources International of Calgary to assess the Nanisivik lead-zinc deposit on Baffin Island. Despite bone-chilling temperatures, long, dark winters, permafrost extending more than 600 metres into the Earth’s crust and thick sea ice preventing ship access for all but two months, Farquharson told the owners that he thought the deposit could be developed. After being rebuffed by major mining companies, financial support was secured from Germany, the Netherlands and the Canadian government. Nanisivik began commercial production in 1976, and under Strathcona’s management, operated successfully as one of the world’s lowest-cost zinc mines for more than 22 years. His work in the establishment of a mining community near Nanisivik (the last mining town built in Canada) where three languages were spoken, Inuktitut, French and English was vital to the success of the project.

In the 1980s, he served for three years as chairman of the independent committee overseeing the Page-Williams mine in Ontario’s Hemlo Camp until an ownership dispute was settled by the courts. He acted as an expert witness in a variety of cases, including the Bre-X Minerals scandal, where Strathacona’s audit proved conclusively that Busang was a fraud, with placer gold introduced into pulverized core after drilling.

Regulators and the industry responded by establishing new rigorous guidelines governing public disclosure of technical information.

Farquharson has served the mining industry as a distinguished lecturer, a director of many public mining companies, and a pioneering advocate of policies to ensure that mining benefits flow to indigenous peoples. Since 1992, he has been chairman of the Canadian Mineral Industry Education Foundation, and in recent years, has been its largest financial supporter.

Farquharson has also become a significant contributor to medical research, including the Anna-Liisa Farquharson Chair in Kidney Cancer at the Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto.

Victor Wansbrough (1901-1994)

Victor Wansbrough served Canada’s metals mining industry with distinction for more than 20 years as the first full-time managing director of the Canadian Metal Mining Association (CMMA), the forerunner of the Mining Association of Canada.

His appointment in early 1947 was a surprise, as he knew nothing about mining at a time when the industry faced serious challenges, notably a labour shortage and a gold mining industry in decline. He worked co-operatively with governments to devise innovative solutions. The CMMA had 32 members when Wansbrough assumed full-time leadership, and had grown to represent 102 companies when he retired in 1968.

British-born Wansbrough earned a master’s degree at Oxford University, where he befriended Lester Pearson, future prime minister of Canada. Wansbrough came to Canada in 1924 and taught for the next 18 years at Lower Canada College. In 1941, he joined the Canadian Paint, Varnish and Lacquer Association, representing an industry of strategic importance to the war effort. His communication skills and engaging personality came to the attention of the CMMA, which was in need of a full-time manager.

The plight of the gold industry was a complex problem for CMMA’s newly appointed managing director. U. S. President Franklin Roosevelt had fixed the gold price at US$35 per oz. in response to the Great Depression and wartime lend-lease program, a policy that continued long after the war ended. As costs rose, few Canadian gold mines could operate at a profit. An estimated 250,000 people were dependent on the industry, with most living in remote areas where mining was the only employer. After extensive negotiations, the Emergency Gold Mining Assistance Act was passed in 1948, providing a subsidy to mines otherwise unable to operate. It was meant to last three years, but ran for 25 years at an annual cost of about $10-15 million.

Wansbrough, in partnership with the Department of Labor, devised an ingenious solution to the industry’s labour shortage, which mainly affected the growing base metal sector. Three mining engineers and a medical doctor were dispatched to displaced persons camps in post-war Europe, with 6,000 skilled workers subsequently brought to Canada. Wansbrough also worked tirelessly to solve trade issues, notably when the United States sought tariffs on Canadian lead and zinc exports, and to preserve tax incentives during the 1967 Carter Commission on Taxation. In 1980, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal of the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum.

Peter Brown (b. 1941)

Peter Brown has contributed to the growth and prestige of Canada’s mining industry by helping many resource entrepreneurs and emerging companies gain access to venture capital.

He has been a dynamic force in the Canadian capital markets since 1968, when he joined Ted Turton in purchasing control of a small Vancouver brokerage firm for $23,000. By focusing on the small to mid-sized resource and junior industrial firms, long ignored by senior investment firms, he transformed Canaccord Capital into the largest independent investment dealer in Canada, with successful operations in Europe and the United States.

A third-generation British Columbian, Brown began his career with Greenshields in the early 1960s in Toronto and Montreal. He returned to Vancouver in 1967 just as scandals in both the Toronto and Montreal markets greatly reduced the capital available for small and emerging companies including, in particular, the risk capital desperately needed for mineral exploration and development.

Brown recognized this as an opportunity and boldly positioned the newly acquired firm to fill the gap in venture capital financing. In co-operation with the Vancouver Stock Exchange (where he would soon serve as chairman), he worked to build a vibrant junior finance market with a particular emphasis on expertise in mining and exploration finance. These efforts gave birth to Canadian successes, such as Corona, the Hemlo discoveries, Eskay Creek and Dia Met Minerals and Canadian exploration expertise around the globe.

Over 40 years, Brown has built a major integrated, independent investment dealer. He has worked diligently to raise the standards for venture capital finance and to make it a respected vehicle for economic growth and wealth creation around the world. As CEO of Canaccord until 2007, he mentored the management team who share his entrepreneurial visio
n, commitment to the capital markets and passion for global resource finance.

Currently chairman of Canaccord Capital, Brown is also a director of the Investment Industry Association of Canada and an adviser to Canadian Securities Transition Office. He is also a director of the Fraser Institute, BC Pavilion Corp. and a director and member of the Finance Committee for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games. He has served as chairman of two provincial crown corporations as well as the University of British Columbia and as a director and chairman of the Finance Committee for Expo 86. He has earned many awards, including the Order of British Columbia, an Honorary Doctor of Laws from UBC, Entrepreneur of the Year (Pacific), the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada’s Distinguished Service Award, BC and Yukon Chamber of Mines Financier Award, the Interfaith Society Person of the Year Award, the Fraser Institute Founders Award, and the Commemorative Medal for the Golden Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, for his public service.

