Mineral Exploration

Issue #1: The BC & Yukon Chamber of Mines annual general meeting review revealed how companies were grappling with environmental and social issues. 16 S P R I N G 2 0 1 6 T he 1981 inaugural issue of Mining Review (now Mineral Exploration) confirms that mineral exploration and mining companies were grap- pling with environmental and social issues long before toolkits and other resources for applying corporate social responsibility (CSR) were readily available. Summing up comments from a panel of mine operators at the BC & Yukon Chamber of Mines annual general meeting (the predecessor to AME BC's Roundup), the Review reported that "meeting environmental controls and standards" was one of the major "problems" inherent in almost any new mine. Dave Barr, then vice-president of DuPont of Canada Exploration Ltd., noted that more than 25 permits were required for the newly opened Baker gold-silver mine in the Toodoggone region of B.C., resulting in added costs and delays. Environmental concerns were heightened as the air-supported mine was situated near B.C.'s largest caribou preserve in the Spatsizi/Stikine wilderness. The company had to hire wild- life consultants to carry out long-term studies and prepare an environmental report to prove that the mine and the caribou could coexist. "Part of the objective," Barr stated, "is to lay groundwork for future operations in similar situations." The groundwork paid off, as exploration in the Toodoggone con- tinued well into the mid-1980s, culminating with the opening of the Lawyers (Cheni) gold-silver mine in 1989. Barr also helped lay the groundwork for Canada's first exploration safety manual, released in 1981 by the Chamber. (The manual has since been reissued several times, with more than 30,000 copies distributed by 2015.) Subsequent issues of the Review reveal that the environment took a back seat to the economy after a brutal recession hit in 1982. Gold discoveries in Ontario's Hemlo camp came as wel- come relief, as half of the 130,000 mine workers in Canada had been facing some type of layoff. By the mid-1980s, junior com- panies were back in the game with a series of impressive discov- eries, notably in the "Golden Triangle" of northwestern B.C. First Nations signalled they wanted resource jobs and ben- efits too, and a standoff between operators of the Golden Bear mine near Dease Lake, B.C., and the Tahltan Nation resulted in the first impact benefit agreement ever signed in the province. THIRTY-FIVE YEARS OF FRONT-LINE REPORTING FROM MINING REVIEW AND MINERAL EXPLORATION From yesterday's problems to today's opportunities By ViVian Danielson Mining Review subsequently reported that the Golden Bear project was "living proof that native land claims and the mining industry don't have to be on a collision course in B.C." In the late 1980s, Mining Review featured numerous articles about proposed land withdrawals for parks and wilderness areas, most of them critical in tone. Nick Carter, outgoing Chamber president in 1989, warned that the mining indus- try "must assume a proactive rather than a reactive role with respect to the important issue of land use." By the early 1990s, however, the industry faced another downturn and came under siege on other fronts. The New Democratic Party ( NDP) won the 1991 election in B.C., and media-savvy green groups were waging big-budget campaigns against forestry and mining. The world-class Windy Craggy copper-cobalt-gold deposit was locked up as part of a park, a loss aptly described by Mining Review as "a crushing blow to B.C.'s mining industry." In 1999, the Chamber withdrew from the "dysfunctional" NDP land-planning process, citing the "major damage" it was doing to the rural economy of B.C. By this point, many companies were pursuing foreign projects in more mining- friendly jurisdictions. After a period of reflection, the Chamber

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