Obituary: Dit Holt

Meredyth “Dit” Holt, one of the builders of Barrick Gold and a past president of the Prospector’s and Developers’ Association of Canada, has died after a long illness. He was 77.

The son of Eric Holt, a mining engineer who had arrived in Canada from Ireland as an orphan, Dit Holt went to work for his father at the age of 15. He graduated from Queen’s University in 1952. In his early career he worked for Technical Mine Consultants, part of the Joseph Hirshhorn interests, under geologist Franc Joubin. In the early 1950s he worked in the Beaverlodge uranium camp of northern Saskatchewan, then was one of the pioneering mining men in the Blind River uranium camp in Ontario, where he was instrumental in extending the known uranium horizons of the Blind River and Elliot Lake deposits to the east.

His interest in analytical geochemistry — in one early manifestation, starting up a radiometric analysis lab in Beaverlodge — continued through the 1960s when he established geochemical programs in Canada for copper giant Phelps Dodge. In 1974 he joined the Camflo Mines group, working on projects in northwestern Ontario (Wilanour), Quebec (Pandora), Manitoba (Kasmere Lake), and Nevada (the Pinson mine). Part of a team that included Bob Smith, Alan Hill, and Brian Meikle, Holt helped build the project portfolio of the infant American Barrick Resources out of Camflo’s mining assets and Barrick’s cash, incuding Mercur, Goldstrike, and the Holt-McDermott mine, which carried his name.

Holt was president of the Prospectors’ and Developers’ Association of Canada in 1979, and a driving force behind the mining museum in Elliot Lake. He leaves his wife Marilyn, three daughters, two sons, eleven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.