Canadian Mining Hall Of Fame Welcomes Five Inductees

The Canadian Mining Hall of Fame marked its 22nd anniversary by inducting a cast of five bona fide mining heavyweights at a cere m o ny at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel in Toronto in mid-January.

The word “legendary” fits comfortably next to all of this year’s inductees: Peter Brown for his status in the world of finance; Graham Farquharson for his consultancy work; Hugo Dummett for his exploration geology; Victor Wansbrough for his shaping of federal-government mining policy; and the trio of Benny Hollinger, Sandy McIntyre and Jack Wilson, whose discoveries of three mines in Timmins, Ont., a century ago made the “Town with a Heart of Gold” one of the world’s great gold-mining camps.

In what has become a near-annual gig, gold guru and chairman of Franco-Nevada (FNV-T) Pierre Lassonde presided over an evening made even more memorable by the 800-plus persons in attendance raising $900,000 for relief efforts in Haiti, just two days after the devastating earthquake there.

Peter Brown

He may not be a geologist or a mining engineer, but Peter Brown (born 1941) is still considered one of the most important figures in junior mining over the last 40 years.

Brown’s considerable influence on the industry is apparent, and continues to this day, by way of his mastery of the brokerage business.

In the words of Lassonde, “no one has done more than Peter Brown to build Canada’s junior mining industry. . . in the glory days of the Vancouver Stock Exchange, Peter was the stock exchange.”

The founder of Canaccord Capital turned the independent investment house into one of the leading financiers of junior mining companies in Canada, spurring on countless projects along the way.

Norman Keevil, chairman of Teck Resources (TCK. B-T, TCK-N), who has known Brown for some four decades, made the introduction.

Sizing up Brown’s business style, Keevil said, “Peter has a knack for sizing people up and knowing who deserves backing. . . but even when he turns someone down — and I’ve seen it — he does it politely and in a way that makes them want to come back.”

Keevil also heralded Brown for his work in the community, pointing out Brown’s contribution to the Vancouver Olympic games, Expo 86 and his role as governor and chairman of the University of British Columbia — an institution that Brown attended as a young man and where, Keevil kidded, that he majored in “fun-loving.”

While Brown didn’t finish his degree in those days, he was later awarded an Honorary Degree in Law by the university.

When Brown took the podium, he uncharacteristically spoke in a low and humble tone that contrasted with the loud applause from the large group of Canaccord faithful in attendance.

“I’m not sure why I’m here, but I’d like to thank those that put my name forward and worked hard on my behalf,” he said. “In fact, I’m so delighted to receive this honour,

I’d even like to thank the people that didn’t think it was a good idea.”

Brown offered encouraging words to any junior mining executives in attendance, saying there was a record amount of debt and equity capital available in the industry today thanks to high commodity prices. But he also sounded a note of caution.

“How this capital is managed,” Brown said, “will be the key in determining how long the industry can hold its current high investment yield.”

Brown also applauded Canada’s global mining reputation.

“I’ve never understood why your industry has not received more recognition in Canada,” he said. “It’s not often that Canada’s expertise is so greatly respected in the global community. Perhaps this lack of recognition is partially because Canadians have been too conservative to be comfortable with it.”

Brown finished by quoting the legendary former U.S. president Teddy Roosevelt, whom he described as “one of our kind of guys,” saying the quote reminded him of a mining entrepreneur.

After deriding those who stand on the sidelines in a critical frame of mind, Roosevelt exalted the man of action, the man “who spends himself for a worthy cause. Who, at the very best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, fails while daring greatly; so that his place will never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

Graham Farquharson

Graham Farquharson (born 1940 in Timmins), president and a founder of Toronto-based mining consulting firm Strathcona Mineral Services, was inducted in recognition for his career as one of the industry’s top mining consultants.

Farquharson’s career highlights include building and managing the long-life Nanisivik lead-zinc mine on Baffin Island, and exposing as a fraud in 1997, Bre-X Minerals’ Busang gold discovery in Indonesia.

