Okay so we're about to begin an interview with Peter Dimmel. It is November 30, 2015. We are in St. John's, Newfoundland, and the interviewer will be William McRae. So just to begin, could you please state your full name? It's Peter Murray Dimmel. And your age? 69. And where were you born? I was born in Clacton on Sea, Essex, UK. Okay. What did your parents do as a child? Dad was a Canadian forces, was in the Canadian army during the war. My mom was a war bride. We came over here after the war. She came over after the war. How old were you when you moved to Canada? First time I was a year or two. It was five times back and forth before I was 10. And on ocean liners of course. So I had, it was an interesting time. I don't remember much of it, but I remember living in the UK and just outside London, a place called New Maldon, and going, taking soccer lessons and that type of thing. But I don't remember a heck of a lot more than that. So when I came back to Canada, I started in grade four. Okay. And you kept moving back and forth because of your dad? Yeah. Dad was, it was the end of the war. He came back. He got out of the forces for a bit, became an Indian agent of all things. He attained an A.K. Indian reserve near Desaranto and Bay of Quinty area. And then he actually got rejoined. The forces was posted to the UK one time and posted to Germany another time.  It's the first time out of the UK. For sure. And you as a child, other than, I mean, the first few years spending a lot of time back and forth, let's see, what were your, what were your past times? What were your go-to activities? Well, when I was, we lived in Desaranto and then we moved to Kingston. I moved to Desaranto after grade nine or after grade nine and moved to Kingston and lived there. I did grade 10-11, sorry, yeah, 10-11 in Kingston and then moved to Fredericton, New Brunswick. I did grade 11 and 12 there to put me back in grade 11 because I said, my French wasn't good enough, which was true. And then I went to Camp Borden. Dad was posted to Borden and he, I did grade 13 in Borden. So I actually went to four high schools, which is not, most kids can't say that. But my dad was a recruiting sergeant when he came back to Canada last time. And one of his jobs was to go around and people that were, you know, that were getting, applying to come into the Army, they'd do the background checks on them. And so he went around all over southern Ontario, right up to Bancroft, up to, I guess, Bancroft probably as far north as he went. And in Bancroft, because it's a mineral collecting area, you've got to know people. One of the people he would visit most of the time would be barbers, because the barbers knew most of the people in town. They'd cut their hair, they'd know them very well, so they'd do the background checks. And then the gossip and everything. Yeah, gossip and things. And so he'd go in there and one of the barbers in Bancroft that he went in to see was a mineral collector. So I got, for some reason, I had found a piece of quartz crystal, which I still have that was some relative, I think it was my grandfather in the UK had found on the Epsom Downs. And I was very intrigued by that. So I sort of liked mineral collecting. So he started bringing the minerals back from Bancroft. And that's what got me interested into, into mineral collecting first, and then really geology down the road. So what did, after high school, what did you decide to do? Well, I made up my mind sort of going through high school that I would be a geologist. The question was, where was I going to go? I applied to Queens, didn't get in. My marks weren't good enough. That was when I was in coming out of grade 13. So I applied to UNB. I could have got into UNB after grade 12 quite easily. It had very good marks. In grade 13, they dropped off, again, moving around. And I applied to UNB and I was accepted not in first year science, but second year arts. So that's why I went to University of New Brunswick and started second year arts, switched at the end of second year, or at the end of the first year to second year science. And that gave me a lot of problems because I didn't have the grounding in first year chemistry, math, and physics. So I had problems all the way through because of that. Geology-wise, I was okay. But the rest of the sciences, I had problems with. And I was a good student. I just didn't have the grounding. Yeah. So you really enjoy geology, but not necessarily the other sciences? Well, no. It wasn't I didn't enjoy them. It just I didn't have the grounding in them. I had because I had high school stuff. The grade 13 is not equivalent to first year university. And that was part of the problem. Looking back, retrospect, I probably should have gone into UNB right after grade 12 because I had an average. I was up in the high 70s. I would have got into UNB no problem. All my friends at Frederickton High School went to UNB at that time. And so I could have very easily got in. And I would have started in first year science. I don't think I would have had any problems. So you did graduate with a geology degree? Yes, yeah. Okay. A Bachelor of Science with a major in geology. And what did you what would you consider to be your first job after that? Uh, the first job was with Nurenda exploration in in Newfoundland. Now, at that time, it was quite easy to get geological jobs, mineral exploration jobs, primarily