Viola MacMillan: 1903-1993 — Industry loses `queen bee’ of

A pioneer of the Canadian mining industry, Viola MacMillan, has died in Toronto. She was 90.

A prospector who headed the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) for 21 years until the mid-1960s, MacMillan was honored by her colleagues in 1991 when she was inducted into the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame. Earlier this year, she was awarded the Order of Canada. “She was a stimulus to the industry,” said Robert Ginn, another past president of the PDAC who met MacMillan in the 1950s when he was a student. Membership in the association increased significantly during MacMillan’s presidency.

Ginn credits MacMillan with changing the functions of prospecting and developing. “She brought the prospecting industry and the scientific community closer together, providing the forum for interaction at the annual convention.”

The thirteenth of 15 children, Viola Rita Huggard was born on a farm near Windermere, in Ontario’s Muskoka district. After attending high school and then a business school, she eventually landed a secretarial job with a Windsor, Ont., law firm, where she spent nine years.

MacMillan was introduced to mining when she visited a brother in Cobalt, Ont., who worked at a silver mine and who gave her a clandestine underground tour.

Her marriage to George MacMillan in 1923 cemented her relationship with mining. The couple soon came to experience life in the bush when they agreed to look after an uncle’s claims in northern Ontario.

Prospecting became a full-time career when they staked claims in Hislop Twp., near Kirkland Lake, Ont., following a gold discovery by a farmer who was plowing his field. The MacMillans and two partners created the Porcupine Quartette Syndicate as a follow-up to the staking, which eventually led to the creation of the Canadian Arrow gold mine. The couple was active in numerous other successful projects across the country, including the Victor mine in British Columbia, which produced from the late 1940s to 1962. Her husband, who was also a former president of the PDAC, died in 1978. In the mid-1960s, a charge of “wash-trading” brought MacMillan into trouble with the law. Known as the Windfall Scandal (after Windfall Oils and Mines, which the couple controlled), the incident led to a royal commission inquiry, Ontario Securities Commission reforms and MacMillan being sentenced to nine months in jail (but serving only six weeks).

Windfall held property near the Texasgulf base metal discovery (made in 1964 and known as the Kidd Creek mine) at Timmins, Ont., and both companies were caught up in the trading frenzy of the time. The Windfall property did not prove to be economic, and share prices dropped. MacMillan was convicted in 1967. She was completely exonerated by the government in 1978. In 1989, MacMillan donated $1.25 million to the fundraising drive for the $7-million William Pinch mineral collection. The collection is housed, in a gallery named after her, at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa.by Patrick Whiteway