Lassonde described Farquharson as being “one of the toughest and most-exacting consultants,” and a man who has “earned his distinction as a senior statesman of the Canadian mining industry by demonstrating a commitment to integrity, fairness and technical excellence” throughout his career with Strathcona Minerals.

Lassonde added with a smile that Farquharson is “so scary that, to avoid meeting with him, geologists have been known to jump from helicopters.”

In accepting the award, Farquharson called it “the ultimate in honour and recognition” and thanked the people who had worked at Strathcona over the last 36 years, many whom had “gone on to bigger and better things, and bigger pay-cheques. . . we look on at your achievements with great pride.”

Farquharson commented on what he called the three biggest decisions of his career.

The first — “an easy one” — was to make a phone call to senior officers of Bre-X “advising that we had serious doubts about there being any gold at Busang.” Six billion dollars of shareholder value in Bre-X was wiped out in the aftermath of the revelation.

His second-most difficult decision, made when he was 33, was to put the Nanisivik lead-zinc mine into production as Canada’s first mine in the Arctic, in this case on the northern tip of Baffin Island, 700 km north of the Arctic Circle.

“Despite its location, technical challenges and youthful management, Nanisivik went on to be a great success,” he said.

He called his third big decision — building a family-friendly town at Nanisivik instead of a worker-only fly-in camp — the “most important of my career.”

Farquharson said that the concept originated when he worked as a young man in Keno Hill in the Yukon, and where he shared living quarters with a miner who “headed for the bar in Keno City after every shift, and I thought, ‘I don’t want to spend the rest of my life this way — why should anyone else have to?'”

He lamented that Nanisivik “was the last mining town built in Canada” and urged today’s mine builders to reconsider the benefits of the kind of community that was built at Nanisivik.

Hugo Dummett

Hugo Dummett’s (1940-2002) name is synonymous with some of the biggest finds in mining over the last 30 years.

While his life was cut short by a car accident in his homeland of South Africa in 2002, his legacy was further cemented with his induction into The Hall.

Dummett’s importance was felt not only through a list of his technical accomplishments — the most noteworthy of them being his key role in bringing the Ekati diamond mine in Canada into existence — but also by the distance people in attendance travelled to honour him.

One such group was a delegation from Mongolia, where Ivanhoe Mines’ Oyu Tolgoi project sits, and where the main deposit bears Dummett’s name in a post-humous tribute to his role in developing the venture.

Also seated near the main table were friends and family from Australia, South Africa, and the WesternU.S.

A speech from Hugo’s daughter Annie exemplified how finding great deposits was only part of the Hugo Dummett story.

After describing her late father as an adventur
er, explorer, humanitarian, avid geologist, and an exceptional father and husband, she offered a more intimate glimpse into the man’s character.

“He was the most modest man I ever met,” she said. “He’d be more comfortable to have us talking about him as a man that loved chocolate, rocks and his family rather than talking about his achievements.”

Long-time friend and fellow geologist Bob Schaeffer also spoke, offering a perspective on Dummett as both a competitor and a co-worker.

As a competitor, Schaeffer said working in the same region as Dummett “meant you had to be at the top of your game,” as Dummett’s aggressive geological work was legendary.

As colleagues at BHP, Schaeffer got the inside track on Dummett’s secrets to success. Schaeffer relayed some of Dummett’s guiding mantras such as, “Get there first” and “Budgets are for wimps.”

“For Hugo,” Schaeffer said, “if budgets were road maps to discoveries, then they were merely a suggestion on how to get there.”

Hugo’s widow Nora Dummett, a native of B.C., described exploration geology as the thrill of Hugo’s life and added that, while his work took him around the world, Canada held special importance. “I’d like to think his Canadian experiences — his wife and diamonds — were definitely two of the main high points in his career.”

Dummett’s impact on the Canadian mining scene began in the late 1970s. Working for Superior Oil Minerals, he teamed with Chuck Fipke and Stewart Blusson in an effort to find an economic diamond deposit.

After Superior left in the mid-1980s, Fipke managed to keep exploring on a shoe-string budget through his company Dia Met Minerals. When some encouraging results were found, Fipke contacted Dummett, who in turn lobbied his new employer BHP to joint venture with Dia Met.

