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The entrepreneurial part
won out, and Christie served as
president and/or director of a
handful of mining companies,
including Vancouver-based
Klondike Gold Corp. Eventu-
ally, she became CEO of Banyan
Gold Corp., which has employ-
ees across the country and
its main exploration areas in
the Yukon.
Christie, who is based in Van-
couver, describes finding one of
the company's main sites, the
AurMac Gold Project, by pur-
chasing the alluvial rights (the
ownership of new land formed
naturally along riverbanks due
to sediment carried through
the water) years beforehand. "I
bought the surface gold—that's
how I knew about it and we set
out to acquire it and made the
discovery in 2019," she says.
That move propelled the com-
pany toward a peak market cap
of around $110 million. That
has backed off a bit now to
around $75 million, but it's still
a big uptick from where it once
was. "There was a time when
we were a $3-million market
cap company," says Christie.
"It's a pretty interesting story,
I think, to have built something
that quickly."
She's also the co-founder
and president of the Victoria
Gold Yukon Student Encour-
agement Society, an indepen-
dent charity that works to raise
awareness and funds to sup-
port student success across the
Yukon. "Sometimes the thing
that most changes a kid's career
is one single caring adult that
makes the connection," Christie
says. "For me, that's been the
greatest success. And I've seen
it over and over again."–N.C.
