A lively story of luck and perseverance in the building of a major mining company. A century ago, a prospector discovered gold at Ontario's Kirkland Lake and a son was born to British immigrants in Saskatchewan. The boy--Norman Bell Keevil--went on to become a renowned scientist, teacher, and prospector, discovering a small but high-grade copper mine in Ontario. Parlaying that into control of the Kirkland Lake gold mine fifty years later, he formed the fledgling mining company Teck Corporation. In Never Rest on Your Ores, Keevil's son Norman, also a geoscientist, recounts how over the next fifty years, a growing team of like-minded engineers and entrepreneurs built Canada's largest diversified mining company. In candid detail he tells the story of a company and its makers, of the discovery and creation of mines, the mechanics of industry financing, and the role that mergers and acquisitions play in a volatile environment. Along the way he meets fascinating captains of industry and politicians not only in Canada, but in the United States and around the world. Finding an ore body--rock that holds valuable metals and minerals--and promoting its development in order to finance and create a mine, most often in hard-to-access wilderness, is complicated work, comparable to locating and extracting a needle in a very messy haystack. Underlying this history is a constant need to replenish the ore, and this need drives the people involved. A detailed and revealing history of a company that he helped to grow and lead for many years, Norman Keevil's Never Rest on Your Ores is both entertaining and instructive, a rare insider's account of an industry that has been crucial to the building of this country.--$cProvided by publisher.
Authors
- Bibliography, etc. Note
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 461-462) and index
- Control Number Identifier
- CaOOCEL
- Date published
- 2017.
- Description conventions
- rda
- Dewey Decimal Classification Number
- 338.7/6220971
- Dewey Decimal Edition Number
- 23
- Distributor
- Canadian Electronic Library (Firm),
- General Note
- Issued as part of the desLibris books collection
- Geographic Area Code
- n-cn---
- ISBN
- 9780773552012 9780773551558
- LCCN
- HD9506.C24
- LCCN Item number
- T43 2017eb
- Modifying agency
- CaBNVSL
- Original cataloging agency
- CaOONL
- Physical Description | Extent
- 1 electronic text (xviii, 474 pages, 16 pages of unnumbered plates)
- Published in
- Ottawa, Ontario
- Publisher or Distributor Number
- CaOOCEL
- Rights
- Access restricted to authorized users and institutions
- System Control Number
- (CaBNVSL)kck00238019 (OCoLC)1007861299 (CaOOCEL)453342
- System Details Note
- Mode of access: World Wide Web
- Transcribing agency
- CaOONL
Table of Contents
- Cover 1
- NEVER REST ON YOUR ORES 2
- Title 4
- Copyright 5
- Dedication 6
- CONTENTS 8
- Preface 10
- Acknowledgments 12
- List of Characters 14
- Maps 20
- Introduction 26
- PART ONE: BEGINNINGS 30
- 1 Discovering Gold 32
- 2 The Keevils from England 45
- 3 Discovering Copper at Temagami 61
- 4 What Happened to the Trilobites? 73
- 5 From Temagami to Teck Corporation 90
- Epilogue, Part One 101
- PART TWO: INTERMEZZO 102
- 6 From Silver to Lobsters 104
- 7 The Texas Gulf Discovery at Timmins 114
- 8 Early Prospecting in Chile 124
- 9 When Teck was an Oil Company 133
- 10 Feeling the Stones in the 1960s 137
- Epilogue, Part Two 147
- PART THREE: THE NEW TECK TAKES SHAPE 150
- 11 Evolving Strategy, People, and Prospects 152
- 12 Divertimento: Tales from the Wild West 162
- 13 Consolidation 174
- 14 Building Two More New Mines 178
- 15 The Song of Afton 185
- 16 Dave Barrett and the “Socialist Hordes” 196
- 17 The Turbulent Seventies 204
- 18 Bullmoose Coal, Saving Order from Chaos 221
- 19 China, a Giant Stirring 237
- Epilogue, Part Three 250
- PART FOUR: A SEA CHANGE IN THE WORLD 254
- 20 Heady Days as an Era nears Its End 256
- 21 Managing through an Unprecedented Recession 264
- 22 The Highmont Mine and Metal Prices 270
- 23 Hemlo and the Gold Hustlers 277
- 24 How Highland Valley Copper Evolved 292
- 25 Acquiring Cominco, the First Stage 303
- 26 New Mines at Red Dog and Louvicourt 313
- Epilogue, Part Four 338
- PART FIVE: THE 1990S, A SLOW ERA FOR MINING 340
- 27 Returning to Chile with Quebrada Blanca 342
- 28 Financial Problems in Cominco 354
- 29 The More Things Change … 360
- 30 Expanding in Metallurgical Coal 363
- 31 Prospects Come and Go 371
- 32 Bob Hallbauer, a Leader Gone 383
- 33 The Saga of Diamond Fields 385
- 34 Stranger Still, the Bre-X Tale 398
- 35 The Sumitomo Connection 410
- 36 Finding Antamina, a Jewel in the Andes 418
- Epilogue, Part Five 437
- PART SIX: BEFORE THE BOOM 438
- 37 Noodling Strategy 440
- 38 Biting the Bullet on Cominco 445
- 39 Consolidating Canadian Coal 455
- 40 Denouement 465
- 41 The Changing of the Guard 474
- 42 The Last Decade 478
- PART SEVEN: OBSERVATIONS AND REFLECTIONS 486
- 43 Crossing the Stream by Feeling the Stones 488
- Riding into the Sunset 496
- Bibliography 500
- Index 502
