Cusac Chairman Has the Power of Persuasion

Vancouver — In an era when the term “promoter” has largely gone out of style, Guilford Brett still attributes his success in exploration to an ability to convince investors that investing in mining stocks will be good for them.

“I’m a pretty fair stock promoter and I don’t mind saying so,” says the Cusac Gold Mines (CQC-T, CUSIF-O) chairman.

It is a skill that he learned while teaching classical music to high school students in Vancouver during the 1960s.

“If you can persuade fourty-two thirteen-year-old boys to play the violin, you can promote just about anything,” he says.

To prove the point, family-run Cusac recently reopened its flagship gold mine in British Columbia’s Cassiar Mountain range after overcoming a series of hurdles, including the collapse in February 2004 of an important financing.

When the $3-million financing fell through, Cusac executives had to scramble to convince a whole new set of investors that developing a small starter in order to fund exploration on its Cassiar claims was a worthwhile strategy.

Persistence finally paid off last month, when Cusac’s Table Mountain property became the only metal mine in B.C. to reach the production threshold in 2006.

At the age of 76, Brett will be rewarded for that feat when he receives a special industry recognition award for perseverance at the Cambridge House Investment Conference in Vancouver on Jan. 20.

“This is a recognition award for all the years that he has been in the industry and for bringing the mine back into production,” said Cambridge House CEO Joe Martin.

A former boy soprano who was raised in Nelson, B.C., and played ice hockey for the Trail Smokeaters, Brett eventually quit teaching to spend his time prospecting in the Cassiar Mountains, where Cusac brought its existing mine into production for the first time in 1993.

After being forced to close by low gold prices in 1997, the Table Moutain mine was relaunched in December, when Cusac poured the first 5-oz. dor bar.

Working with limited resources, Cusac was able to restart production because it already had the permits and metal processing infrastructure in place, says Brett.

“That gives you a big leg up on the competition,” he says.

Now that the mine is up and running, Cusac hopes to produce 25,000 oz. of gold this year, precious metal that will generate cash for the development of other discoveries in the Cassiar mining camp.

Looking back, Brett says “it was basically greed,” which drove him to give up a career in teaching for the uncertainty of mineral prospecting.

“I thought, ‘look at me. I can get hold of one million dollars and become wealthy.'”

He is now sufficiently well off to divide his time between a weekend cottage in Whitby Island, Wash., and a home in Vancouver.

But he says he couldn’t have achieved his goals in mining without the support of a family that is now charged with running day-to-day operations at Cusac.

After studying to become a church minister, son David is now the company’s CEO. Daughter Leanora is the corporate secretary. A jack-of-all-trades, youngest son Danny is now in charge of overseeing the remote mining operation.

“He knows every nut and bolt on the property,” says Brett, who trained his children to stake claims and run geochemistry lines when they were teenagers.

Brett recalls the days when the family members looked forward to drying themselves off in front of a bonfire after hours spent prospecting in the bush.

“We were absolutely drenched,” he says.

Brett senior says it is that kind of on-the-ground training that enabled Cusac to keep its mining claims in good standing during the lean years in the late 1990s, when gold was in a deep slump.

“You have to be dedicated to the corporation to do that kind of work.”