PROFILE A Practical Academic

Ask 76-year-old Teck Corp. founder Dr Norman Bell Keevil Sr which mine remains his favorite. The answer is not one of the company’s recent multi-million dollar ventures but his first find in 1954, the now- exhausted Temagami copper mine in northeastern Ontario. “It was unusual to find a high-grade copper mass that rich — some areas assayed 34% copper,” says Keevil. The 25 ft of overburden peeled away, easily exposing ore so rich it was shipped straight to the smelter. In just a few months, the mine earned more than $1 million in revenue, spring-boarding Keevil, an academic-cum-consultant, onto the Canadian mining scene.

But not before Keevil could have some fun with his find. On a $500 whim, he rented the Port Credit tombstone maker’s sandblaster and polished up the exposed, arena-sized body of ore to a high gloss that sparkled in the sun.

“It was beautiful,” he says. “It was a shame to cut into it.”

Keevil’s Temagami Mining Co. (later to become Copperfields Mining Co.) operated on the Temagami Lake claim with never more than two years of ore in reserve. But, largely through the efforts of Keevil, the property continued operating for 17 years.

Today Keevil remains convinced the area holds more potential and plans to return to the region, where he maintains a summer home, for further exploration. “The area has been neglected for years,” he says, “There are a lot of ideas that have never been followed up.”

Following through on ideas has been a hallmark of Keevil, both in industry and in academic life. The unknown and the idea of discovery continue to fascinate him. Although serving as Teck’s chairman, Moli Energy’s president and chairman, a director of Cominco and other companies, Keevil is still actively seeking new opportunities. He talks guardedly of a new high-tech proposal under consideration which is “on the leading edge” in the science field.

During his early life, Keevil had the same insatiable appetite for discovery. His father had left the family wholesale food business in England to follow his intrigue with the Canadian West. (The Keevil name traces back to a village outside of Bath in England.) He was born in Saskatoon, Sask., grew up on a farm and advanced rapidly through the academic ranks. He quickly earned merit: bachelor and masters degrees at Saskatchewan University, a faculty appointment at Harvard, where he received his Ph.D, and a Royal Society of Canada fellowship in geological science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (mit). Norman Keevil Jr, the first of his 10 children and now president of Teck, was born in Boston.

After obtaining his doctorate at Harvard in 1937, Keevil Sr ventured into an emerging field, geophysics, doing post-doctoral research at Harvard and mit

In Canada and the U.S., geophysics was virtually unknown at the time. Few had tied the principles of physics to probing the earth’s wealth. Keevil returned to Canada and joined the University of Toronto faculty as assistant professor of geophysics, becoming Canada’s first full-time instructor on the topic. His first class consisted of nine, straight-A engineering students. “They were so good I hired four of them,” Keevil recalls. Course content consisted of consulting work he performed on weekends because “that’s the sort of thing that would interest them.” The Second World War brought more projects onto Keevil’s research desk — and there was a battery of them as he maintained laboratories in the university’s physics, botany and history departments and at the Banting Institute. One invitation came from Harold C. Urey of Columbia University to take a leading position in the Manhattan Project, the U.S. team developing the atomic bomb during the Second World War. However, the fbi wouldn’t clear a Canadian in time to participate.

Another wartime project involved studying the characteristics of vitamin B2 (riboflavin) and how it aids vision in sunlight, a condition of special interest to airplane pilots. Keevil discovered that even very dull sunlight would leach out substantial amounts of B2 in milk left in glass bottles.

Another source of vitamin B2 is beer, so Keevil set about determining the quantity found in beer and donations from breweries were solicited. “All we really needed was a thimble- full,” says Keevil. The breweries more than complied with his request sending more than several cases which eventually blocked out a lab wall. “My students thought it was one of the best research projects they ever had.”

During his 15-year academic career Keevil wrote some 45 scientific papers in technical journals, on topics relating to chemistry, physics, geology and physics. A significant portion of his research focussed on radioactivity, isotopic tracers on reactions and the distribution of uranium and thorium in North America. He was particularly well-known for his research into the use of radioactive decay series in geochronology and geothermics. While at the University of Toronto in the 1940s, he was credited with building Canada’s first mass spectrometer, a device widely used today to determine chemical composition of various metals.

The Second World War, like most wars, resulted in the rapid development of new technological tools. One such development in particular would later have a significant impact on the future Teck Corp. Gulf Oil, AT&T, and the U.S. Navy jointly developed a magnetic airborne detector to help locate submarines. During the first trial flight over the Strait of Gibraltar, a bleep registered. “Because it was experimental, they weren’t sure whether it was background,” says Keevil. After much procrastination, the crew called in the location. The bleep was an enemy vessel and the magnetometer became a powerful tool in keeping the strait clear of submarines during the balance of the war.

