TNM Blast from the Past: PDAC’s Royal York boom years

The Northern Miner’s coverage of the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada convention in the late 1980s – reprinted below – showed Toronto’s Royal York Hotel at the top of a flow-through-driven drill rush.

Record attendance came as Ottawa weighed tax changes that threatened the incentive many juniors relied on to raise money.

The industry was still rattled by the fatal shooting of stock promoter Joseph LaMarche in the hotel lobby a year earlier and security was tighter.

Even so, PDAC kept the spotlight on discovery, naming Kirkland Lake prospector Walter Baker Prospector of the Year for work that helped point the way to Ontario’s Hemlo camp.

Four decades on, PDAC still tracks the cycle: when risk capital flows, the aisles fill up.