in the summertime. So what even after first year at UNB, which was my my mistaken geology courses, even though I was in arts, second year arts, I worked with the with the university geology department, mostly in the lab doing lab work and stuff. But also we got a little bit of field work in Southern New Brunswick and Grand Manin area, that sort of thing. And then the second year, I got a job at the Geological Survey of Canada in the summer job and worked with geologists that you know, geologists based in in Ottawa, Frank Anderson, F.D. Anderson. And he gave me a really good grounding in in mapping and things like that. So sort of interesting. And then the third year, I got a job with I was offered six job jobs for the summer. The third year went with a company called McIntyre Porcupine, another one that doesn't exist anymore. And then that was in Newfoundland. And then the fourth year, Nurenda was opening an office over here. They needed people to do something about Newfoundland because I'd been there the summer before I got on with Nurenda and that became my permanent job. I got I was offered two jobs, either Incoe and Sudbury or Nurenda and Newfoundland. I went with Nurenda. So heaven knows where my life would have gone otherwise. Wide Nurenda instead of Incoe. I think it was because I've been in Newfoundland and I like Newfoundland. Now I'd spent most of the summer in the woods. I really wasn't out very much. But what I liked about it was just, you know, the wildness of it. In fact, you could get around quite easily, even though it was quite wild. You were never that far from the road, unlike, say, Nurenda in New Brunswick or not Nurenda in Brunswick, Northern Canada somewhere. So I really liked that type of thing. I liked the people that I met and I was intrigued with it. And I thought there was more opportunities. Sudbury was expiration in the summer and beat theologists in the winter in one of the Sudbury mines, you know, one of Incoe's mines. So again, retrospect, the Sudbury one, you know, I think all geologists should have underground experience and I don't have that. But I think all exploration geologists, to be good ones, should have some underground experience even a year or two because they'd understand a three-dimensional part of the orbodies, right? Okay. And were you, as a geologist, I often, this comes up, were you really into the exploration part of it? Or were you happy to do it, you know, as a younger student in the summers, but was hoping to have more of a permanent settled job? No, I think when we started, especially in those days, when we first started with Nurenda, we worked a five and a half day week. We worked till Saturday noon. I mean, that was essentially the week we had, right? And when we're in the field, we work seven days a week. I mean, then we work for four weeks or something and maybe have a week off then, at least a few days off and stuff. There wasn't much office work. It was mostly field-oriented. I didn't really mind it at the time. I wasn't married. No, as soon as you get married, it becomes a little different. But even then, presumably your wife understands it in the short term, it's when the kids come along that that becomes difficult. And, you know, looking back at it, there was a lot I missed raising the kids, which I'm seeing with my grandchildren now, that I missed with the children going up. But I think most of us accepted that's what we do. Now, in today's world, it's changed because people just aren't willing to do what we did back then, which is no different than any other job. I mean, people aren't willing to do what was done in the past. It's, you know, people want more and they expect more, right? Yeah, yeah, even involving the safety. I mean, I got married on, I got married on a Saturday in St. John's here and I went in the woods on the Monday following. And I was in there for three weeks. So, you know, I mean, in today's world, that wouldn't happen, right? So, can you take me a bit through your, it can be quickly, through your career path and then we'll, all the way back. Yeah, okay. Well, I worked with Noranda in Newfoundland as a, what they called a project geologist from 1969 to 1982. In 1982, I was offered a job as a district geologist in Bathurst, New Brunswick. And I was responsible for Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, outside of the Bathurst camp, except for the area around the East Steele Mine, which was a company called Metogamy Lake Mine, which was combined with Noranda. They had operated that little area. So, I was tasked with that, even though it was within the Bathurst camp, which didn't make a lot of sense, but it's the way it went. In 1986, Noranda decided that they didn't need me anymore.  