Miners open their wallets at ‘Rock of Ages’ gala

Much of Toronto’s mining elite descended on the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in early June for a black-tie gala to raise funds to acquire what is being called “The Kirwin Ore Deposits Collection.”

Douglas Kirwin, an Australian who is currently executive vice-president of exploration at Vancouver-based Ivanhoe Mines, has
chosen the ROM to house his world-class collection of mineral specimens gathered over his 40 years spent working as a geologist, much of it in the Asia-Pacific region.

Kirwin joined Ivanhoe in 1995. Prior to that, he was managing director of International Geological Services Pty., and held senior positions with Anglo American and Amax. He earned an undergraduate geology degree in 1971 and a Master of Science degree in mineral exploration from James Cook University in Townsville, Australia, in the mid-1980s.

A career highlight for Kirwin was being part of the discovery team for the Hugo Dummett copper-gold deposit at Ivanhoe’s Oyu Tolgoi project in Mongolia, for which he was a co-recipient in 2004 of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada’s Thayer Lindsley medal, awarded for the year’s most significant international mineral discovery.

The ROM describes the Kirwin ore collection, with its 15,000 pieces, as “one of the most impressive collections of ore suites ever assembled . . . (and) the mineral collection is equally impressive,” with more than 7,000 pieces, primarily from the Asia-Pacific region.

The ROM goes on to state that by acquiring this collection, the museum will become a “serious international resource for mining companies and educators.” The ROM and its partners are seeking to raise $4 million to acquire, transport and house the collection, and the “Rock of Ages” evening brought in about a quarter of that amount.

The acquisition will prompt the ROM to expand its storage capability by 40%, and add a classroom and lab to accommodate students and professionals seeking to study the collection. Right now, it’s housed in 26 wooden cabinets in a two-story building near Kirwin’s residence in Thailand.

Kirwin gave the gala guests a brief slideshow tour of the collection, which includes hard-to-get, museum-quality samples from deposits and mines (some now closed) in Myanmar and Russia.

Kirwin talked about how his interest in rocks emerged at a young age, and how, as a school-aged child, he would frequently spend his weekends in the rock and minerals section of the Queensland Museum in Brisbane. 

Today at the ROM, he has witnessed a “tremendous passion” for the earth sciences on the part of museum staff and visitors, and his thank-you’s included a nod to Clarus Securities’ Laurence Curtis, who first approached him with the donation idea two years ago.

“I can clearly see the collection being used extensively for education and research by future generations,” Kirwin said. “This is probably the main motivation I have for bringing the collection here. I’m thrilled about it.”

During the dinner, Barrick Gold chairman Peter Munk spoke to the crowd about how mining and geology education “totally disintegrated” in Canada 20 years ago.

“Now, we are bereft,” Munk said. “We are facing a crisis, in that the very foundation of this enormous potential that we are benefiting from today may disappear unless we put the funds, the efforts and the human commitment into recreating the educational basis that trains the geologists and the mining engineers that Canada has become famous for – thirty, or forty, or fifty years ago.”

In addition to sponsorships and ticket sales, money was raised during the evening by a silent auction of mineral specimens and by a live auction of large, museum-quality rock and mineral specimens, plus various “once-in-a-lifetime” experiences such as driving a NASCAR car, riding in a fighter jet and attending high-end cooking schools in Paris. A guitar autographed by the four Rolling Stones was auctioned off for some $24,000.

The top sponsors of the Rock of Ages event were Osisko Mining, Clarus Securities, the Dundee Group of Companies, Dalradian Resources, Inmet Mining, Rosseau Asset Management, Solutions with Impact, Jennings Capital, Kinross Gold and Quadra FNX Mining.

The organizing committee was made up of Catherine Beckett, David Brace, Laurence Curtis, Nick Tintor and Patrick F.N. Anderson.

Entertainment was provided by former cast members of the Rock of Ages musical, a 1980s-era rock nostalgia act that runs on Broadway and tours North America and beyond.