As a financier, company-builder and philanthropist, Seymour Schulich has few peers among his generation. He transformed the Canadian mining industry and launched one of its greatest success stories when he applied the concept of royalty investing from the oil and gas sector to the gold business and co-founded Franco-Nevada Mining Corporation with partner Pierre Lassonde.
Alfred Miller discovered copper mineralization near the headwaters of the York River in Quebec’s eastern Gaspé Peninsula in 1909, triggering a chain of events that brought Noranda Mines to the region to construct a major mining and metallurgical complex known as Gaspé Copper Mines in the 1950s.
Canada’s recent emergence as a centre of excellence for diamond exploration and production owes much to the pioneering efforts of John Williamson, a brilliant geologist from McGill University who discovered, built and operated the highly successful Williamson diamond mine - also known as Mwadui - in Tanganyika (now Tanzania).
Ned Goodman has made transformative and enduring contributions to Canada’s minerals industry and capital markets as a company-builder, merchant banker and investment advisor during a dynamic career spanning almost half a century.
Pierre Lassonde has long believed that a nation’s natural resources are not its commodities, but its people. He proved this true during his own exemplary career as a professional engineer, astute investor, innovative financier, entrepreneurial company builder, dedicated philanthropist, and senior statesman of Canada’s mining and investment industries.
Selwyn G. Blaylock devoted a working lifetime to mines and minerals and left a number of monuments to his effectiveness including: A successful Canadian mining and metallurgical enterprise, Consolidated Mining & Smelting Co. of Canada, moving upward in this organization from assayer in 1899 to president and managing director in 1939.
In a life span of 89 years, Hector Authier drank deeply from the cup of Canadian life and enriched his country in the process. All Abitibi was his cause and Val d’Or one of the effects.
Pierre Beauchemin was a towering figure on the mining horizons of the province of Quebec. As one of French Canada’s most outstanding mine makers, he was the founder of one of this country’s leading mining organizations, the Sullivan Group of companies. A rough-hewn coureur de bois raised on the shores of the St. Lawrence and in the woods of Abitibi, he had a firm faith in the mineral wealth of his native province, and pursued this faith with tenacity and perseverance.
