Munk heads Canada mining top 10 - Mining Journal (subscription)

Canada is one of the great mining countries in the world. With the second largest land mass in the world and an entrepreneurial junior and senior mining culture – Toronto is the mine financing capital of the world for a reason – the mineral sector has been an integral part of this country’s history.

Canada is celebrating its 150th anniversary of the signing of confederation next year – a number of widely scattered British colonies combined to form a nation in 1867 to avoid being swallowed up by the expanding American giant to the south. Since the mainstream media largely ignores the enormous contributions of the mineral sector, both current and to the historic settlement and industrialisation of many isolated regions, I felt it was time to highlight the top 10 mining men in Canadian history.

The list is only focused on mine builders not mine finders. It highlights individuals who have built corporate empires and/or who have developed isolated regions of the country with the necessary infrastructure for mines to flourish and create multi-generational jobs, shareholder wealth and great economic impact.

It also includes Americans as there really was no border between the two countries when it came to mining expertise, capital and movement of skilled labour for much of the shared history between the US and Canada.

In 1909, Noah Timmins (below) who along with his brother Henry had already become millionaires during the Cobalt Silver Boom of 1903, was instrumental in the building of the legendary Hollinger gold mine in the Porcupine Gold Rush. The Hollinger mine produced 19.3 million ounces of gold over 58 years before it closed in 1968. Noah Timmins through the Hollinger company, invested in other mining interests including the Noranda Horne smelter and gold mines in Quebec, Manitoba, Kirkland Lake, Yellowknife and the Yukon.

He was called “one of the great mining magnates of Canada” by the Toronto Star and known as the “grand old man of Canadian mining” when he died in 1936.

American-born Robert C Stanley is considered the “grandfather of the nickel industry”. As president of the International Nickel Company, he oversaw the development of the extraordinary Sudbury Basin polymetalic mines – found in 1883 during the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railroad – that produced not only nickel but copper, PGMs, cobalt, gold, silver and sulphur. Sudbury is still the richest mining district in North America today.

Until the First World War nickel was mainly used for armour-plated steel which was made into a wide variety of military products including tanks and the feared dreadnoughts, the primary battleships used by navies in Europe and the US.

Stanley (right) spearheaded a huge research and marketing division that found a large number of peacetime uses. During the Second World War, company metallurgists in the UK found the exact alloy that allowed Sir Frank Whittle’s newly invented jet engine to fly.

The number one person on the list is gold mining magnet Peter Munk. In November 2005, Munk launched a takeover bid for Canadian gold miner Placer Dome, agreeing to sell certain assets to Goldcorp. By the following spring, the takeover was complete and in less than 25 years, this upstart junior miner with two small gold operations – an Alaskan placer mine and a half interest in a small northern Ontario gold operation called Renabie – had created the largest gold mining empire in the world.

For that reason alone, Munk (pictured below with wife Melanie) deserves the top spot, as 2006 witnessed the foreign takeovers of legendary base-metal miners like Inco by Vale, Falconbridge/Noranda by Xstrata (subsequently taken over by Glencore) and Alcan swallowed by Rio Tinto in 2007. And let’s not forget the foreign takeovers of Canada’s three major steelmakers, Algoma, Dofasco and Stelco, a hollowing out of the Toronto Stock Exchange that Canada has yet to recover from!

Canada’s corporate elite – shell shocked at the frenzy of foreign takeovers in the middle of the last decade – could thank Munk, Hungarian born to a Jewish family, for saving at least one globally significant Canadian mining corporation that is still based in Toronto.

Canada recently passed the 10th anniversary of the takeover of companies Inco and Noranda/Falconbridge. Notwithstanding an enormous amount of national angst about a “hollowing out” of the Canadian resource sector, we need to highlight just a few individuals of the current generation of mine builders who may end up on some future top 10 mining people list.

Terry McGibbon (right) founded Sudbury-based FNX Mining, which discovered the extraordinarily rich Victoria deposit that has not yet been developed. FNX merged with Quadra Mining which in turn was taken over by KGHM, a Polish company. McGibbon also founded INV Metals which hopes to develop a gold property in Ecuador; TMAC Resources, that will be opening a new gold mine in Nunavut in the next few months; and guided Torex Gold’s Mexico mine through its early acquisition, exploration and development.

Sean Roosen, John Burzynski and Robert Wares, who founded and brought into production the Osisko mine – the largest openpit gold producer in Canada – which was taken over by Agnico-Eagle and Yamana Gold after a hostile attempt by Goldcorp. The three are consolidating properties in the Abitibi Greenstone region of Ontario and Quebec and are exploring for the next great gold deposit.

(Left to right below) John Burzynski, Sean Roosen and Robert Wares found and built the Osisko mine which is the largest gold producer in Canada.

For the entire list of the top 10 mining men in Canadian history, click here: http://bit.ly/2gLWkjj

*Stan Sudol is a Toronto-based communications consultant, owner/editor of the http://ift.tt/1mKtJMC  and is originally from Sudbury, Ontario, which Stan likes to remind us is one of the greatest mining towns in the world.