St Andrew Goldfields’ Stock Township gold property has everything a fledgling mining company could want. Gold mineralization that looks mineable. A shaft to access the deposit. A mill that with each passing day comes nearer completion. But it lacks poisonous snakes. And that makes J. D. (Doug) Bryant, project co-ordinator, very, very happy. An encounter with such creatures tends to take your mind off the work at hand. Try climbing down ladders underground knowing that maybe at the bottom or somewhere on one of the rungs is curled a thick, five-footer whose venom could kill you. The semi-arid Australian outback in the Northern Territory is home to such things. A favorite hangout is the old workings of the Golden Kangaroo mine near Tennant Creek, where Bryant, an eager young grad of Michigan Technological University, was directing underground exploration in the early 1970s. “You got used to the fact that they were there until you actually saw one. Then you became a nervous wreck and you waste so much time worrying about them that you had to quit for a while. They were cantankerous as hell. They’d come at you.”
One viper even struck in a daylight attack on surface, backing him up against a pickup truck. “I don’t even think I hit the side of the truck. I jumped right over that sucker and into the back of the Toyota. And the thing was striking at the tires.”
From the foregoing, you might think Bryant lives in utter fear of snakes. He doesn’t. This was just one of several experiences he related over a hot hamburger and several coffees at the cafe in the J & H General Store, a roadside store and diner a few miles east of St Andrew’s Stock Twp. project near Matheson, Ont. Bryant is 43 years old and married to a geologist, Karen. They have two teenage sons and a pre-teen. By choice, they live in a trailer on the mine site. He feels that it’s “a good place for the kids. It’s better than the city or town.”
Now Australia, where “everything that grows, swims, walks or crawls is poisonous,” was entirely different for the then newly-minted geologist. He had grown up in Levack, near Sudbury, Ont., and in Gore Bay on Manitoulin Island, the son of a jack-of-all- trades father. He recalls that he especially admired his grandfathers, one a farmer and cabinetmaker (“He was an artist really”), and the other a lusty Irishman who taught the youngster to drive a pickup. It was simple really. From the passenger side of the ’53 half-ton Chevy, grandpa would tromp on the accelerator, while young Doug, his feet dangling just short of the clutch pedal, wrestled with the steering wheel and ground the gears without the clutch.
“Hang on to ‘er Doug, we’re heading for the rhubarb,” his grandfather would holler when Bryant swiped the greenery alongside the road. Modern driver training it wasn’t. But that’s the way it was in working-class Sudbury and on the hard farmland of Manitoulin Island in the 50s, before the appearance of seatbelts and motorcycle crash helmets and health insurance and uic and the rest of the appliances and government programs that attend our safety-conscious, socially secure (relatively speaking) modern times. The pioneer spirit prevailed.
“My dad always believed that if you did your best, that you worked hard, you’d get ahead. That’s hurt him physically. But when you come from a farming background, you always work hard, and you can justify in your head that when you leave the company you don’t owe them anything.”
His father was a deeply conservative man and a patriot who believed in the country and the democratic process, that is, until he had had a look at the process in action. Young Bryant was 10 when his father decided a lesson in the deeper meaning of politics was in order. So father and son packed off for Ottawa and sat respectfully in the public gallery of the nation’s esteemed House of Commons and witnessed the most raucous debate they’d ever seen this side of a street brawl. Honorable members were thumping the benches and screaming across the floor at their opposite numbers.
“I don’t recall what the debate was all about, but I remember thinking to myself that if I did that at school I’d be in deep trouble. I was going to tell my dad just that when I looked at him. He was white as a ghost and he grabbed my hand and started taking me out of there. My dad never said anything about it afterwards and he never went back to Ottawa. That really upset him.”
Six years later, Bryant joined the youth wing of a political party, but disillusionment quickly overpowered any desire to continue his political education at first hand. During the summers of his high school years, he worked at Inco, socking away just enough for a first year at Michigan Tech. The co-op program gave him plenty of field experience in the Yukon, northern Minnesota and northern Manitoba. Then came his first permanent job, the stint in Australia in 1970, and a return to Canada four years later. He hooked up with Quebec Sturgeon River Mines and worked as an exploration geologist at its Bachelor Lake mine sampling and logging core and generally directing underground diamond drilling up until 1977, when he was transferred to the St Andrew site.
The Bachelor Lake mine, near Desmaraisville, Que., has had a checkered history. In commercial production in 1982, the mine did generate cash flow for a time, but problems in the mill and underground and a falling gold price dogged the project. It was closed for a time, although it is operating now. The majority owner, Quebec Sturgeon Mines (also a major equity holder in St Andrew Goldfields) hopes that this time success will come. So does Bryant, who believes Bachelor Lake can be a “nice, little mine.” In the fall of 1977 just before his move to Stock Township, he and his wife capped the shaft and a ventilation raise by hand, using a cement mixer and wheelbarrow.
That’s the kind of thing project co-ordinators do. At Stock Twp., Bryant has been a diesel-engine mechanic, a loader operator, chief geologist, general contractor, office manager, maintenance man and, often enough, a “gofer” chasing into town for spare parts. He estimates that over the eight years he’s been on the project, he has spent about 10% of his time doing what an exploration geologist is supposed to be doing — directing and supervising exploration.
Head office has noticed that. “He’s more likely to have a spanner in his hand than a geologist’s hammer,” says Harry Michie, St Andrew’s vice- president of exploration. “He’s a good guy to have in a place like that.” That geology has played a decreasing role over the past few years hasn’t bothered Bryant. “You learn a helluva of a lot and you’re not in a slot. There’s always something interesting, but it’s always time consuming. You don’t work an 8-hour day, 5-day week.” He is elated, of course, that the project will soon be an operating mine.
“I think I feel happier for the people at head office in Toronto. They`ve been trying for years. They had Bachelor Lake, but it got off to a bad start.” Fortunately, the Stock Twp. property is off to a good start thanks in large measure to Bryant.
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