Obituaries Thomas J. McQuillan

Thomas J. McQuillan, one of British Columbia’s best known prospectors , died at White Rock, B.C. recently after a lengthy illness. He was 70.

McQuillan was born in Nanaimo and, as a young man, worked in the merchant marine, travelling up the coast of B.C. and Alaska, where he came in contact with numerous mining men whose stories of the north’s rich mineral wealth aroused his interest and led him into a career in mining. At an early age he prospected on the Unuk River, north of Stewart, B.C., where he soon became interested in trapping, earning enough money to pay for his prospecting ventures. He operated placer ground in the area and located high grade gold and silver deposits, some of which are active today.

In 1949, prospecting for Helicopter Explorations, financed by Karl J. Springer, McQuillan and his partner Einar Kvale, staked what is now known as the Granduc Coppper Mine, in the Stewart area. Under different company management, including Granby Mines and Newmont Mining, this deposit became a substantial copper producer.

Some years later McQuillan and partners Julian Berkosha and Bob Hutchings took a lease on the old Silbak Premier gold silver mine from which they extracted a substantial amount of exceptionally high grade ore from a section of one of the original veins that had faulted some 40 ft from a tunnel driven in the early days.

McQuillan served in the Canadian Navy on corvettes in the North Atlantic during the second world war.

He was a recipient of the B.C. & Yukon Chamber of Mines “Prospector of the Year Award” in 1985.