Agnico’s Boyd links gold’s allure with contest goals

Agnico Eagle Mines (TSX, NYSE: AEM) chairman and Canadian Mining Hall of Fame member Sean Boyd and Anthony Vaccaro, president of the Northern Miner Group, recently sat down with The Northern Miner podcast host Adrian Pocobelli to discuss gold’s current bull market and the Great Canadian Treasure Hunt. 

Organized by The Northern Miner, the coast-to-coast contest – which began Aug. 13 – is challenging Canadians to use clues to find $1 million in gold coins minted from Agnico’s Detour Lake mine and an additional 12 monthly $25,000 rewards. Twelve treasure chests are hidden across Canada, each containing an alpha numeric code, after Gina Anderson found the first prize near Dawson City, Yukon in late September. Each round of clues will appear monthly, through The Northern Miner, MINING.COM or CEO.CA. All clues will be available for free. 

Questions and comments in this interview were condensed and edited for clarity.  

Adrian Pocobelli: Before we get started on the Great Canadian Treasure Hunt, I thought we could start with gold. Sean, how are you doing? It must be pretty good being chair of Agnico Eagle these days.  

Sean Boyd: Yes, that’s an understatement. This is a long time coming in terms of gold and the gold mining industry. We all expected, as we worked through our careers, that we would see the day where we could have prices that would generate significant cash flows in our business.  

It’s not an easy business, but certainly at this point in time, not only are the gold miners generating significant free cash flow, but there’s the expectation that the gold price could continue to go higher. So that generates a tremendous excitement within the industry. We’re seeing that both in the gold price and we’re seeing that in the gold equities.  

This is certainly a great time, but we don’t think it’s over. We think this could easily get to US$5,000 an oz. and do that over the next 12 to 18 months. So, we’re super excited. 

AP: It brings us to our topic of the day here, which is Canada and the Great Canadian Treasure Hunt. How did you get involved? 

SB: The essence of this really is connected to our long history in the business, almost 70 years. We knew the contribution that The Northern Miner was making in terms of chronicling and telling the story of mining.  

Anthony invited us to the 110th anniversary party of The Northern Miner during PDAC this year. Around the room, they had a number of photographs of mining history. I was going around looking at them, and I mentioned to Anthony and Denis (Laviolette, the CEO of EarthLabs, owner of the Northern Miner Group) there’s probably a way that we can work together and use the storytelling that you’ve put together over 100-plus years, the pictures, and use that as the basis to get a wider message out on mining to Canadians.  

Anthony and his team went away, and they came back and they said, we got a crazy idea to use as a foundation to tell the story.  

The idea was to bury $1million worth of gold somewhere in Canada and have a contest to find it. And on the back of that, tell the story of mining and how well mining is positioned. And we’re sort of shaking our heads, going ‘Man, that’s kind of crazy,’ but that is going to work, that’s something we need. We need to sort of shake the tree and get people to pay attention. So here we are.  

There’s another unique angle here. It’s not just $1 million worth of gold, it’s $1 million worth of gold in the famous Canadian 1 oz. gold Maple Leaf with all the gold in that Maple Leaf coming from one of the world’s largest gold mines, which happens to be in Ontario and owned by Agnico Eagle.  

AP: What is it that you hope to accomplish here? 

SB: Part of this is really to have fun and to celebrate the success of mining and the success of Canada in a fun way. But there’s also a message here. We collectively understand that Canada is at a point in time where we have to make some important choices on how we’re going to develop our economy, how we’re going to focus on our sovereignty, and we think one of the ways to do that is focus very much on industries where we have a competitive advantage and we’re really good at and we have a strong history and we have great skills – and that’s mining.  

It’s also important, from an education standpoint, to reach the young people to let them understand that there is a really good industry that they should consider in terms of employment and careers. They don’t really know a lot about it.  

AP: Anthony, what do you hope to see happen here with the Great Canadian Treasure Hunt? 

Anthony Vaccaro: Sean captured it very well. There are so many stories there that we just feel haven’t been celebrated and really appreciated. There’s a disconnect in the general public between where things come from and how important metal is and how important the mining industry is to this incredible country around us, both in terms of what’s been built up to the present, right?  

The idea that absolutely everything that you touch that isn’t just part of the natural world is related to mining. So even if it’s not metal, it was made using metal, or it was transported using metal.  

If Canada is going to remain strong, if we’re going to remain sovereign, it’s not a far leap to realize how important mining is to that. Here was a chance to kind of bring that to the fore in a very fun way, in an emotionally engaging way.  

We’re pulling wealth out of the ground as a sector.  We’re going to see the timing was right. You know, the general Canadian public is hearing more about critical minerals. They’re seeing more important policies coming from the federal government around this file. There’s an inkling here. And this was a fun way to kind of step into that opening that’s been made to really highlight and to show people just how great the sector can be. 

For more information, including full contest rules, FAQs and updates, visit treasure.northernminer.com. Follow @northernminer (X/FB/YouTube) | @thenorthernminer (IG) | @mining (X) | @miningdotcom (IG/FB/YouTube); @ceodotca (X/IG/FB/TikTok) | @ceocafilm (YouTube) for ongoing clues and community updates.