Canadian Mining Hall of Fame to honour five new inductees

The Canadian Mining Hall of Fame, of which The Northern Miner is a sponsor, will welcome five new inductees at its twenty-fourth annual induction dinner on Jan. 12, 2012, at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel in Toronto. The new inductees are Ned Goodman, Phillip Hallof, John Hansuld and joint inductees Robert Hunter and Robert Dickinson. For tickets and more information, visit www.mininghalloffame.ca.

Ned Goodman

(Born 1937)

Ned Goodman has made transformative and enduring contributions to Canada’s minerals industry and capital markets as a company builder, merchant banker and investment adviser during a dynamic career spanning almost half a century. He applied his geological training and business acumen to help build several successful mining companies – notably International Corona and Kinross Gold – and nurtured many other mineral producing companies through astute and timely investments.

In addition to being an outstanding member of the philanthropic community, Montreal-born Goodman is considered one of the leading architects of Canada’s investment management industry. Along with his partners, he founded the first exploration flow-through partnership, CMP Group, which has raised almost $5 billion since the 1980s to help companies explore and develop mining and petroleum companies, leading to the generation of jobs and benefits for rural and northern economies in Canada. He was also the driving force of the Dundee group of financial companies, which grew under his leadership from a $300-million base to a $50-billion mutual fund entity.

An early interest in science prompted Goodman to obtain a BSc degree in geology from
McGill University. When geological employment was sparse and Goodman was laid off by Noranda in 1960, business also caught his attention, leading him to complete an MBA degree from the University of Toronto in 1962.

His career path took a financial turn in 1967, when he earned the designation of Chartered Financial Analyst and co-founded Beutel, Goodman & Company, which offered pension funds and private client investment advice. The firm also established a reputation as a “go-to” destination for mining and oil investment, with junior companies particularly benefiting from Goodman and his partner Seymour Schulich’s ability to recognize resource mineral projects of merit – as well as sound management teams – and raise funds for their exploration and development.

Goodman played a leadership role in the re-emergence of Canada’s gold-mining industry in the 1980s, ultimately becoming the largest shareholder and chairman of International Corona, which held interests in world-class gold mines in Ontario’s Hemlo region. He was involved in the creation of Kinross Gold, Repadre Capital (later Iamgold) and Dundee Precious Metals, and was an early backer of FNX (later Quadra FNX Mining) and its discovery and development of new nickel deposits in Ontario’s Sudbury camp.

The Goodman name is synonymous with that of the Dundee group of financial, resource and real estate investments, which he founded in 1991. Dundee’s Dynamic Funds was recently acquired by ScotiaBank. The remaining Dundee enterprise continues to oversee $14 billion in resource and real estate investments, as well as a resource-based capital markets and investment banking division – Dundee Capital Markets.

Goodman is Chancellor of Brock University and founder of the Goodman Institute of Investment Management at Concordia University, where he is an adjunct professor. He is a meaningful benefactor of many worthy causes. Among his many awards and honours is the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada’s
Developer of the Year award, presented in 1989, the Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2004 and the Morningstar Investment Career Achievement award in 2005.

Phillip G. Hallof

(1931-1992)

Phillip Hallof earned his status as one of the “fathers of modern geophysics” for his pioneering and innovative work in the field of frequency domain induced polarization (IP), which grew from an obscure research effort into an essential exploration tool. He contributed in many ways to the research and development of geophysical equipment, techniques and interpretation, and also provided technical expertise to the mineral exploration industry through his leadership of McPhar Geophysics and later Phoenix Geophysics. Another legacy of his 35-year career was aiding the discovery of mineral wealth for the benefit of Canada and the global economy.

Hallof was born in St. Louis, Mo., and educated at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he earned a bachelor’s degree in geology (geophysics option) in 1952. While still a graduate student, he undertook research into the then-novel variable frequency IP method being developed by Newmont Exploration, and demonstrated that it gave measurable responses over certain known sulphide deposits. The technology was further refined and successfully field-tested, resulting in a valuable new tool to help identify buried mineral deposits that were not conductive and which conventional electromagnetic (EM) surveys could not detect. He also created a new and useful mode of displaying multi-spaced IP and resistivity data in the now standard pseudosection format.

After earning his PhD from MIT in 1957, Hallof joined McPhar Geophysics as chief geophysicist in Toronto, and became president (and a Canadian citizen) in 1961. He led the company into the forefront of IP science and also spearheaded a range of innovations in electrical and electromagnetic geophysical techniques. Following the sale of McPhar Geophysics to CIL in 1975, Hallof founded Phoenix Geophysics, which achieved notable advances in both Spectral IP Complex Resistivity and Magnetotellurics. Both companies designed, manufactured and marketed geophysical equipment worldwide. They also planned, implemented and interpreted geophysical surveys.

Hallof used his exceptional communication skills to convince the exploration community of the merits of advanced geophysics, which he strived to make as user-friendly as possible. He was a prolific author of technical papers and case studies based on exploration successes, of which there were a great many around the world. Through his enthusiastic advocacy, IP became a dominant exploration tool used worldwide, notably for porphyry copper deposits, sedimentary exhalative massive sulphide deposits and precious metal deposits associated with minor pyrite, among others. An advantage of the frequency domain IP method in the early years was that the equipment often could be smaller and lighter than time-domain IP equipment, an advantage in mountainous terrain. The long-running rivalry
between these IP methods was brought to an end by the digital age.

