Franklin Pickard was a miner’s miner and the first Sudbury native to head up a major nickel company. He joined Falconbridge as a young process labourer and rose through the ranks to become the company’s President and Chief Executive Officer.
Aptly described as “the soul” of Barrick Gold, Robert Smith is best known as the stalwart of one of the most successful partnerships in mining history. While Chairman Peter Munk supplied the vision and business talent that made Barrick one of the world’s largest and most profitable gold producers, Smith built, led and inspired the technical team that transformed Munk’s vision into reality.
Known by his contemporaries as “the man who made the Malartics”, James Paul Norrie combined ambition, energy, instinct and an extraordinary entrepreneurial spirit to discover and open mines in the Abitibi region of northwestern Quebec, including Perron, East Malartic and Malartic Goldfields, to name but a few.
Canada’s enviable reputation for engineering excellence owes much to Roland Kilborn, whose vision, technical skills and entrepreneurial spirit led to the founding of one of the nation’s foremost engineering consulting companies.
Robert Isaacs is best-known for his role in the discovery and development of the massive lead-zinc deposits in New Brunswick that became the cornerstone of Brunswick Mining and Smelting. A talented mining engineer, he also had a hand in financing and developing many smaller producers, particularly in Newfoundland, where he developed a reputation for building mines with low capital and operating costs.
Most follow one path, but John Paris Bickell commanded several successful careers during his extraordinary life. He opened a brokerage firm at the age of 23 and was a millionaire by 30. In 1919, he left the investment business to become president and, later, chairman of McIntyre-Porcupine Mines, one of Ontario’s first and most important gold producers.
Marsh Cooper is best known as the driving force in the acquisition and development of many of the deposits and mines that transformed Falconbridge into a global nickel giant. He guided the company through one of its strongest periods of growth, brought new mines into production and, during the 1970s, oversaw the completion of Falconbridge Dominica’s ferronickel plant in the Dominican Republic.
During a distinguished career that spanned more than five decades, John Fairfield Thompson led Inco through a period of phenomenal growth and immense social, economic and technical change. As a young scientist, he explored the potential of nickel and helped discover new uses for nickel-based alloys.
As the founder and builder of Barrick Gold, Peter Munk has few peers in Canadian mining history. In less than two decades, he turned a small Canadian producer into one of the world’s largest and most respected mining companies.
Dick Ennis was among a select number of larger-than-life personalities that appeared in the early days of the twentieth century when an explosion of mineral discoveries launched Canadian mining on a wave of unprecedented growth.
