As enthusiasm for zero-emission technologies accelerates into the mainstream, Canada has lost one of its earliest and most ardent champions of critical minerals.
Donald Stephen Bubar, founder and longtime president of Avalon Advanced Materials passed away on July 30 at the age of 68 from neurodegenerative diseases. The mining veteran, who worked as a field geologist and with several base and precious metals projects, recognized years before most others the importance of critical minerals for the future economy. And in his decades of involvement with the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC), advocated for greater and earlier engagement with Indigenous communities.
Bubar was born in Ormstown, Que., the eldest of two children. His early years were spent in Beaconsfield, near Montreal, where his father was a lecturer at McGill University’s MacDonald College. His family moved to Truro, N.S., in 1967 when Bubar’s father John began working at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College at Dalhousie University.
His son Andrew, who was inspired by his father to become a geochemist and now works with First Nations on major projects, believes Bubar’s time in Nova Scotia formed his sense of the connection between community and development.
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