John Cumming MSc (Geology) is the editor of the Northern Miner, Canada’s global mining newspaper.  jcumming@northernminer.com

Our “Mining Person of the Year” award for 2008 goes to the trio of Patrick Anderson, Keith Barron and Stephen Leary for their leading roles in the discovery, swift development and sale of Aurelian Resources’ spectacular, 13.7-million-oz. Fruta del Norte gold deposit, part of the Condor project in remote, southeastern Ecuador.

All three men are exploration geologists who brought varied backgrounds and plenty of passion to the task at hand at Fruta del Norte (FDN).

Anderson graduated from the University of Toronto’s geology program and, since then, has racked up over 14 years of experience as a geologist, entrepreneur and business executive. He’s worked for a variety of mining and exploration companies and consulting firms on gold, base metals and diamond projects in South America, North America and Europe.

Anderson was co-founder, president, CEO and a director of Toronto-based Aurelian Resources, prior to its takeover by Kinross Gold — a $1.2-billion offer launched in July and completed in September. Anderson now sits on the boards of Noront Resources, Colossus Minerals and U3O8 Corp.

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John Cumming MSc (Geology) is the editor of the Northern Miner, Canada’s global mining newspaper.  jcumming@northernminer.com

The week ended July 19, the 29th trading week of 2008, kicked off with a surprise announcement by the Ontario government that it would “protect” at least 225,000 sq. km, or roughly half of the province’s boreal forest.

The scope of the proposal is broad. It includes: banning economic activity within at least half the province’s boreal forest; holding meetings across the province with every conceivable stakeholder to come up with new land-use plans; giving local aboriginal communities veto power over proposed economic activities; revamping the way resource businesses are taxed, including more taxes going to local aboriginal communities; and building up bureaucracies to create and implement land-use plans.

The government also restated its intention to rewrite the province’s mining act before 2010, including changing the process for staking and exploration. It starts reviewing the act this August.

Given that you can’t trust anything Premier “I-won’t-cut-your-taxes-but- I-won’t-raise-them-either” McGuinty says, and that his professed environmentalism is driven by pure political expediency, figuring out what this latest proposal means for miners in Ontario is tricky.

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