PROFILE Hudgins attracts cash to the Maritimes

The East Kemptville mine, the only operating tin mine in North America, has attracted substantial investment to Nova Scotia. Playing a major role in the discovery of East Kemptville is prospector Avard Hudgins, 54. He is now exploration consultant to Scotia Prime Minerals. For Scotia Prime, Hudgins is looking for sedimentary exhalative deposits of base metals and of silver-barite in Nova Scotia’s Windsor-age carbonates. As well, he works part-time for Guinness Gold Resources, a 50/50 partner with Freewest Resources. The focus of this joint venture is on deposits of epithermal gold associated with younger, Pennsylvanian-age sedimentary sequences in New Brunswick. “Over the past three decades, I have brought millions of dollars of exploration to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick,” said Hudgins.

With mineralized boulders often covered with appreciable thickness of till, outcrops in Nova Scotia are scarce. “In a given claim group, everything is looked at — streams, fields, lake shores, old quarries, bush trails and ridges,” said Hudgins. “We even prospect stone walls and farmers’ fields. Prospecting down here is slower, more detailed and methodical.”

Hudgins is often identified with the Gays River lead-zinc deposit, west of Truro, N.S., where he lives and with the past Loch Lomond celestite operations. He instigated the original prospects.

He grew up on the south coast of 0600,0000 the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia where the Triassic-age lava flows outcrop in high sea cliffs. The profusion of minerals around his home instilled a love for geology in the youth. He holds a B.Sc. (1957) and a M.Sc. (1960) from Acadia University. In 1966-69, he taught elementary geology at the University of New Brunswick.

Trout fishing is Hudgins’ favorite pastime. Occasionally, he writes sporting articles and stories, for which he hopes to find a publisher some day.

Three of his four sons are in mining and exploration. The eldest son, a mine geologist for Westminer of Canada at Gays River, gave Hudgins an underground tour of the mine recently. The other two sons work with him as prospectors and woodsmen.

Hudgins’ wife, Joan, does his paper work and keeps his accounts. He met her at Acadia University in 1956, then a secretarial science student, when he hired her to type a report in geology. “She is still typing for me after more than 30 years,” he said.