I immediately got a job, temporary job, with a company called Corona Corporation, La Cana Corporation, which became Corona Corporation within a year or two after that, working in New Brunswick, out of the Bathurst area. So, I was pretty well home every night, but went to different areas in Northern New Brunswick. And they decided to open a, by 1988, they started working in Newfoundland and the project geologists or district geologists, they had for that are regional geologists, I guess they called them at the time. He quit, went with another company. So, he needed somebody that knew something about Newfoundland. Of course, I had a lot of experience. So, they offered me the job. I had been working with them in New Brunswick anyway. So, they offered me the job. I went over, so I spent the summer of 1988 pretty well in Newfoundland, back and forth, to Bathurst. And then, 1989, they decided to open office. They asked me if I'd be the regional geologist. So, that lasted till 1992, when Corona Corporation got taken over by Homestake. And they rolled it in. They were going to keep myself and another geologist. It was based in Val d'Or. They were going to put us both in Toronto. We were going to look after Canada out of Toronto. And then, they decided to wipe it all out and just go move to have a group in Vancouver. And I think that lasted a year or two. And then, they closed that one too and retreated right back to San Francisco, which is what happens in these things. So, I became a consultant in 1992, working with mostly junior companies. And then, I worked with a number of juniors. Voise Bay, Rush came along, 93, 94, 95. That sort of cemented that. I started with one company, which I was a director of and involved in for a number of years. Became president of that one just before Brax came along. So, we couldn't raise any money. So, that one went by the way. I actually got rolled into another company, which became Linear Gold. Ultimately, Linear Resources and it was Linear Gold. It became Briggs Gold and just got taken over by another company just recently. So, I was president and director of that for a number of years. And then, three or four years ago, I became president of a junior company called Silver Spruce Resources. And I was president of that till February this year, when I resigned from that. So, and this year, very little work being done, I become just really an unpaid consultant. I'm working with different groups to on various properties, but there's no money to pay me. So, it's more of a sweat equity to earn either an interest or just to help people. Hopefully, they can raise some money down the road and I can get something out of it. It keeps you busy too. And I've staked a few claims of my own over the years too, different times when I've been unemployed, as such, letting going on, always without conflicting with anybody I'm working for. And some of those properties I still own. So, I want to have that option to different groups. Would you consider yourself retired at this point or? No, definitely semi-retired. And probably quite less semi.  The advantage I've got is it's my office. It's just we bought an old house down on the Marchick Road just up the hill from the Delta there. And it's, you know, I go there and I do stuff, but the phone doesn't ring. You know, days go by, the phone doesn't ring. Emails have dropped off to, you know, 100 to what they used to be and stuff. Most of it, of course, lately it's advertising. But, you know, it keeps me busy. I do one thing I miss too. I was myself in a partner, reactivated the old Ramber base metal mine over in Beaver in the 90s, mid 90s, around the same with the Voices Fund, the same time as the Voices Bay Discovery. And we operated that for eight months as a copper mine. It did very well with it. Actually, we had about $6 million in the bank and I own 15% of it at the time. And then we, the copper price dropped. We had to spend a lot of money to go down, which is what Ramber, the main Ramber mine, which just started operating again. That's what they're doing now. Copper price dropped down to 80 cents a pound or something, where we've been getting $1.20. There's a lot of money had to go in to get underground further down. We just didn't have the money to do it. So we switched over to gold, put a gold concentrator in. But we just didn't make it work. It just didn't work for us. We didn't have people who knew how to do that. And we hired the wrong people and a number of things like that. So it just never worked. So we almost went bankrupt, essentially. So that goes down. The only thing came out of that, I do have a small NSR, that smelter return on Ramber now, which is my really only income at this time. I just hope they don't close down. So they only started two, three years ago. So what they're working on is something that'll give them 21 years of mine life. So that's true. Then that's my retirement. I hope it is. On that, I mean, probably on that topic, is there, is there either a period in your life or a specific job or project that comes out at you as being dysfunctional? I don't think any specific project becomes as dysfunctional. I thought about that question quite a bit. When I started with Narendra and at that time, most of us had jobs because the major companies were doing regional exploration, what we call grassroots exploration. We would get jobs doing stream sediment sampling, soil sampling, a little bit of mapping, prospecting, etc. Prospecting wasn't pushed, but because they had prospectors per se that did that. But we were supposed to do the geology, tie the prospecting, they find a rock. What type of rock is it, where is it, that type of thing. That was what was done. So most of us had jobs. When we got out, there was a lot of people being hired by these major companies to do mineral exploration and continued. And for example, Narendra, when I was district geologist in Bathurst, we had 21 districts across the country. We each district had two or three, minimum of two, probably three, sometimes four project geologists