Technical innovation spurred the development of Sudbury, Ont., as the world’s premier mining and metallurgical centre. Louis Secondo Renzoni, as a chemical scientist working on the nickel refining operation of Inco Ltd. for more than three decades, did much to further the company’s fortunes and those of the entire industry.
Richard Valentine Porritt was the man who set the pace and style that marked a “Noranda man” - tough and fast-moving.
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.
Joseph Errington embodied the spirit of mining prior to the Second World War as the country pulled itself out of the depths of the Depression in the 1930s and mining became a prime force in creating a prosperous and bustling postwar Canada.
During his 43 years with The Northern Miner, a weekly newspaper, Maurice Brown has been an enthusiastic supporter of the Canadian mining industry. His reporting on mineral discoveries, operating mines and the people who find, develop and operate them, has enhanced the industry’s reputation for openness and facilitated the free flow of information that has helped make it a world leader.
The Kerr Addison mine near Virginiatown, Ontario ranks among the top gold mines in Canada, producing at its peak more than half a million ounces of gold every year. No one deserves more credit for turning the mine into the enormously successful venture it became than William S. Row.
It has been said of Frederick R. Archibald that he had a genius for devising creative metallurgical solutions and transforming those solutions into operating process facilities.
Arthur Stollery was a rare combination of prospector, mine finder and entrepreneur. He played a key role in finding two great orebodies, contributed to the development of both Denison Mines and Camflo Mines, and inspired others by his leadership, dedication and personal integrity.
Canada is known as a centre of excellence in mining geophysics, and much of the credit for this achievement goes to Harold Seigel, an extraordinary geophysicist who conceived and pioneered several new methods of mineral exploration.
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”.
