Rex Murphy gives pep talk at Roundup

The 29th annual Association for Mineral Exploration BC Roundup conference wrapped up in Vancouver with a record 8,320 delegates in attendance.

Along with a banner year for participation, the conference was notable for celebrating the first 100 years of AME BC’s existence. The association was formed as the Vancouver Mining Club on April 23, 1912, as “a non-profit institution, organized to foster mining in British Columbia,” and today continues to promote a healthy environment and business climate for the mineral exploration industry.

It was as part of this celebration that Rex Murphy, social commentator and author, presented a powerful and rousing ode to the importance of the mining industry at the final Roundup luncheon.

In his own captivating style, Murphy spoke of how the jobs the industry creates are a source of integrity and dignity for those able to support themselves and their families. He told of the pride he saw in those who truly had the hard life, working at the Buchans Mine near his home town in Newfoundland some fifty years ago.

“That punishing labour is also a glory,” Murphy said. “It wasn’t done because they were herded like some donkeys and chased down a mine . . . it was a choice of doing the most arduous, the most gruelling, most crucifying kind of work, for which they could get a salary, for which they could claim justified wages. And that on their own, on their own, they could feed their family, they could build a house, they could have kids.”

He said that today, while working conditions have improved immensely, it is still tough to leave home to work in the remote mines and oil fields, and the principle still applies.

“The core thing, the core: they’re earning their own. And earn is better, always.”

Murphy also touched on society’s staggering progress in health, technology, education and wealth, all of which have depended, and continue to depend, on the mining industry.

“We’ve built something really, really good, something magnificently splendid,” Murphy said. “And at the centre of it, the structure that supports it . . . is the stuff we get from the earth, the necessary things to build the machines, to form the technology, to get the power.

“You’re involved in a cardinal industry. You’re involved in a central endeavour that is central to the function of the entire society.”

With that in mind, he warned not to listen too much to the naysayers, to those who reject industry as a whole, to those who have no other purpose but to build impediments.

“It is really, really easy to say ‘no’; it’s really, really, really hard, to do,” Murphy said. “Those that are doing things should not be overruled by those whose only skill is the mouthing of the word ‘no’. Don’t buy the indictments of your enemies.

The audience gave him an enthusiastic standing ovation.