The Canadian Mining Hall of Fame (CMHF) celebrated its 20th anniversary with a star-studded line-up of industry movers and shakers on January 17th 2008, at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel in downtown Toronto. The annual dinner and induction ceremony is one of the social highlights of the mining industry which has a lot to be celebrating about this year in addition to the five new members that were inducted that evening – Carroll O. Brawner, Johannes J. Brummer, Ernest Craig, Chester F. Millar and David A. Thompson.

In total, including this year’s inductees, 135 individuals have been honored for their outstanding lifetime achievements to the benefit of the country’s minerals industry.

Many people and politicians still think the mining sector is a boring, polluting, low-tech industry that should be delegated to the dustbins of history. A quick review of the many prospectors, metallurgists, geo-scientists, and corporate financiers in the hall of fame, whose discoveries and technological advances have made Canada a global mining powerhouse, would quickly change those negative perceptions of the industry.

Stories of intense courage, guts, greed and glory. Stories of passionate believers with quiet and tenacious determination. Stubborn characters who would not give up. These are the people who helped populate our isolated north, created enormous amounts of shareholder and corporate wealth and jobs for hundreds of thousands if not millions of Canadians.

That is why the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame is so important. It is the keeper of the flame ensuring that the next generation understands and is justifiably proud of the enormous contributions and debt we owe to those that preceded us.

The four main sponsors of the Hall of Fame are the Northern Miner, the Mining Association of Canada (MAC), the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) and the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (CIM) which also publishes an industry magazine. Read the rest of this entry »

Carroll O. (”Chuck”) Brawner is known and respected worldwide for his contributions to open-pit mining and geotechnical engineering.

He earned his reputation as a foremost authority in these fields as the result of professional experience gained over half a century in no less than 40 nations and all the world’s continents, including Antarctica. In 1963, he co-founded a consulting firm that provided technical assistance to hundreds of open-pit mines and mineral projects in Canada and around the world. Golder Brawner and Associates subsequently evolved into Golder Associates, an internationally recognized firm with multi-disciplinary expertise. Read the rest of this entry »

Johannes J. (”Joe”) Brummer was one of Canada’s most accomplished exploration geologists. During a multi-faceted career that began with great promise in Africa’s Copper Belt and spanned five eventful decades in Canada, he continually pioneered the development of innovative exploration techniques in the fields of geochemistry, Pleistocene geology and geophysics. His openness to innovation and willingness to employ new and original exploration techniques and geological theories contributed to the discovery of at least 10 mines or mineral deposits on two continents. Read the rest of this entry »

Ernest Craig was the first general manager of Falconbridge Nickel Mines, building a mine and a townsite in the late 1920s that became the foundation for the international powerhouse that now operates under the Xstrata banner. One of 12 children born in Kearney, Ont., Craig left school early in search of employment. He found his calling at age 19, when he began working in the emerging mining camps of Eastern Canada.

As he helped build and manage various mines, his talents caught the attention of the legendary mine-finder, Thayer Lindsley, who appointed him the first general manager of Falconbridge Nickel Mines in 1928, the year the company was founded. Read the rest of this entry »

Chester Millar launched an illustrious career in the mining industry in the mid-1960s by discovering a copper-gold deposit that became the highly successful Afton mine, near Kamloops, B.C. He founded Afton Mines intending to develop his discovery, but the company was ultimately acquired on the open market by Teck Corp. (now Teck Cominco), which operated the open-pit mine from 1987 until its closure in 1997. Read the rest of this entry »

For more than a quarter century, David Thompson contributed to the spectacular growth and prudent financial management of two of Canada’s oldest continuously operating mining companies. In 1986, while vice-president of finance for Teck Corp., he helped structure a transaction in which Teck joined forces with foreign partners to buy 31% of Cominco Ltd. from Canadian Pacific for $280 million. The two companies merged in 2001 to form Teck Cominco, a world leader in the production of zinc and metallurgical coal and a major producer of copper, gold and specialty metals. Read the rest of this entry »

In January 2007, Teck Cominco Limited President and CEO Donald R. Lindsay announced a $10 million donation to the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto to create three galleries highlighting minerals and the fascinating history of Canadian mining.

The donation – the largest corporate gift in the ROM’s history – will establish the Teck Cominco Suite of Earth Science Galleries, the Teck Cominco Endowed Chair in Mineralogy and the Teck Cominco Digital Education Module in Earth Sciences, as well as create a new home for the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame.

At the time of the donation, Lindsay said, “We are proud to join the Museum and the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame in educating students and delighting Museum visitors with the wonders of the earth sciences.” He continued, “Bringing the Hall of Fame to the new ROM is a natural fit, complemented by exhibits that investigate the link between Earth’s resources and everyday life. The ROM has boldly embraced a philosophy of innovation that resonates deeply with Teck Cominco.”

The following speech was given by William Thorsell, Director and CEO of the Royal Ontario Museum updating the audience at the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame induction ceremony and dinner about the organization’s new home. Read the rest of this entry »

Among the many attendees to the 20th Hall of Fame dinner, one table had much to be proud of. The Women in Mining team who participated in last fall’s Weekend to End Breast Cancer in Toronto were also celebrating their status as the top fundraising team achieving a record total of $200, 707 for this worthy cause.

During the September 7-9, 2007, weekend, over 5,300 women and men joined forces in Toronto to walk 60 kilometres in a bold display of courage and commitment. It was a weekend of hope, as they honoured lives lost, celebrated survivors, and helped bring in funds for breast cancer research as well as care to those who so desperately need it.

The Women in Mining team successfully tackled the offices of Canada’s biggest mining companies, consultants and suppliers for donations to fight breast cancer and succeeded beyond their wildest dreams considering their late start. Read the rest of this entry »

I am an Inco brat. I was born and raised in the shadows of those tall industrial smokestacks that tower over the city of Sudbury, Canada. In the days when I turned 18 in the late 1970s, if you didn’t go to university, then it was almost a rite of passage to work for “Mother Inco,” as it was affectionately (or derisively) known.

For most students today, the prospects of a good-paying summer job to help finance post-secondary education has become an elusive dream. Skyrocketing tuition fees combined with minimum-wage work equals enormous debt at graduation. Read the rest of this entry »

Stan Sudol is a self-described “Inco Brat.” He was born in Sudbury, Canada, the richest mining district in North America and among the top ten most significant globally. Sudol grew up in Sudbury during the 1960s and 1970s, where his father and most of his neighbours worked for Inco Limited (now Vale Inco).

Sudol worked for Inco’s Clarabell Mill for one year during 1976/77 and underground at the the company’s Frood-Stobie mine in the summer of 1980. The hard-rock mining culture of the Sudbury Basin has left a tremendously positive impact on him.

Based in Toronto, Canada, Sudol works as a communications consultant, executive speech writer and policy analyst. He has been writing a mining column for the past four years that currently appears in Sudbury’s Northern Life newspaper. Articles and columns have been published in the Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, National Post and regional papers and magazines.

Sudol has been interviewed on CBC Radio, CHML, Radio-Canada and the natural resources television station IDNR-TV. His columns have also been posted on Australian and British websites.