Few geologists have made the transition from the field to the boardroom more successfully than Maureen Jensen, or contributed as much to revitalize Canada’s mining and investment industries. She is best known as the first female to head the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC), where she championed policies to improve investor protection and encourage diversity for executives and directors of public companies.

The greatest discoveries are transformative, and Brian Meikle is one of only a few modern-era geologists who achieved this pinnacle of success.

Viola MacMillan had two careers in the Canadian mining industry. First, over a period that spanned four decades, she and her husband teamed up as prospectors and developers of several substantial mineral deposits across the country.

Minefinders get the glory, but it is the minebuilders who get the ore. For 65 years, while others discovered and financed the deposits, John Maclsaac applied his energies to breaking the first rock, sinking the first shafts and preparing the mines for their first production.

James McCrea was instrumental in building Dome Mines into one of the giants of the Canadian mining industry. He was responsible for acquiring and developing Dome’s Sigma mine in northwestern Quebec in the early 1930s, which has been producing gold for 56 years, and the Campbell Red Lake gold mine, one of Canada’s premier gold producers and also still in production.

In the fall of 1926, a memorial tablet was unveiled at Cobalt, dedicated to Willet Green Miller, “provincial geologist of Ontario, who gave to Cobalt its name and place among the great mining camps of the world; who read the secret of the rocks and opened the portal for the outpouring of their wonderful riches”.