Few modern-era exploration geologists have made the transition to company builder and mine developer as successfully as Terry MacGibbon. He applied the expertise and experience gained over a 30-year career with nickel giant Inco to build four substantial mining companies: FNX Mining, Torex Gold Resources, TMAC Resources and INV Metals.
Few events in mining history have generated as much excitement or public attention as the Lac de Gras diamond discoveries in Canada’s North during the early 1990s. Stewart (Stu) Blusson was an intellectual catalyst for this transformative event, which led to development of Ekati, Canada’s first diamond mine, and other significant discoveries.
For more than half a century, Edward Thompson has contributed to the progress and prestige of the Canadian mining industry as an explorer, mine developer, company builder, and dedicated supporter of industry causes and associations.
An imaginative exploration philosophy, sound academic approach and the resolute perseverance of a risk taker - these were the qualities that made Charles E. Michener a major factor in the success of Inco Ltd.‘s mine-finding endeavours during the middle decades of this century.
In his day, Robert J. Jowsey was known as the dean of mine makers. He was indeed a charter member of Canadian mining, a true, “dog-team and canoe” prospector, whose career flourished through the frenetic heyday of the Cobalt silver rush, the goldfields of Kirkland Lake, and the base metal plays in Manitoba.
Côme Carbonneau had an unusual career for a mining man. It straddled not only the academic and private-sector fields, but also reached into the public sector where he became the builder and developer of the novel, state-owned enterprise known as SOQUEM.
Joseph Tyrrell has been variously described as the doyen of Canadian mining men, the dean of mining, the man who conquered the Canadian North, Canada’s senior geologist, and the last of the great breed of mapmaking explorers and first of the modern mineralfinders and technologists.
Few mining men have made as many and as varied contributions to the industry as Stephen Ogryzlo. A globe-trotter long before it became fashionable, Ogryzlo’s accomplishments are legion. He explored and outlined, in a joint-venture with Freeport Sulphur, major nickel laterite deposits in Indonesia. He recognized and proved up significant, open-pit asbestos deposits at Black Lake, Quebec.
James Thomson embodied dedication to the mining industry throughout his 44-year career with the Ontario Department of Mines (ODM), later the Ontario Geological Survey (OGS). He revived, enlarged and modernized ODM, transforming it into an increasingly important body recognized in Canada and internationally for its technical excellence.
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.
