Odds ‘n’ sods: Friends close and far

One thing that has always amused me during my 40 years in mining is meeting friends in strange places.

It’s been said that working in the mining industry in Canada is like living in a small town: There are less than a hundred mines in this country, and as you move around it’s not unusual to find people who have worked in some of the mines you have visited, or know some of the same people you know. It’s like meeting people who have walked the same streets as you have, or know people who have lived on those streets.

In the same way, working in the global mining industry is like living in a small city.

In 1990, I was working at the Caribou mine in New Brunswick, and my friend Robert looked me up when he was in the area on business (selling pumps, I believe). I had known Robert in North Bay, Ont., and he had recently moved to Montreal for a new job.

While we were sitting in a restaurant in Bathurst, my superintendent from the mine happened to walk in with our project manager Paul, who was based in Vancouver. They joined us at our table for supper, and we started chatting.

During the meal, Robert and Paul kept looking at each other, and both said the other looked familiar for some reason. Finally, they agreed that they “knew each other from someplace,” and started listing all the places they had lived and worked.

It turned out that they had both lived in Timmins, Ont., several years before, in houses next door to each other. Robert said, “I still have the jig saw I bought at your garage sale when you moved!”

That evening, I was amazed and thrilled that two people so far away from home, one from the West Coast and one from the middle of the country, could run into each other on the East Coast and discover they were old friends.

A few years later, I learned about a meeting of people even more remote.

In 1994, my friend Bruce in Vancouver called me in North Bay and asked me if I knew any diamond drillers.

His consulting firm was doing some engineering work for a project in the Philippines. Their client wanted to do some diamond drilling on the property, and instead of hiring a contractor, had decided to purchase their own drills. This way they could hire some local labour and put something back into the country. However, they needed someone with drilling experience to manage the project.

Bruce knew the district around North Bay, Sudbury, Timmins and Rouyn-Noranda had always been an active one for diamond drilling. He asked me if I could send him a list of people in the business he could contact.

I faxed him a list of half a dozen people whom I had worked with or met at meetings of our local branch of the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (CIM). Some were drillers, and some were other mining people who might know some drillers and be able to point Bruce in the right direction.

One name on the list was driller Don, whom I knew only from CIM meetings. I had been told that Don once had a small diamond-drilling firm of his own in Haileybury or someplace and sold it to a larger outfit. He had moved to North Bay and worked part-time as a drilling consultant.

Soon after I sent that fax, I went for lunch with some of the guys from my office to a Chinese restaurant. I opened a fortune cookie and the message in it was: “You are going to hear from an old friend.” The next day I got a call from my former engineering manager who wanted me to go to Turkey for a few months. I have paid close attention to fortune cookies ever since!

While I was in Turkey at the Cayeli mine in early 1995, my boss Joe called with a message for me to call driller Don in Canada, collect from wherever I was. I called Don, and found he wanted to thank me for getting him a terrific job in the Philippines.

They had flown him over to look at the project, and even flew his wife over to show her the country. He was really happy with the situation and wanted to thank me personally for giving them his name, but I explained that I was just helping my friend Bruce find some drillers. Don must have done the rest himself.

About six months later, back in North Bay, my boss Joe told us that business was slow. He asked all his employees to look up anyone we used to work with at different mining companies and contact them to see if anyone needed some engineering work done.

I looked through the CIM membership list and found Bob, with an address in Denver. Bob had been project manager when we sank the shaft and drove the first levels at the Lupin mine in the Northwest Territories. I had worked in his office in Edmonton for several months in 1981. I faxed him a message to say hello and offer our services, but got no answer.

About a month later, I received a letter from Bob. He said he had been away from the office when my fax came in and that’s why he didn’t reply. He had been overseas at their mine site in the Philippines. It was the same project that my friend, driller Don, was working at!

I could imagine these two guys meeting each other on the top of a hill on the other side of the world. I wondered if sometime in their conversations they may have mentioned this fellow they both happened to know back in Canada. It may not have come up, but this made me realize how small the global mining community can be.

I was reminded of this incident recently when I read the Canadian Diamond Drillers Association 65th anniversary magazine in The Northern Miner. There was an article in it about driller Don, who had received an award for his lifetime achievements, including managing a drilling company in the Philippines. It was good to hear about another friend in the mining community.

— The author is a mining technologist in Yellowknife, N. W. T. He can be reached atdafritchie@gmail.com