http://www.canadianminingjournal.com/
It is time for me to retire. I was 25 when CMJ hired me; now I am turning 70 on Nov. 4, and I have chosen the end of that month to call a halt. Forty-five years seems like a good run as an observer of an industry I am passionate about and that has become a large part of my life. While retirement is a tectonic shift for me, I’m sure our geologist friends won’t be offering new theories about continental drift.
The first mine I visited was Sidbec Normines iron mine near Fermont, Que. It has come and gone, and iron ore production is coming back to that corner of the world. The first time I went to Saskatchewan I was underground at the Main mine in Flin Flon, Man. The first gold mine I visited was the old McIntyre mine in Schumacher, Ont.… I’m dating myself.
Some of our loyal readers probably weren’t born when I took up the pen – later to be computer. For those old enough to remember back to the mid-’70s, they will recall that women in mining were a novelty.
For a few years I was the only female at the Canadian Mineral Processors meeting in Ottawa every January. My streak was broken when Judy Erola, the federal junior minister for mining, addressed the assembly.
I was once told by the superintendent giving me a tour that I should tuck my hair up under my hard hat because the cage tender we were about to meet held to the old superstition that women in mines were bad luck.
For the rest of this column: http://www.canadianminingjournal.com/features/a-tectonic-shift-45-years-in-the-making/