working under us. So you can do the math on that. You're talking 100, 120. We had five or six regions. Each region had a manager and assistant manager in it. So it was somewhere around 120 people working directly with Narendra exploration. That wasn't Narendra mines. This was Narendra exploration, looking for the mines that would feed Narendra mines. And it was a good system, but it was when times got bad, they cut the funding. So you'd be sitting there with this group of people and essentially you'd be paying salaries. You didn't have much money to do anything outside. We ran a Newfoundland for years with a half million dollar budget. And of that, probably 200 grand of that was salaries. No, we weren't getting paid very much at the time because when I started with Narendra, I think my salary was $800 a month, something like that. So it wasn't very much, but it gradually increased as everything else did. But the system seemed to work. The problem was when things changed, when Metogany Lake came in, there was a guy by the name of John Harvey, took over. He tried to make Narendra, which was a big organization, very similar to Metogany Lake Exploration, which was a small company. And there was too much oversight on the top. The guys on the ground who were given a budget to do a job were not allowed to do their job. And I saw that. We were actually judged on variances on our budget. The variances on the budget was if you had a $50,000 budget for a property and you spent $60,000, that was a $10,000 budget or variance. But if you only spent $40,000, it was still a $10,000 variance. And they would add those up and do a percentage. And they would reward you with whoever had the smallest variances were considered to be the better geologists or better managers type things. But why I looked, I saw there, it was the people that were doing that when they were balancing the budgets because you could apply to take money from this one and put it to that. But it would take you a week or two to do that because you had to justify it, you had to do everything. So you'd have guys doing that instead of being exploration.  But what they did was they did their job. And I think that was the biggest mistake that Miranda made. They hired people, very capable people, but they didn't let them do their job. There was always this oversight. You had to prove this, you had to spend, we used to get ready for budget meetings. It would take us a month to get ready for budget meetings because we had to prove it to have all the maps.  And it was so counterproductive. And that's what I saw. The other thing I didn't see that really bothered me was you didn't get a lot of support from your manager and system manager. You got blamed when something went wrong. And they took the credit when something went right. There was a lot of trust. No. Well, to me, it was exactly what the way not to manage. And one of the system managers had actually said to me one time, he said, you know, we expect loyalty from our subordinates. And I said to him, well, I said, you know, the problem with loyalty, it's earned, it's not given. And they just didn't do it. They didn't show that to the people.  I think that was one of the reasons that Naranda exploration really wasn't that successful. People used to say a great property to pick up is one that Naranda dropped. Because they would go so far, they pick it up and they do all the right work. The work would be good for so far, but they wouldn't be allowed to finish it. So somebody else would pick it up and drill the next hole or drill something like this and, you know, continue on with it and they'd find something. So that's, I guess, that was the biggest thing that I found over the years. When I went with Corona Corporation, I was, I was given task to find a mine. I could, you know, this thing where we, the Pine Cove deposit, which is under development there at now, which actually had a kind of gold over on Bay vertigar. They are mining that right now. That was a deposit that we took when head 11 holes. I went in and looked at it, 11 drill holes. And I said, this looks like a significant deposit. So we took it to the point where it exactly, it really hasn't changed a heck of a lot since we outlined the deposit. That is something with Corona. So it's, you know, we had success with Naranda. I drilled a hole on the Point Leamington deposit. First hole we drilled, got 240 feet of massive sulphides. It's still not a mine because the grade isn't there in the metallurgy problem. But it's, it was, it's still probably the biggest massive sulphide deposit on the island in Euphonite, you know, which is, which is quite interesting, right? So, you know, yeah, that was in 1971. I started in 69. So, but I was very junior. I was, I mean, all I was doing was, and then this is, I started telling you about the prospecting course. One of the things we did at the prospecting course was did a success stories. So I've been involved with Point Leamington. I was also involved with Telepon deposit, Telepon Ductpon, which was just closed. Tech Corporation operated it. We found the boundary deposit about 1975-76. It wasn't started mining. They started mining it about seven years ago, finally. So it took that long to take it there. We didn't actually find the Ductpon deposit, which made the biggest, the biggest part of it. But we knew it was there because we were finding evidence of