Obituary (September 17, 2007)

Paul Brown

Paul Brown passed away suddenly after completing a day’s work at the Dome mine, in Timmins, Ont., part of the Porcupine Joint Venture managed by Goldcorp. He was 54.

Brown was a resident of Porcupine, Ont.

Brown was born in Trinity, Nfld. He graduated from Memorial University in 1974 with a bachelor of science degree in geology.

His first job after graduation was with Amoco, and he went on to work for Dome Mines, Placer Dome and Hudson Bay Exploration and Development.

He was a mainstay in many of Canada’s well-known mining camps, like Red Lake, Kamloops, Flin Flon and Timmins.

In 1989, while working for Placer Dome in an office in Thunder Bay, Ont., Brown received 52 boxes of data from the Musselwhite gold project, in northwestern Ontario. The project had failed two economic evaluations and Placer considered the project to be marginal, and was seeking buyers.

Upon careful evaluation of the data, Brown believed Musselwhite could be a mine, and dedicated himself to proving that.

In 1996, after a lot of work by all involved, Brown’s analysis proved correct and Musselwhite was approved for construction. Although the Musselwhite brothers had found gold on the shores of Northwestern Ontario’s Opapimiskan Lake, it was Brown’s technical skills and dedication that proved the gold mineralization was ore.

After Musselwhite, Brown went on to manage Placer Dome’s exploration office at Red Lake, and helped develop drill targets at the Trout mine in Flin Flon, Man.

For the previous two years, he was working with the exploration team at the Porcupine JV. Recently, he said he was having a ball, doing what he loved most — developing drill targets and looking for ore.

Brown will be missed by his wife Debra-Ann.

— The preceding was written by Goldcorp’s David Gliddon and edited by The Northern Miner.