Part 2: I took too much risk.
“That’s the problem with this business: people drink their own Kool-Aid.”
Margaret Kent
Financial Times of Canada editorial cartoon of Peggy Witte from 1991.
We continue with Part 2 of our exclusive, in-depth interview with Stratabound Minerals chairman Margaret “Peggy” Kent, carried out by Northern Miner senior staff writer Trish Saywell on the sidelines of the PDAC convention in Toronto earlier this year. (For Part 1, click here.)
Peggy goes into detail on various aspects of the Royal Oak Mines gold mining empire at its peak in the early 1990s when she was CEO, including the controversial expropriation of the Windy Craggy copper deposit by the B.C. government to make a park, and the perils of a miner taking on too much debt.
Business partners Ross Burns and Peggy Witte (now Margaret Kent) at their Neptune booth at the PDAC convention in Toronto in the 1980s. Credit: Margaret Kent archives.
She also shares some fond remembrances of her lifelong business partner Ross Burns, who passed away two years ago, including their weird “opportunity” to invest in Bre-X Minerals before it was proved to be a fraud.
This podcast is sponsored by the Yukon Mining Alliance (www.yukonminingalliance.ca) and the Grosso Group (www.grossogroup.com).
Audio Editorial Assistant: Liam Zisman
Music Credits:
“Miami Nights – Main Theme” and “Andrea’s Theme” by Kevin MacLeod (www.incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Very interesting interview. But, you left me on the edge of my seat waiting to hear about the Golden Culvert play, and now I have to wait. That was dirty! Lol. Great job on the interview!
I would like to acknowledge Trish Saywell and the fine job she did interviewing Margaret Kent. I am glad I am getting to hear Margaret’s experiences trying to raise money for the various projects she has been involved with. Having been a citizen of Timmins since 1975 and previous to that raised in Cobalt, Ontario, I have always had an interest in exploration and mine operations. Margaret brings me back to the days of Pamour mines and Matachewan. Several ounces of gold were left behind at the Pamour property in Timmins but was uneconomical at the time Margaret was CEO. As Margaret says she just wasn’t at the helm at the right time. A case in point is that where Pamour was an underground operation and when Goldcorp took over the property, the uneconomical gold had become economical via open pit operations.
As Margaret says it was a case of bad timing, $250 ounce gold in 1999 wasn’t economical but $1300 ounce gold is economical today. Same for the Kirkland Lake/ Matachewan area.