Obituary: John Kostuik

John Kostuik, former president and chief operating officer of Denison Mines and a member of the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame, has died. He was 93.

Born in Poland, Kostuik emigrated with his family to Cobalt, Ont., at the age of one.

A born athlete, he played on an Ontario Junior Hockey Championship team at 16. His talents in athletics and academia led him to Queen’s University, where he graduated with a degree in mining engineering in 1934; a year later, he earned a master’s degree there.

At Queen’s, he was president of the student body, captain of the hockey and football teams, and led the “Famous 11” to victory in the Yates Cup, the trophy given to Ontario’s university football champions.

Upon graduation, he was offered professional contracts in hockey with the Chicago Black Hawks, and football with the Toronto Argonauts and the New York Giants.

In the midst of the Depression, with family responsibilities at hand, he declined a Rhodes Scholarship and began his illustrious mining career.

After graduation, he became mine superintendent of the Howey gold mine, where he gained recognition for somehow managing to eke out of profits for what was in the late 1930s the lowest-grade mine in Canada. Howey Gold Mines, in fact, proved to be a training ground for low-cost mining methods.

He later displayed ingenuity at Sladen Mines’ Malartic operation, introducing mucking machines at drawpoints for loading ore, a major innovation at the time.

From the goldfields of the Abitibi belt, Kostuik signed on with Newmont Mining in French Morocco. His experience there with a big-tonnage base metal mine, coupled with his earlier achievements in squeezing profits from low-grade gold mines, made him an ideal candidate for the new Denison development near Elliot Lake, Ont.

In 1955, Stephen Roman hired Kostuik as Denison’s mine manager. He will be remembered for developing the Elliot Lake uranium properties into a big-tonnage, underground producer. By 1969, he had become president and chief operating officer of Denison, which later became a huge energy company with interests in uranium, oil, gas and coal.

In 1964 and 1965, he presided over the Ontario Mining Association, and in 1969 and 1970, he was president of the Mining Association of Canada.

Kostuik’s achievements were recognized by the Sir William Casimir Gzowski Society and the Canadian Nuclear Association. He won the Ian McRae Award, which honours industry professionals for outstanding non-scientific contributions to nuclear energy in Canada.

He was also the founding chairman of the World Uranium Institute. But among his many honours and directorships, Kostuik was most proud of being a member of the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame.

Kostuik is survived by children John, Paul, David and Jacquie, as well as eight grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.