Queries Gibson Girl and Caliper remain inactive

Please provide me with some information on Gibson Girl Mines and Caliper Developments. The Northern Miner hasn’t published any news on the two companies for at least a decade. F.M., Orillia, Ont.

According to our files, we have had nothing to report on Gibson Girl Mines since August, 1977, when the Vancouver company changed its status from a specially limited to a limited company.

That was more than 23 years after the previous reference to this company.

Gibson Girl Mines was incorporated in June, 1951, to acquire and develop a group of base metal claims covering Gibson Island, 27 miles south of Prince Rupert, B.C. It was capitalized at 3.5 million shares, of which 400,000 were issued to Helicopter Explorations.

However, after encountering a series of parallel ore occurrences, Gibson Girl, dropped its option on the property in April, 1952. With only $13,990 in cash, it appears that the company couldn’t afford to follow up on its previous work.

As reported (N.M., Oct 7/54), the company was financing a prospecting-exploration company called Brikon Explorations which was in the early stages of exploration at the Atlin Lake uranium property in the Yukon.

We traced Gibson Girl to its current home at Suite 510, 1200 West Pender, Vancouver, B.C. V6E 2S9, but sadly the company is inactive, unlisted and retains no assets or liabilities.

President Harold Eisler, a Vancouver mining consultant, says he has no plans to revive the company. “It would be much easier to start a new one,” he said.

When Caliper Developments was last heard from in 1975, the Quebec Securities Commission had issued a cease trading order. A year earlier, Caliper had moved its head office from Montreal to Vancouver, and the company’s 75%-owned Ocona gold mine in Peru was on the selling block. Highland Queen Mines offered to buy the operation which was a strain on the Caliper treasury.

While a profitable operation was churning out ore at a rate of approximately 185 tons per day, the high costs of acquiring the property and replacing the equipment crippled the former Quebec-listed company.

As a result, Caliper was unable to bring overdue mortgage payments up to date and the company failed to get the go-ahead for a planned reorganization.

According to Gilles Lachance, a spokesman for the Quebec Securities Commission, Caliper hasn’t filed the necessary statutory reports since 1985, and the company’s charter could be cancelled if it isn’t heard from soon.

In 1975, Hans Dietmann was listed as the company’s president, but he couldn’t be reached by either The Northern Miner or the QSC.