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Northern Miner – Mining Person of the Year Award

The Northern Miner’s 2005 “Mining Person of the Year” – Virginia Gold Mines’ Andre Gaumond

Since 1915, the Northern Miner weekly newspaper has chronicled Canada’s globally significant mining sector.

Intense. Passionate. Tenacious. Shrewd. Visionary. These are the words that come to mind when describing The Northern Miner’s Mining Person of the Year: Andre Gaumond, president and CEO of junior explorer Virginia Gold Mines.

Gaumond is a graduate geological engineer from Laval University in Quebec City and holds a master’s degree in economic geology from Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique.

Early in his mining career, from 1987 to 1990, Gaumond worked as a mining analyst for several financial institutions, including Pemberton Securities and Midland Walwyn.

He then joined Corpomin Management as a technical and financial consultant, where he held management positions in various mineral exploration companies.

In 1993, Gaumond reorganized Virginia Gold Mines, assumed the title of president, and moved its head office to Quebec City — not a mining centre, but a picturesque city, ideal for his young family.

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The Northern Miner’s 2006 “Mining Person of the Year” – Ivanhoe Mines’ Robert Friedland

Since 1915, the Northern Miner weekly newspaper has chronicled Canada’s globally significant mining sector.

The world’s top athletes, scholars, artists and gurus all talk one way or another about the importance of finding and then living in that narrow zone that exists at the very limits of your intellect and abilities. But “working your edge” is a trickier thing in practice: staying too close to the familiar may lead you to stagnation and complacency, while transgressing too far across your normal boundaries can leave you broken and disconnected.

The business world, too, has its share of people who’ve lived and prospered “at the edge,” and we can think of no better example in our own industry than The Northern Miner’s “Mining Person of the Year” for 2006: Ivanhoe Mines executive chairman and founder Robert M. Friedland.

While there were other worthy candidates in this very busy year for the minerals industry, Friedland’s luring of British major Rio Tinto in October into a partnership to develop Ivanhoe’s Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold project in Mongolia’s South Gobi region struck us as a defining moment in one of the world’s biggest mineral-development success stories of the past decade.

(We’ve been covering Oyu Tolgoi’s astonishingly rapid advancement under Friedland’s direction since we first visited it in 2001, and its latest parameters can be seen on page 2 of this issue. Look next week in these pages for another in-depth, on-site report.)

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The Northern Miner’s 2007 “Mining Persons of the Year” – Agnico-Eagle’s Sean Boyd and Eberhard Scherkus

Since 1915, the Northern Miner weekly newspaper has chronicled Canada’s globally significant mining sector.

No company better embodies the spirit of Canada’s plucky gold mining sector today than Toronto-based Agnico-Eagle Mines, with its technical competence, unshakeable faith in gold, independent streak, and proven ability to execute truly visionary growth.

While Agnico-Eagle’s astonishing success over the past decade is the result of a team effort, the pair who have been leading the company in the boardroom and at the mine site during this exceptional period are the co-winners of our Mining Person of the Year award for 2007: Agnico-Eagle’s vice-chairman and CEO Sean Boyd, and president and chief operating officer Eberhard (Ebe) Scherkus.

Unlike the peripatetic career paths of many in the business, both Boyd and Scherkus have spent most of their working lives at Agnico-Eagle, and have maintained an admirable humility about their lofty positions and seven-figure take-home pay packages, perhaps having been tempered by living through several gold price cycles and seeing fate dish out equal amounts of heartache and glory.

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The Northern Miner’s 2008 “Mining Persons of the Year” – Aurelian Resourses’ Patrick Anderson, Keith Barron, Sephen Leary – by John Cumming

 John Cumming MSc (Geology) is the editor of the Northern Miner, Canada’s global mining newspaper.  jcumming@northernminer.com

Our “Mining Person of the Year” award for 2008 goes to the trio of Patrick Anderson, Keith Barron and Stephen Leary for their leading roles in the discovery, swift development and sale of Aurelian Resources’ spectacular, 13.7-million-oz. Fruta del Norte gold deposit, part of the Condor project in remote, southeastern Ecuador.

All three men are exploration geologists who brought varied backgrounds and plenty of passion to the task at hand at Fruta del Norte (FDN).

Anderson graduated from the University of Toronto’s geology program and, since then, has racked up over 14 years of experience as a geologist, entrepreneur and business executive. He’s worked for a variety of mining and exploration companies and consulting firms on gold, base metals and diamond projects in South America, North America and Europe.

Anderson was co-founder, president, CEO and a director of Toronto-based Aurelian Resources, prior to its takeover by Kinross Gold — a $1.2-billion offer launched in July and completed in September. Anderson now sits on the boards of Noront Resources, Colossus Minerals and U3O8 Corp.

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