Victoria Gold CEO McConnell axed

Victoria Gold (TSXV: VGCX) CEO John McConnell has lost his job, the CBC reports.

PricewaterhouseCoopers, the firm handling Victoria’s Eagle mine in the Yukon after it was forced into receivership last week, fired McConnell, the broadcaster said. It cited an email from the CEO saying Monday would be his last day at the helm.

Victoria Gold declined to comment to The Northern Miner, referring questions to PwC. The accounting firm didn’t immediately reply to an email on Monday.

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice accepted the Yukon’s request to put Victoria into receivership last Wednesday. The company’s board resigned the next day.

The mine suffered a financially crippling heap leach pad landslide on June 24 that shut operations. The territory began stepping in about a month later when it said the company was lax in remediation efforts. Crews were trying to contain cyanide-infused ore that had tumbled into a stream but was mostly contained on site.

Cleanup pledge

McConnell said he was proud of what Victoria Gold had built over the past 15 years, according to the CBC. Last week he said he knew his time was short even though he pledged to help with the cleanup.

The Yukon has said the mine could return to production at some point and that Victoria Gold could have been part of that plan.

In March, McConnell, accepted this year’s Viola R. MacMillan Award for innovative financing at the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada. He’d used a combination of private equity and offtake streams when backers for the low-grade mine in the far north were hard to find. 

With a file by Blair McBride.