https://www.northernminer.com/
Great Bear Resources president and CEO Chris Taylor was the stand-out choice for The Northern Miner’s Mining Person of the Year award for 2021.
The 44-year-old structural and economic geologist not only sold the company and its Dixie gold project in Ontario’s Red Lake district to Kinross Gold in December for $1.8 billion, but in the three years of due diligence leading up to the acquisition, Taylor and his team also managed to set off what he calls the “largest staking rush” in Red Lake’s history.
Like many tales of glory, it took guts. Taylor’s efforts to keep his dream of Dixie alive involved years of hard work and laying his own money on the line. At first he borrowed funds from family and friends just to keep the lights on and the rent paid in the dark years of 2013 and 2014. But in order to come up with the initial payment for the Dixie project in 2014-2015, Taylor had to rack up an enormous line of credit against his house.
“When we couldn’t raise the money and I was going hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt my hair started falling out in chunks,” Taylor recalls in an interview, adding the strain also put pressure on his heart. “It was basically so much stress building up that my body was shutting down under the pressure of being able to finance the project.”
For the rest of this article: https://www.northernminer.com/editorial/chris-taylor-is-our-mining-person-of-the-year-for-2021/1003839353/