On the level (March 30, 1992)

CANADA PARDON — HIS EXCELLENCY THE GOVERNOR GENERAL IN COUNCIL, on the recommendation of the National Parole Board, is pleased hereby to grant to Viola Rita MacMillan, nee Viola Rita Huggard, a pardon in respect of the offence of fraudulent manipulation of stock exchange transactions of which she was convicted on the seventeenth day of March, 1967 . . .

Given under the Seal of the Registrar General of Canada, at Ottawa, this twenty-third day of November in the year of Our Lord one thousand nine hundred and seventy-eight.

I had planned writing this column on the awe-inspiring Pinch collection of minerals and gems in a new mining exhibit on the first day it was open to the public. It drew over 8,000 visitors to the Viola MacMillan Gallery of the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa.

But on seeing the above letter, which had been sealed with a “not to be opened until my death,” I thought I would focus on Viola MacMillan herself, still very much alive.

At the insistence of people making a feature hour-long film of her life story, she finally revealed the content of the letter, which was received just two weeks after her prospector husband George’s death. This will be shown on a national television network later this year and at the convention held by the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) this week in Toronto.

MacMillan is an amazing person who has contributed much to the mining industry, including a $1.25-million donation to the $7-million Pinch acquisition fund.

Although completely exonerated of wrongdoing, she was deeply hurt by the 1964 Windfall scandal, then cruelly charged and convicted of a minor unrelated infraction in the frenzied trading that followed the big Texas Gulf discovery at Timmins, Ont., which the Toronto Stock Exchange itself simply could not control. (Her lawyers’ bills exceeded $1 million.)

She was born April 21, 1903, into a penniless family of 15 children on a bleak homestead in northern Ontario. Her father never saw a single day in school. On his death, each child received $25.25 from his estate. While her contributions to mining have been many, she is perhaps best known for her tireless work with the 4,000-member nationwide PDAC, this week celebrating its 60th anniversary. While she didn’t start it, she certainly put it on the map in the 21 years she headed it as Canada’s “Queen Bee of mining.”

She knew every mines minister in Canada on a first name basis — and they listened to her.

It was 50 years to the day of the gallery opening that she went to see the all-powerful C.D. Howe in Ottawa to find out what war minerals the country needed. With a list that included tungsten, chrome and molybdenite, none of which Canada was producing, she put up her diamond ring and life insurance policy as security to the Royal York Hotel where she assembled 172 prospectors and five senior government geologists to launch that war mission. “And did we ever do a job,” she quipped during my interview. Then right after the war she played

the leading role in getting Ottawa to launch the Emergency Gold Mining Assistance Act (EGMA) which saved the country’s gold mining industry until the US$35 per oz. imposed ceiling price on gold was lifted.

An inductee into the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame, she expresses deep concern over the onerous new mining regulations being legislated in Ontario and British Columbia, driving our mine seekers and developers out of this country. “It’s sad to see them go,” she says.

One of her ambitions not yet realized is a federal Mining Day holiday for all schools in Canada. But she’s not giving up, she warned Canada’s governor general during the opening ceremony of the MacMillan Gallery. Mining, unquestionably, has been good to Viola MacMillan, with several of the mines she helped develop turning out more than $100 million. But she has been good for mining, too, having put much more into the industry than she ever took out. Indeed Canada badly needs more of her ilk.