That partnership led to finding a cluster of kimberlites that eventually became Ekati and gave birth to a major new sub-sector of Canada’s mining industry.

But Dummett was far from finished. He teamed up with another great mine finder, Robert Friedland, and his company Ivanhoe Mines (IVN-T, IVN-N) to drill out and dramatically enlarge Oyu Tolgoi in Mongolia — a project that hosts what is considered to be the world’s largest undeveloped copper-gold porphyry.

“Hugo was so optimistic about the future of the Mongolian deposit and the effect it would have on the country and its people,” his widow said. “He believed Mongolia repre- represented the next great geological frontier.”

Timmins mine finders/builders

Also inducted were Benjamin Hollinger (1885-1919), Sandy McIntyre (1869-1943) and John (Jack) Wilson (1872-1948) in recognition for kicking off the Porcupine gold rush of 1909 in Timmins.

The gold discoveries of these three men resulted in the development of the iconic Hollinger, McIntyre and Dome gold mines, which have produced an astounding 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 still ongoing.

Lured to the area by a series of gold and silver discoveries and a newly constructed railroad, Toronto-born Wilson and a prospecting party headed north into the bush near Porcupine Lake to find a gold vein he described as a “regular jewelry shop.”

His team, which included Harry Preston, later discovered spectacular gold on a large, rounded outcrop, which was called the “Big Dome” and ultimately became the Dome mine, which has operated for a century.

The Big Dome discovery prompted Benny Hollinger, a former barber from Haileybury, to head to Porcupine with Alex Gillies, a professional prospector. Together they discovered what would become the Hollinger mine developed by entrepreneur Noah Timmins.

Alexander Oliphant left Scotland for Canada in 1903, changed his name to Sandy McIntyre, and eventually made his way to the Porcupine camp with German-born partner Hans Buttner. The same day of the Hollinger discovery, they staked the area that would later host the McIntyre mine.

In his introductory remarks to honour the three Timmins inductees, Goldcorp chairman Ian Telfer joked that “you’ve probably noticed there’s no table here for Barrick. Of course, there’s a rumour that they couldn’t afford a table, but that’s not true.”

With its Porcupine mining complex, which includes Dome, Goldcorp remains a significant presence in Timmins, and Telfer commented that, “we’re very proud of those operations and we’re very excited about those operations. We’re spending a couple of hundred million dollars over the next few years, so hopefully the mines in the area can last another hundred years.”

Telfer noted that the California gold rush, which happened around the same time as the Porcupine rush, faded away quickly while the latter camp, which didn’t garner the same publicity worldwide, continues strong to this day.

With several descendants of the three inductees present, Timmins mayor Tom Laughren accepted the award on behalf of the Timmins trio.

Laughren said the city of Timmins “owes a debt of gratitude to the hardy and adventurous souls such as these three inductees, who made their way north in search of fame and fortune. Their story of perseverance in the face of trials tribulations will now be forever immortalized for all to enjoy.”

The final inductee of 2010 was British ex-pat Victor Wansbrough (1901-1994), who served Canada’s mining industry with distinction for more than two decades as the first full-time managing director of the Canadian Metal Mining Association (CMMA), which later morphed into the Mining Association of Canada.

In particular, Wansbrough was instrumental in helping out Canada’s gold miners in the 1940s, at a time when gold was fixed and artificially depressed at US$35 per oz.

Wansbrough earned a master’s degree at Oxford University and came to Canada in 1924, teaching for the next 18 years at Lower Canada College.

In 1941, he joined the Canadian Paint, Varnish and Lacquer Association — an industry of strategic importance to the war effort — and in the late 1940s headed up the CMMA.

He was instrumental in getting the Emergency Gold Mining Assistance Act passed in 1948, which subsidized unprofitable gold miners. It was meant to last three years, but ran for 25 years at an annual cost of about $10-15 million.

Wansbrough was also a key recruiter for Canadian mines of skilled workers from post-war Europe, and headed up efforts to fight off tariffs and tax laws that hurt Canadian miners.