Editor’s picks: Best human-interest stories of 2018

The following are the best human-interest stories that appeared in The Northern Miner in 2018, as selected by editor-in-chief John Cumming (click on headline to read story in full).

Mining titan and philanthropist Peter Munk’s lifetime of achievement

By Trish Saywell, April 11, 2018

It’s an extraordinary story about an extraordinary man who became one of the most legendary entrepreneurs in Canadian history.

But at its core it is also a love story. It’s a tale about Peter Munk’s life-long romance with Canada — the country that welcomed him after he and 14 members of his family fled Hungary and the Nazi’s death camps in the final year of the Second World War.

Since then the iconic entrepreneur and founder of gold mining giant Barrick Gold has donated $300 million to institutions in Canada, primarily to healthcare and education in recent years, before his death on March 28, 2018, at age 90.

Editorial: Peter Munk receives our Lifetime Achievement Award

By John Cumming, April 11, 2018

In this issue of The Northern Miner and at an event at our Canadian Mining Symposium at Canada House in London on April 24 and 25, we are awarding to Barrick Gold founder Peter Munk our Lifetime Achievement Award for transforming Barrick over several decades from a small producer into the world’s biggest gold producer in gold output and market value.

It’s an award that has been in the works for months, but it takes a bittersweet turn with Munk’s passing on March 28, 2018. Months ago he had graciously extended his thanks for the award in an email, but noted he was too ill to travel by air to accept any award in person.

Instead, Barrick president Kelvin Dushnisky is slated to accept the award on Munk’s behalf in London, and a celebratory dinner we’ve arranged that evening in Munk’s honour will now take on more poignancy.

 

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Four Canadian mining giants honoured at CMHF soirée

By John Cumming and Trish Saywell, March 14, 2018

Canada’s mining and mineral exploration community gathered at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre in January for the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame (CMHF)’s 30th annual induction ceremony.

With Franco-Nevada chairman Pierre Lassonde serving as master of ceremonies for the 17th year, over 1,225 people were in attendance to celebrate the careers and industry contributions of this year’s four inductees, in order of appearance: Edward G. Thompson, Robert Gannicott, A. Terrance MacGibbon and Ross Beaty.

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Editorial: Former Massey Energy CEO, ex-con Blankenship attempts comeback in US Senate

By John Cumming, May 8, 2018

It’s hard to figure out what the lessons are here, but the audacity and sheer political spectacle can’t go unremarked: the disgraced former CEO of Massey Energy, Don Blankenship, is attempting a major comeback in the public arena by launching a serious run to become a Republican U.S. Senator for West Virginia, having emerged from federal prison only a year ago after a conviction related to a 2010 explosion at a Massey coal mine that killed 29 miners.

Blankenship was convicted in 2015 by a federal jury in West Virginia of conspiracy to violate U.S. mine-safety laws in relation to the deadly explosion caused by a buildup of methane at the firm’s Upper Big Branch underground metallurgical coal mine in Montcoal, W. Va., 48 km south of Charleston.

The conviction was unprecedented in U.S. mining history in that prosecutors targeted a high-ranking executive for workplace-related safety violations, though Blankenship was acquitted of the more serious charges of lying to regulators and investors regarding the accident. Indeed the conviction was for a misdemeanour with a maximum prison time of one year, which Blankenship served in full, followed by a one-year probation that just ended.

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Commentary: Humanity ‘living on borrowed time’ as ‘cheap metals’ disappear, says Ross Beaty

The following are edited remarks made by mining entrepreneur Ross Beaty during a panel session at the Resources for Future Generations conference in Vancouver in June.

When it comes to sustainability, there is both bad news and good news. I’m an optimistic person, so I always save good news for the end.

The bad news is that, for the past 50 to 70 years, we have lived on borrowed time. Global output has grown significantly, and mining output has grown even more. Copper production, for example, has grown from 2.8 million tonnes in 1950 to 20 million tonnes in 2015.

All global governments remain obsessed with gross domestic product (GDP) growth. This is a recipe for disaster — growth of anything in a finite system is impossible, and always ends in collapse. Always.

 

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Editorial: Gren and Eira Thomas share secrets to success

By John Cumming, July 17, 2018

Canadian diamond mining icons Grenville Thomas — co-discoverer of the Diavik mine in the Northwest Territories — and his daughter Eira Thomas were featured guests at The Northern Miner’s inaugural Diamonds in Canada Symposium, sitting down for an in-depth interview with Diamonds in Canada editor Alisha Hiyate.

While Gren is now chairman of Arctic diamond explorer North Arrow Minerals and Eira is president and CEO of producer Lucara Diamond, the interview touched on how they both got into mining, the excitement of the Diavik discovery and tips for a successful career.

Harkening back to his youth in Wales where he started working in coal mines at age 16, Gren noted that “it was a job” and “in those days, people my age — I suppose you’d call them children today — didn’t have much choice in what they did. The point was, you had to get a job. I could have ended up being a historian, I suppose, or a poet or a singer, maybe. That is one of the problems I see today: children are so relatively well off, they aren’t obliged to make a decision to do anything.”

 

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Book excerpt: Placer Development and Amelia Earhart’s final flight

By Nean Allman and Justin Baulch, Oct. 1, 2018

The disappearance of Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan in 1937 on an attempted round-the-world flight has become one of aviation history’s great enigmas, embroidered with fanciful theories about their fate and the subject of at least 30 books, says an article by Hugh Leggatt in the June 1992 issue of Placer Dome’s employee quarterly, Prospect.

“At a time when aircraft exploits gripped the popular imagination the way space travel would do to a later generation, Amelia Earhart was the first woman to attempt to fly around the world and the first person to try to do so around the equator. She was already the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean and she held other aviation records.”

The story of her disappearance en route to Howland Island is relatively well known. What is not so well known is that the two aviators flew off on the last leg of their tragic journey from Lae in New Guinea, from the airport that owed its existence to the Bulolo goldfields.

 

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Odds ‘n’ Sods: My three ‘Eureka!’ moments as a 
Canadian explorer

By James Wade, Special to The Northern Miner, Oct. 3, 2018

The excitement of a mineral discovery is a “Eureka!” moment, and this is the story of my three Eureka moments. I’m 77 years old now, so some of the details may be misted by time, but the big picture is correct.

For the first six years of my life I lived in Copper Cliff in Ontario where my dad worked for Inco in the smelter. In 1946 we moved to Joeburke, Ont., which was a whistle stop along the CNR main line between Gogama and Foleyet.

The developing Joeburke Gold Mines gold mine was a mile or so into the bush from the rail line, and my family moved to the area to be part of the developing gold mining community. It didn’t work out that way, but that’s another story.

My dad and mom ran a grocery store and post office near the railroad and had a few tents stretched over two-by-fours and plywood frames which they rented to miners and their families.

Our horse Nellie was a feisty black mare that pulled us around winter and summer to deliver groceries and light freight.

My first two trips down a mine was when I was 7 years old, where I learned what gold looked like. I really enjoyed those trips, liked the feel of the underground and made a career decision that I wanted to be in this business — and have now been in it for more than 50 years.