it. And it was all based on prospecting discoveries that a couple of prospectors out of the Benton area had made a family of prospectors called the Keats. The Keats Stairs family are sort of popular. They became, they got prospector of the year for the PDAC a number of years ago, recognizing the impact they've had on mineral exploration, particularly in North United Labrador, but really right across the country, particularly in Eastern Canada. Did you just mention the PDAC? Did you join any organizations for your career? Oh, yes. Yes. I've been pretty well all of them. I always believe that that's important. So I'm an actually a life member, I guess, or whatever they call it, honorary member of CIM. So I joined them way back in my student days. I started with the PDAC probably trying to think the early 70s. I used to go to CIM meetings for the first number of years, and then I switched over to the PDAC and I've been going. So I've been a, I'm a life member of the PDAC also. When I was in New Brunswick with Miranda, I became a regional representative at the time they had regional representatives. When I moved to Newfoundland, I became a regional representative for Newfoundland. And then subsequent to that, I became a director of the association. And then I, but anyway, I ended up as in the executive. So ended up as president in 2004, 2006, I think it was. And I have trouble going back now. So I'm a past president of the PDAC also. But still I'm quite involved in, not quite, not heavily involved, but because the directors are the ones that run the association. But the, as past presidents, we get, we get invited to strategic planning sessions, these things.  What do you think about that? So it is still quite, quite a good thing. PDAC, I've also been involved with Newfoundland Labrador Expirationists here as president. I was involved with the NVPDA as a president over there. I was involved with the Bayley Society when it was at the, at UNB as president of that. The Bayley Society? No, no, this was a, it's a geological thing. Oh, sorry. Geology. What was it, sir? Bayley Geological. Bayley Geological Society. I was at the Bayley Society. No, I don't know what I'd make a good debater. The, also I'm a member, associate member of the Association of Applied Geochemists. I'm also a SCG, a Society for Expiration Geologists, I think it is, SCG.  I've got also past chairman and past executive director of the, what is now Mining Industry, NL. It used to be called Chamber of Minor Zoneses when I was involved with it and the director to do that. So yeah, I always thought that industry, industry organizations are very important to, to what we do because we have to, we have to, you know, talk to, we have to talk to the politicians and the bureaucrats and tell them this is what we do. I think that's part of the problem. Some of the decisions that are made, made by people have no experience in our, in our system. They don't understand what we're doing it, why we're doing things. Well, here's a question for you. Do you think there's a, and I ask this question a lot. Do you think there's a disconnect between the general population and this could include government and the natural resource industry? Well, I don't think there are any doubt that there is. Majority of people, especially in, in places like Toronto, bigger cities, they don't understand what we do, how we do it, etc. All you have to hear is every time, you know, somebody's out digging the mine, right? Well, you know, we don't dig mine. So we don't dig, you know, things like this. That's what we do at the end of it, but we don't do it, you know, in the early stage. Most people, most people think mining is a dirty thing.  I've been told all of the mines in Ontario, for example, don't take up as much land as Highway 401, you know. And I mean, you know, to me, well, that's, and that's, when that was a number of years ago, that was true. Now, what it's still you today, but you just think of how much room 401 takes up when it's overpasses and it's, and it's interchanges and how long it is and things like this and the amount of land that that takes up. And this was at least 10 years ago, that was true. I don't know whether it's still true today. But, you know, people have this idea about a mine taking a huge area and just wiping it out forever. And that's, that's what I think.  And I said, well, what makes you think that things haven't changed? I said, all you're seeing is history, the historical part of what was done in the past. I said, okay, let me, let me put this to you. How about if somebody decided to put in a city somewhere and they're going to, it's, it's around the harbor and it surrounds the harbor and it's going to take all the sewage from 100, 200,000 people is going to dump all that sewage into the harbor. Oh, would that would be allowed? And I said, well, you're right, it wouldn't be allowed. But that's what St. John's does until about two years ago. That's what we did. That's a Victoria still does. Yep. And that's what Montreal just did the other day. That's right. So I said, you know, what, why would you think we're any different? You know, I said that was what was done. And I, you know, well, you know, never really thought about that because the problem is with it from a media perspective, we never get anything except when something goes wrong, you know, and, and it's, it's, it's a function