Moving The Miner into blue-chip quarters

As most readers probably know, we recently moved to the Don Mills complex of Southam Business Communications Inc., where Southam now houses all divisions of its expanding Mining Group under one roof. It was in November, 1989, that Richard Pearce sold The Northern Miner, which had been a close family-owned business for over 75 years. Having worked there for more than 40 years running the gamut from field engineer to assistant editor, editor, publisher and now publisher emeritus as well as being a director of the firm for the 10 years preceding its sale, I got to know the Pearces quite well, always holding them in the highest regard.

And, of course, I quickly developed something of an affaire de coeur for the paper itself, which I truly believe to be “the bible of the mining industry.” So it is with some feeling of nostalgia that I look back on The Northern Miner’s 25-year Club, with its 25 living and 24 deceased members, numbers almost unique for a small company. A very close bond developed among that group.

For a year or so after the sale, things didn’t change much around The Miner’s home at 7 Labatt Avenue in Toronto’s east end, with Southam just getting to know us and vice versa. But it seems they liked us so much they decided to move us to the head office in the city’s north end. Or perhaps it was to keep a closer eye on us? In any event, we’re there and we’re happy. Echoing this is Editor Jim Borland. “We’ve had to make some adjustments, but by and large, I think the Southam connection has made us better prepared to continue into the 1990s as Canada’s leading source of information about mining. We’re just as committed as we’ve ever been to the industry and its future.” The move itself proved to be no small operation, for we have annual reports and files on virtually every mining company in Canada (dead or alive), some of which date back to the turn of the century. And countless photos, likewise priceless. In fact there were over 50 four-drawer steel filing cabinets filled to overflowing. And there was quite a mining library built up, too. In fact we have over 100 stuffed boxes here in storage in addition to the filing cabinets.

“Even with the three months we had to plan and pack (we needed every minute), the actual moving day went remarkably well,” said Cindy Gardner who heads our Handbooks department.

Southam, of course, is one of the great names in the Canadian publishing and printing world, with a history going back to 1887. It was in that year that William Southam, the son of an immigrant English stonemason, purchased for $4,000 the failing Spectator, a Hamilton daily newspaper founded in 1846.Today, the Southam empire he built has something like 16,000 employees and annual revenues reaching $1.7 billion.

Until its surprising acquisition of Northern Miner Press Ltd., the Southam organization had not displayed any leading interest in mining, although it did acquire the venerable 110-year-old Canadian Mining Journal back in 1970, which it is still proudly publishing.

Now, of course, it not only gets The Northern Miner weekly which boasts the world’s largest mining circulation, but also adds the highly respected Canadian Mines Handbook, the newer American Mines Handbook and a sister publication to the CMJ, The Northern Miner Magazine, to its string.

And drawing it ever deeper into the mining fold is its new-found association with the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame. For The Northern Miner itself was one of the main founding sponsors of that project three years ago, virtually carrying it through the first one. In a recent tete-a-tete with Harvey Southam, the big firm’s senior vice-president of Canadian Publishing assured me of its continuing and enthusiastic support for this fledgling project with which I am closely associated.

One of the very few complaints I ever had in my years at The Miner was that its employees held no equity in the company itself. Not so at Southam’s, for I quickly learned that periodically its employees can purchase treasury shares at a slight discount to the going market.

Thinking I was privileged to get into a safe and seasoned blue chip industrial stock, I immediately jumped aboard with both feet, only to learn that it is not just mining shares that go through cyclical gyrations.