Odds ‘n’ sods: Mills’ date with serendipity

From the early 1950s to the mid-1960s, there was brisk trading of junior mining penny stocks on the Montreal Stock Exchange. And most of these companies had offices in the city.

One of the most renowned financiers and promoters in Montreal during that era was a fellow named Randolph Pope Mills, president of New Royran Copper Mines. Virginia-born Mills had a stable of more than 20 junior mining companies in Montreal. He was the darling of many brokers because he was often successful in financing ventures that led to important copper-gold discoveries in the Chibougamau, Que., area, which ultimately pioneered the development of that camp.

Mills was the best mining promoter I have ever met. He was a quiet, private sort of fellow; honest, loyal and very intelligent. He was a geologist’s dream because if he cottoned to your ideas and liked the potential play, then he’d back you to the end. He was also a super salesman. If he was still around today, he could sell Maxwell House coffee to Tim Hortons.

Mills had a penchant for listening to unusual people who wanted to get his companies involved in some weird ventures. I was puzzled for a long time as to why this fastidious and extremely busy man would waste his time with such people.

In 1960, Mills hired me as a young geologist to look after several claim groups his companies had staked in Nova Scotia.

Later that year, I went to Mills’ office on Craig Street in Montreal to provide an update on exploration. There were usually people in his office and when they found out that I worked for him, they often tried their promotions on me.

Over the years, I met some very unusual folk with some equally unusual stories.

One local schoolteacher had a dream that rubies the size of walnuts existed somewhere in the Laurentian Mountains. Another chap was certain a large sphere of solid gold was precisely 200 ft. below surface somewhere in Quebec’s Eastern Townships. And another old prospector had developed what he called a “mine-finder,” which looked a lot more like a steel ball attached to a piece of string.

I heard other stories, too. Each person was there to get Mills to finance their ideas. Some would be in his office for the longest time and I often wondered why this very busy man didn’t give these feckless folk the bum’s rush. But he was my boss, and a very private man, so I never brought it up.

The years went by and Mills and I grew close. In fact, we became partners in several exploration ventures in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Then came the news in 1977 that Mills was dying, so I travelled to Westmount, Que., to check on him.

I found him in an unusually reflective mood. We went to his basement bar, sipped some of his favourite scotch, and started talking about people in the exploration business. We chatted for a while before I finally summoned the gumption to ask why he had such tolerance for unusual characters. He looked at me, smiled, and launched into a story.

In the early 1940s, Mills was a financial writer for the New York Times. One day, a doctor approached him to see if he could get a few hundred dollars to promote a new type of sanitary napkin, as well as to get a patent for his idea, which he called Tampax.

The doctor was demanding and loud, with long dirty fingernails. Mills dismissed the man without listening to all the merits of his creation. But it was the fingernails that did it. “Who could trust a doctor with dirty fingernails?” asked Mills.

Two years later, Mills met another gentleman playing golf and they got to talking. The chap told Mills that he was retired and had accumulated his wealth by backing a doctor with an idea for a sanitary napkin. The company, Tampax, went on to make lots of money and the golfer cashed out for more than $1 million when it was sold to a large pharmaceutical company.

After that, Mills vowed that he would listen to the full story from anyone, no matter who they were, how they looked or how strange their idea seemed.

Years later in New York City, he met some promoters from Montreal and Toronto who had some wild stories about copper discoveries in Chibougamau. Despite their obvious lack of sobriety and excessive promotion, Mills deemed that there was indeed something exciting happening in the Chibougamau camp.

He soon arranged a trip to Montreal to once again meet the promoters and their geologist. He liked what he heard. After arranging some financing, he moved to Montreal.

The group soon launched a drilling campaign that led to a discovery and eventually a mine.

Mills said: “Serendipity came calling on me once and I blew it, then it came a second time and things worked out well for me because I gave it a chance.”

From that day forward, I found myself listening to some crazy people, no matter how daft they sounded.

— The author is a retired prospector living in Truro, N.S.