of things. It's the same thing with oil spills and things like this, you know, I mean, somebody complained she spilled 10 gallons of hydraulic fuel when you're doing a drill on the girl thing, right? Well, this is a, it's an ecological disaster. But you know, how long ago was it? We used to take oil, used oil and put it on our roads on our dusty roads. That was done years ago. That's what it was done. That's why people did. When they changed the oil in their cars by themselves, what did they do with the oil? You know where it went, right? So it's, it is frustrating from that perspective. And I think it's somebody said the other day, what we have to do is we have to talk to people, tell them what we do, tell them how we do it. Yeah, I was going to ask you, do you think, because, because a lot of people still kind of, when they mentioned the mining industry, especially they'll say it's a sunset industry still, when, when really, if you know a bit more about it, you know that there's still incredible innovation going into many of these natural resources. But do you think the industries maybe lately haven't done a good enough job to communicate how much things have changed? How many, how much regulations have changed? Because like you said, a lot of people only seem to picture the natural resources 50, 60 years ago, right? Well, I think the proactive, I think companies and, and our industry groups are becoming much more proactive. We're trying to do that in the, in the PDAC, CIM, ICMM, all of these companies, MAC, all of these groups are becoming much more, they have, you know, TSM towards sustainable mining. They have PDAC as E3, environmental excellence and exploration. Most groups have these systems now where they do it. Now, what we try to do is go to things and go to areas where we can talk about it. The prospecting groups here in New, in the Brunswick, in, in Newfoundland go to, go to fairs, you know, different places where they're having groups and do displays and they'll go and they'll talk about prospecting and what mining and prospecting means to the, to the province and how it's done. And those are the type of things we need to do. Now, in the past, it wasn't done as much. And I think, again, people, it's sort of peripheral to what we do, but it's very important to what we do. And this experience of it, mining matters from the PDAC is teaching kids what mining does and how it's done and why it's important. And I think those type of initiatives are really important to this thing, the Johnson Geo Center up on the hill here. If you get a chance, you should go and have a look at that. Paul Johnson, who just died month and month and a half ago, he just lives over here in the corner. He, he put about $6 million or $10 million cost into that. He recognized that we need to do more to talk about the geological makeup of the province, why it's important to the people of the province. And that geocenter goes a long way. So they have, we have, you know, two or three thousand kids through a year. In fact, maybe more than that. I'm not right up to date on that. But they have a lot of people, a lot of kids go through a lot of adults, they have cruise passengers coming through when the cruise has come in, they'll go in there and stuff too. So, you know, that's the type of thing that really helps to explain what we're doing and how we do it. Yeah. It's on the geocenter's on signal. Signal field. Yeah, halfway up signal field. Yeah. Yeah. I'm planning on going when I, I'm going to take the nice hike and I'm planning on doing that and that on the same day. Okay. Yeah. This is a completely different topic here and maybe it's just because I'm, I'm no geologist, but reading a bit about you, what exactly is a qualified person? Okay. A QP is, this is, this was something that was established after Brax and some of the problems that had happened. There were a number of junior companies that really got into problems because of, well, I think it's fraud in some ways, but it was certainly misstatement of facts. Maybe, maybe really people had just didn't know what they were doing. Could it be in as bad as that or it could have been on purpose. Some of them were on purpose.  It was recognized that if we wanted to have any credibility as junior minors, junior mining, mineral exploration people, we had to come up with something where we were then held responsible for it. Okay. So what they said was, okay, how are we going to do this? They got together the TSX, TSX Venture, the Canadian Securities Administrators and they came up with what they call 43-101. 43-101 sets out standards from mineral exploration, compliance of certain things, and also how you put that information out and what you can say and what you can't say based on things and whether you've got resources or whether you've got reserves and there are definitions around those things. CIM did some work on that and the CIM definitions are used for the various reserves, mineral reserves inferred, induced, what they call inferred. Actual, anyway, whether they're reserves or resources, which is very important because resources are very early stage thing. Reserves you've defined them. So it shows how you have to define them or what it means for each one so people understand that because those terms were thrown around pretty easily before. It also says what you can say. You can't say we think we've got a