Hugo Dummett (1940-2002)

Hugo Dummett was one of the world’s most respected economic geologists, aptly described as “the brains, the ideas and the energy” behind the first discovery of economic diamond deposits in Canada.

In the 1970s and ’80s, he worked with Canadian geologists Charles Fipke, Stewart Blusson and South African university professor John Gurney in a quest to find diamonds in North America. Almost a decade later, he convinced BHP Minerals to sign a joint venture with Fipke and Blusson’s junior company, Dia Met Minerals, and continue the diamond hunt in the Northwest Territories. The result of their collaboration was Ekati, Canada’s first diamond mine, and the development of a hugely successful, major new industry.

Dummett’s successes were not confined to diamonds or Canada. He was a respected authority on porphyry copper deposits. During his tenure as vice-president of Ivanhoe Mines, he contributed to the discovery of a huge porphyry copper-gold deposit that bears his name at the advanced Oyu Tolgoi project in Mongolia.

Although born in South Africa, Dummett was a citizen of the world, with discoveries on most continents. He moved to Canada in 1965 after earning his B. Sc. at the University of the Witwatersrand. In 1970, he immigrated to Australia and worked in exploration before entering the University of Queensland for graduate work.

In 1977, he moved to the U. S. as senior geologist for Superior Oil, and began exploring for diamonds. When Superior left the mineral business, he convinced the company to turn over its data to Dia Met so exploration could continue. When Dia Met made its first diamond discovery in the Lac de Gras region in the early 1990s, Fipke turned to Dummett, who convinced his superiors at BHP to back the project. The discovery, which became the Ekati mine, triggered a staking rush that led to other discoveries.

Dummett rose through the ranks of BHP to become vice-president, minerals discovery. He was a strong advocate of corporate social responsibility, and in the case of the Ekati mine, helped ensure that its benefits flowed to northern and aboriginal communities. He mentored a new generation of diamond geoscientists and helped introduce once-proprietary exploration methodologies, such as diamond indicator mineral geochemistry, to improve the odds of finding economic deposits.

Dummett was the quintessential gentleman geologist, a larger-than-life figure with a natural ability to make enduring friendships. His industry recognition includes: the William Lawrence Saunders Gold Medal (1997) and Daniel C. Jackling Award (2000) of the Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration; the American Mining Hall of Fame’s Medal of Merit (1997); and The Northern Miner’s Mining Man of the Year award (1998). He served the Society of Economic Geologists as a Thayer Lindsley Visiting Lecturer (1997-98) and was its president at the time of his death in 2002. In 2005, he was the first recipient of the Association for Mineral Exploration British Columbia’s Hugo Dummett Diamond Exploration award.

Timmins mine finders/builders

Benjamin Hollinger (1885-1919), Sandy McIntyre (1869-1943) and John (Jack) Wilson (1872-1948) The Porcupine Gold Rush of 1909 was a transformative event in Canadian history, with three gold mines discovered by separate prospecting parties a few miles from each other. The rich discoveries made by Benny Hollinger, Sandy McIntyre and Jack Wilson in northern Ontario wilderness led to the development of one of Canada’s premier mining camps and the founding of Timmins, the City with a Heart of Gold.

The Hollinger, McIntyre and Dome mines built from the discoveries of these intrepid prospectors are in a league all their own, having produced 19.5 million oz., 10.8 million oz. and 15.8 million oz. gold, respectively. During the past 100 years, the “Big Three” and other mines in the Timmins camp have collectively produced 67 million oz. gold, with production continuing into a new century.

In the early 1900s, a series of gold and silver discoveries and a newly constructed railroad lured hundreds of fortune-seekers to northern Ontario. Among them was Jack Wilson, a Toronto-born railway superintendent and veteran of the Spanish American War who led a prospecting party north into the bush near Porcupine Lake. Wilson found a quartz vein laden with gold on surface. He and his crew used drills and hammers to open up this seam, and found so much gold he described their find as a “regular jewelry shop.” Then, on June 6, 1909, his team, which included Harry Preston, discovered spectacular gold on a large rounded outcrop. This “Big Dome” ultimately became the Dome mine, which operated for a century.

News of the Dome discovery prompted Ontario-born Benny Hollinger, a former barber from Haileybury, to join the trek to Porcupine with Alex Gillies, a professional prospector. They arrived to find the immediate area entirely staked and headed west beyond the staked claims. In an abandoned excavation, Hollinger stripped moss from an outcrop and uncovered a wide vein splattered with visible gold. The duo’s claims were later developed into the world-class Hollinger mine by entrepreneur Noah Timmins, another Hall of Fame inductee.

Sandy McIntyre left Scotland, where he was known as Alexander Oliphant, to seek his fortune in Canada in 1903. He became a prospector, and found his way to the Porcupine camp with Germanborn partner Hans Buttner. They pulled their canoe up on the shores of Pearl Lake the same day of the Hollinger discovery and immediately started staking the nearest open ground. They, too, found visible gold and staked claims that were subsequently developed into the McIntyre mine.

Hollinger, McIntyre and Wilson never made great fortunes from their discoveries, yet contributed greatly to Canada’s economic prosperity and mining heritage. The city of Timmins celebrated the prospectors’ legacy as part of its 2009 Centennial marking the Porcupine gold discoveries. In 2010, Timmins marks the 100th anniversary of the start of gold production from these historic mines. — For more information on the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame, visit www.halloffame.mining.ca/halloffameor email rplaskett@agendum.ca.