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Wallace, Idaho, 10th March 2006 – Name a nationality, name a colour, name a creed or a religion or a place of national origin – we were all there, under the biggest tent on the planet, the 74th annual Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada’s bash at the Toronto Metro Centre this past week. The PDAC convention, concluded 8th March after a four-day run, was still registering folks the morning of its last day.
Fourteen thousand people, people! Seven hundred exhibitors. Fifty nationalities. All under a tent over which slogan is emblazoned: “Mining’s Back!” And it was the cat’s-ass. Stella at Jeff Christian’s at the Royal Yofk. Scallops l’orange and high-octane Chianti over at Rob McEwen’s new digs on 99 George. Fortuna forking out sushi and salsa at the Intercontinental. Every IPO, every private placement, oversubscribed. Like a closeted decorated Vietnam veteran finally recognized for his heroism but having had to lurk in misunderstood shame, unappreciated for two decades, Mining is indeed back! And with a vengeance.
Four full convention bays, each of which could house the approximate population of Idaho, festooned from the mighty to the hungry. The Chinese took over an entire wall of the trade show to strut their stuff and serve free groceries, and not to be outdone, so did Brazil. This was the largest mining convention ever held on Planet Earth – a rock’n’roll ode to dirt. It was Woodstock without the mud or the weed.
Silver, gold, platinum, uranium – take your pick, meester. Or can I hook you up with a little zinc and lead? Have some copper, copper? Psst, meester, wanna buy some moly? Hey, you, down here in Nigeria we are open for business, bring your Longyears and stay a spell. Dinner with an old Lucky Friday hand, Tom Fudge, now digging for uranium with Concentric Energy.
Yes, Mining’s Back. We are reminded of Ronald Reagan’s remarks, when asked why he left the Democratic Party. He responded that it was a lot like the wife, who asked her husband, Why don’t we ever sit together tight in the pickup anymore? To which the hubby replied, “I’m not the one who moved.” Mining never left the country; the country left mining.
We are slurping scallops at Rob McEwen’s shindig with MaryAnn Mihychuk, professional geologist, masters in science, formerly elected Minister of Mining for the Province of Manitoba, now of PDAC staff and director of this association’s regulatory affairs. She wonders if, as in Canada, there is now down In the States some popular resistance to the Greenie movement. That the Greenies maybe have shot their Jane Fonda wad at the mining industry, and that the public now perceives this NGO crap for the fraud that it is. Being from Idaho, with an anti-mining governor like Dork Kempthorne, we cannot reassure her that all is well in the house of politics. Kempthorne folded to the EPA Nazis as his second act as governor – a boutique politician who prefers ski runs to incline shafts, a Republican John Kerry on a wind-surfing board.
Ah, but she presses, when gas goes to $6 and copper to $10, will anybody wonder if the Green movement is not responsible? No, we reply, the Greenies are not responsible for the 1972-era Vietnam Vet status of the mining industry. Only the Greenies’ whores in the Statehouse and the White House deserve to take the fall for that.
The Greenies’ powers pale under the enthusiasm that was Pee-Dac. Guys are going after rocks again, the long-extinct toadstool be damned. Beneath the hardpan there is real wealth. And behind those endeavours is real capital. It’s everywhere but in the United Snakes of America. While Canada sat out the Iraq War and the Great Crusades, the U.S. is sitting out the mining boom. Canadians are now responsible for 50% of the exploration ventures worldwide. Thirty percent of the listings on the TSX are mining advents. Four hundred and fifty of the 700 exhibitors at PDAC this year were juniors. You were there or you were square.
Simple reason for all this, explains PDAC’s executive director Tony Andrews: Mining and resources are big business in Canada; in the U.S., those same industries don’t match up to an IPO for Krispy Kreme. “We’ve reached a critical mass in Toronto,” says he. Even Prince Michael of Kent would agree.
So Canada will make silver in all parts of the world. The USA will make doughnuts. Sucks, don’t it? Unless you are a miner, of course . . .
By David Bond, Editor
The Silver Valley Mining
Journal
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