OBITUARY — Mario de Bastiani

A pioneer in the Canadian uranium industry through his involvement in the development of the town of Elliot Lake, Ont., and the startup of Consolidated Denison Mines in 1955, Mario de Bastiani, P. Eng., died recently in Toronto. He was 74.

He became resident engineer at the then-new Denison mine in 1995 when underground development commenced; a year later he was named assistant mine manager. In 1959, he became mine manager and remained in that job until 1974, when he was promoted to vice-president of technical operations and a director of the company. He joined head office in Toronto and remained there until his retirement in 1985.

“His philosophy was a desire to do the right things, do them in a timely fashion and to do them well,” said close friend James Hughes. A native of Cobalt, Ont., de Bastiani graduated from the Haileybury School of Mines in 1939. In the early 1940s, he worked at the Omega gold mine, a McIntyre subsidiary, at Larder Lake, Ont., later moving to the engineering department of Canadian Car and Foundry in Montreal. While in Montreal, he took engineering classes at the University of Montreal, and in 1946 he joined Mine Engineering and Contracting Services, serving that company in northern Ontario, northwestern Quebec and Venezuela.

He became assistant general manager of Cobalt Consolidated Mining when that company was formed in the early 1950s to operate five properties in the Cobalt area. He was managing Cobalt Lode Silver Mines in that camp prior joining Denison.

In 1970, he was registered as a member of the Association of Professional Engineers of Ontario.

A former president of the Ontario Mining Association, de Bastiani served as honorary chairman of the board of directors of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Elliot Lake.