LETTERS TO THE EDITOR — Isolation breeds ignorance — Nature of business contributes to carelessness

The passing of David Walsh, the late president of Bre-X Minerals, closes the final chapter on an individual who orchestrated one of the biggest snowjobs in the history of the exploration industry.

He was in the right place at the right time, at the pinnacle of exploration activity when most moose pastures could have been peddled by Walsh’s marketing flair. To suggest that he was not involved with this scam from the outset would be like saying that O.J. Simpson was innocent of the charges brought against him.

Walsh had his pie in the sky and peddled it to those who wanted to get rich quick from all avenues of the boardwalk, including the gullible ones who should have known better (stockbrokers, mutual fund managers and the Toronto Stock Exchange). They were all so caught up in the greenback side of the ledger that it propelled Walsh’s bandwagon. The geologists at the Bre-X compound in Indonesia were surrounded by extras who were all willing to play dumb as long as their pockets were lined.

What is puzzling is this: For all of the so-called experts who made site visits during the reign of this property, not once was there a red flag raised or an alarm sounded. We think that these visitors were rusty because of the nature of their work, which leaves them unexposed to the mainstream of activity. It happened to a driller friend of mine. We were coming off a 6-month stint from a drill job in Uranium City years ago and we were on a train out of Red Deer, Alta., heading home, when my friend turned to me and said “What’s a woman’s ‘yet?'”

“I haven’t a clue,” I replied.

“Neither do I,” he said,” but it says in the paper that a woman was shot on an Edmonton Street corner and the bullet’s in her yet.”

Bud Laporte

North Bay, Ont.