PDAC honors Felderhof and Munk

Much as it dominated the mining headlines in 1996, the Busang gold project was at the centre of the annual awards banquet of the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada (PDAC).

John Felderhof of Bre-X Minerals, credited as the discoverer of the Indonesian elephant, received the Bill Dennis Award for prospector of the year, and Peter Munk of Barrick Gold, whose play for control of the property rang out the old year, received the Viola MacMillan Award for developer of the year.

In his acceptance speech, Felderhof made no secret of his views on the recent property negotiations for Busang. Naming no names, he was emphatic that the minefinders ought to keep the lion’s share of the property. “We have a development that goes against my grain . . . when you find something, someone wants a piece of it. I think we should expand the PDAC to include the tree-shakers.

“The jungle they know is the concrete jungle, and the closest they get to rocks is a scotch on the rocks. And all I say to them is, `go find your own.'” Felderhof praised his colleagues in the Busang play, particularly geologist Michael de Guzman. He also thanked Bre-X Chairman David Walsh for his support, drawing a parallel between the telephone calls he made as a student to ask his father for money with the calls he made to Bre-X’s Calgary offices. “And the money aways came,” he said.

Munk was named developer of the year for having built Barrick into one of the largest gold producers in the world. Barrick’s president, John Carrington, accepted the award for Munk, who was in Europe.

Carrington attributed the company’s growth to the strong team Munk assembled for Barrick, including Robert Smith, Carrington’s predecessor as president.

Rio Algom and Denison Mines shared the 1996 Environment Award for their rehabilitation program in the Elliot Lake uranium camp, which saw its last mine shut down in 1996. The rehabilitation plan has seen the companies transfer mine wastes to new secure tailings areas, and the areas have been revegetated, prompting John Nightingale of Rio Algom to quip, “We invite you to visit Elliot Lake and our reclaimed mine sites — we’ll try to find them for you.”

A Special Achievement Award went to Eileen Wykes for having piloted the Keep Mining in Canada campaign, an alliance of the Mining Association of Canada, the PDAC and the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy & Petroleum. The PDAC praised her “enthusiasm, dedication and creativity,” but she insisted she was just “the lucky one who gets to stand up here.”

The PDAC presented two Distinguished Service Awards — one to past PDAC president John Hansuld and one to John Cooke, executive publisher of The Northern Miner.

Hansuld, who was honored for his service to the PDAC and his involvement in the founding of the Association of Exploration Geochemists, joked that “despite all its uncertainties and inefficiencies, the mineral exploration industry can turn a shortage of any commodity in the periodic table into the damndest oversupply you’ve ever seen.”

Cooke, whose career at The Miner started around the time of the Elliot Lake uranium rush in the early 1950s, was cited for his ongoing support of the mining industry through the newspaper and for his work on behalf of the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame. Noting how the mining industry “thrives on gossip, and what we like to call street talk,” Cooke said, “I want all of you to get out there and find orebodies so we can fill our pages.”