In 1986, Hallof shifted to a consulting role with a number of mining companies and also provided guidance in the start-up and early growth of Quantec Geoscience. Along with his peers, he helped make Canada the “geophysical capital of the world.”

John A. Hansuld

(Born 1931)

John Hansuld served Canada’s mining and minerals sector with distinction as a pioneering geochemist, entrepreneurial company-builder and dedicated industry advocate. As a scientist, he advanced the application of geochemical techniques to mineral exploration and enhanced the profile and prestige of its practitioners. As a corporate leader, he built Amax Exploration Canada into a premier exploration and mine development group later taken public as Canamax Resources. He was also instrumental in transforming the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) from a largely Canadian organization to one of global influence.

Hansuld is perhaps best remembered for his leadership role in using the “flow-through share” tax-incentive program to fund Canadian mineral exploration at a time when many juniors were finding it difficult to access traditional capit
al markets. Flow-through shares became a popular financing option, envied worldwide and used with great success to discover and develop mineral deposits in Canada.

Born and raised in Ontario, Hansuld earned his BSc honours degree in geology at McMaster University in 1954, before heading west to obtain his MSc degree from the University of British Columbia. This was followed by a PhD in geological sciences from McGill University in 1961 and a PMD from Harvard Business School in 1968.

Hansuld began his association with Amax as a company geochemist in 1961, and moved to Denver a year later as chief geochemist and manager of exploration research. In this role, he became a pioneer in the application of geochemical techniques to mineral exploration, notably by introducing the concept of Eh-pH phase equilibria diagrams to aid in the industry’s understanding of the relative mobility of common metals in the secondary dispersion media. He spearheaded the organization of the first International Geochemical Symposium in Denver, and the launching and early success of the Association of Exploration Geochemists.

In the late 1970s, Hansuld built Amax Exploration Canada into one of the largest Canadian exploration groups, with 91 projects across the nation. In 1982, he convinced Amax to spin out the Canadian projects into a new public entity that later developed the Bell Creek, Kremzar and Ketza River gold mines. The initial public offering for Canamax Resources sold out at just under $30 million in the first half of 1983, largely based on flow-through shares. This financing led to the widespread use of the flow-through program, mainly through the formation of limited partnerships, with some $5 billion of flow-through capital raised for Canadian mineral exploration over the next five years. Hansuld was the dubbed “the father of flow-through” for his pivotal role in adapting this innovative financing program to mineral exploration.

As PDAC president from 1993 to 1996, Hansuld helped revitalize the association by adopting a new logo, establishing a strategic plan and expanding the international focus of its annual convention. He was named PDAC’s Developer of the Year in 1989, in addition to other awards and honours bestowed over the years.

Robert Hunter

(1927-2007)

Robert Dickinson

(Born 1948)

A partnership formed by Robert Hunter and Robert Dickinson more than 25 years ago has endured as the inspirational foundation for Hunter Dickinson (HD), one of North America’s most respected mineral exploration and mine development groups. With Hunter as the financier and promoter and Dickinson as the technical advocate and project-potential savant, the efforts of this entrepreneurial duo led to the development of one of the most successful teams in Canadian mining history.

The HD team has raised hundreds of millions of dollars to advance mineral projects in Canada and around the world. The list includes many important porphyry deposits – notably Mount Milligan, Kemess and Prosperity in B.C., Pebble in Alaska and Xietongmen in China – as well as gold and other deposit types.

Hunter and Dickinson began their careers in their home province of B.C. Hunter was a top-performing life insurance agent for 20 years before joining the mining scene in the early 1980s. His first success came as president of Breakwater Resources, which discovered and developed the Cannon gold mine in Washington state. He was one of the first Canadian mining executives to access capital in London and elsewhere in Europe, paving the way for others to follow, and was widely respected for his tenacity and attention to shareholders.

Dickinson earned his BSc degree in geology from the University of British Columbia in 1972, followed by a MBA in 1974. He gravitated to junior mining where many new deposit discoveries are made, a natural fit for his talent and training, and teamed up with Hunter in late 1985. Less than a year later, they took the reins of North American Metals, which acquired an interest in the Golden Bear project in northwestern B.C. In 1988, Homestake Mining made a $40-milllion bid for their interest in the advanced gold project, which began production in 1989. Through Continental Gold, Hunter and Dickinson advanced the Mount Milligan copper-gold project to feasibility before their company was acquired by Placer Dome for $182 million in 1990. Then, with the addition of new HD partners, they discovered and developed the Kemess copper-gold mine through El Condor Resources, which was acquired by Royal Oak Mines in 1996.

Along with being involved in a dozen mines, including the revived Gibraltar copper mine in B.C., HD has provided management, financial and technical services to 17 public companies holding more than 40 important projects on six continents. Among them is the Pebble deposit in Alaska, which hosts one of the largest copper-gold-molybdenum resources in the world. Others include the Campo Morado zinc mine in Mexico, the Burnstone gold mine in South Africa and the Hollister gold mine in Nevada.

The “two Bobs,” as they are fondly known, earned the respect of their peers for their perseverance through industry downturns and technical, legal and political challenges. They maintained a strong presence in B.C., while also expanding their global presence, and championed causes such as the Britannia Mine Museum. They advocated responsible mineral development before it became an industry mandate. This ethic, along with technical excellence, is entrenched in the entire HD team.

In 1990, Hunter and Dickinson shared the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada’s Developer of the Year award, adding to many individual honours for their contributions to the industry and society.