Keevil immediately realized the potential for locating metal bodies of another kind after the war. “I negotiated to get the exclusive rights to use it in Canada,” he says. In partnership with Dominion Gulf, and acting as a consultant, Keevil pioneered the use and interpretation of data obtained through aerial magnetic surveying with this device. Even the rudimentary aspects had to be explored. For example, Keevil’s plane flew at varying altitudes — as low as 100 ft in some cases — to find the optimum 500-ft level used today. Covering more than 100,000 air miles, he completed one of the largest aerial magnetic surveys carried out at that time.

Like a barn-stormer, Keevil’s swooping plane wasn’t always welcome. He recalls flying over a large mining company’s operation in 1957 — right past one side of the manager’s office and back on the other. A heated mine manager called Ottawa to report Keevil, only to be told that air space was considered free and the plane couldn’t be stopped.

On the first day, while heading up north for test surveys, Keevil asked the pilot to randomly zig-zag over interesting areas. Over the Temagami area, he picked up a significant anomaly. However, Dominion Gulf showed little interest, wanting oil, not minerals. It gave Keevil the rights to explore the find. He began ground work on the area and, by 1954, had found the largest Canadian pure chalcopyrite body, with one discovery hole assaying an incredible 28% copper over 58 ft.

Temagami provided the cash flow which enabled Keevil to begin buying the companies needed to build his envisioned empire. A friend was once quoted him as saying: “Some day I’m going to take over Noranda Mines. And if I can’t take over Noranda, I’m going to become Noranda.” The Keevil shopping list included Teck- Hughes Gold Mines, Lamaque Mining and Consolidated Howey Gold Mines. Keevil’s acquisitions, over a span of a decade, would see 21 companies taken off the tse board, earning him the corporate moniker of “Evil Keevil.”

The acquisitions came with cash or shares which, in turn, translated into dollars. An industry publication estimated he had parlayed $1 million into an empire worth $35 million in seven months — a fact that was not missed by the New York press.

As Teck grew, Keevil family members joined or lent support. In 1962 Devonian Petroleum — which had earlier discovered the Steelman field in Saskatchewan — was acquired in a bidding war and would become the foundation of the company’s oil and gas division. Keevil’s brother Alan joined the firm in 1966, heading up the oil and gas division in Calgary until his retirement in 1980.

In 1963 Keevil’s eldest son, Norman, joined the company full-time, taking over the exploration department and becoming president in 1981. Son Brian, a lawyer, recently joined Teck’s legal department, while still another son, Harold, is a broker with Canarim Investment Corp., British Columbia’s largest underwriter of junior resource stocks on the Vancouver Stock Exchange. “He sent us a number of deals. One of them was Golden Knight,” says the senior Keevil.

Teck’s growth hasn’t kept Keevil, a self-confessed academic, from pursuing research and development. An example of his academic interest is an impressive library in Teck’s Vancouver head office that includes hundreds of periodicals and reference sources and a full-time librarian to manage them. Subject matter ranges from Canadian and U.S. general business periodicals to high-tech and scientific journals.

Keevil’s Geophysical Engineering and Surveys Co. is credited with developing the dighem airborne electro- magnetic survey system, one of the most sophisticated in operation today. The helicopter-borne device provides a more comprehensive or three- dimensional image than conventional surveying tools.

Through tdc Technology Development, a 50-50 joint venture between Teck and Canada Development Corp., Keevil has provided the vehicle for developing new products. These include a portable desalinator developed by Seagold Industries, a slow- release fertilizer developed by University of Western Ontario geology professor William Fyfe, and the molybdenum disulphide battery now being developed by Moli Energy. Initially financed personally by Keevil, Moli Energy is now building the world’s first rechargeable lithium battery plant at Maple Ridge, B.C. In October, 1986, the Canadian government’s Awards for Excellence program presented Moli Energy with a gold medal for invention.

Keevil himself has been honored many times. In 1985 he received the Inco Medal from the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy for his practical industry and academic contributions to the Canadian mining industry; in 1986 he was awarded the Order of Canada; and earlier this year he was presented with the Edgar A. Scholz annual medal from the B.C. Yukon Chamber of Mines for outstanding contribution to mine development.

Keevil holds one more honor that provides him with a great deal of satisfaction. He is still captain of the Teck hockey team which each year, during the Canadian Prospectors and Developers Association’s annual convention in Toronto, challenges “the whole damn mining community” to a game at Maple Leaf Gardens.

But, then, challenging the whole industry is something Keevil has been doing for years.