mine, for example, because that just misleads people. You can't say that. You have to have reserves, you have to have this, you have to have economic parameters, you have to have Maria Sings because a mine could be a mine at one time, say it sold at $2,000 an ounce and $1,000 an ounce and not a money because it doesn't make money, which makes sense. So those are the type of parameters had to be done. So and he said, well, how are we going to establish this? What they did was they go to the various professional engineers, associations across the country in most cases and said, okay, how about registering geoscientists? You've got PNGs. Why don't we put in a situation where we register PGOs as the same characteristic? So I sign myself as PGO, the Peter M. Dimmel PGO, which means I am a qualified person to write, depending on my education and depending, I can't sign off on or reserves and stuff because I haven't had the capability. I have never done those and it's not what I've been doing. So I really, if I did that, I'd be outside of my scope of practice, but I can sign off on mineral exploration things. Even then, I'd have to look at some of them because I don't have a lot of experience, for example, in uranium, say in Athabasca, I would have to be really, you know, I'd have to look at that very hard before I signed up on anything in Saskatchewan, even though I'm registered in Saskatchewan. So what we did was we got registered. The first one I got registered here was in Newfoundland here, so Paganel, professional engineers and geoscientists in Newfoundland Labrador. So I registered as grandfathered in in early, early days, got registered. I'm now registered with the APGO Association of Professional Geoscientists of Ontario. I'm registered temporarily with the Quebec Group and I'm registered in Saskatchewan because one of the companies I'm involved with had some properties in Saskatchewan. They wanted me to sign off on news releases and things. So be a qualified person, you have to be, you have to have certain characteristics, certain educational background.  So the group looks at it. But then you still have to go, you have to recognize what you can do and then work within that scope of practice. So it made it professional. So now I can, like a PNG, I can sign if you were applying for a, what do you call it, passport. I could sign off on it. So I'm recognized professional otherwise. We never really were up until that time. Interesting. You had mentioned a bit, and I guess this is further on in your career, but having been on the boards of some exploration companies, some mining companies, are there any projects or findings that to you would be worth mentioning that you're proud of? Looking back at the other day, when we did these things at the Mineral Resources Review this year, I would say very intimately associated with the discovery of the Point Naming Deposit. Unfortunately, it's not a mine, but it is the largest massive sulfide deposit that's been found on the island in general. It probably hasn't been drilled off yet because it's mostly pyrite, which is iron sulfide, not of interest. But there is significant copper in it, the first drill hole we drilled into that was 240 feet of massive sulfides, about 1% copper. And significant gold problem with the gold is because the metallurgy is very, very fine-grained or very difficult to get the gold out the best we could ever get. This recovery is about 25%. Now I have no doubt at some point that deposit will be mine. I was also heavily involved with the Ductpond Deposit, Tallypond Ductpond in the thing we wanted tech to finish mining after they operated for six, seven years. And that was in the 70s and they mined it just closed down last fall, early this spring. So those type of things are very, very good. Personally, myself, and I've got to give credit to those. I don't think any one of those would have been found without these prospectors, particularly Al Keats out of Benton, which is out by Gander. Prospector Par excellence. I mean, he just really knows what he's doing. And it's interesting. One other thing I think you guys might think of doing is doing a history of discoveries of things across the country. I think that would be really good to get that down on paper. That's what we did at our mineral resources review. We did Tallypond Ductpond, we did Point Lamington, and we did Valentine Lake, and we also did Boise's Bay, which is of course far bigger than any of these other ones. And Valentine Lake is probably going to be our next gold mine on the province. That was found by a guy when he was working following up a salt survey. Now there's always luck involved in these things, but it's a lot of hard work, too. A nice type of thing. But personally, I have one gold zone that I found myself over in the Baybird area called Chrissy's zone, that I just, my daughter called Chrissy because she was with me when she was 16, and we found a boulder. It was full of free gold, and we had to stake it because it was ground staking at the time. We'd spend a day and a half staking it the day after we found it, and she never went in the woods with me afterwards, but she's now a chiropractor. Why not? Why not? Well, she was 16, and she never worked like that before going to the woods, rain coming down, mosquitoes and black flies, and not her type of... No, she's a chiropractor, she doesn't have to worry about it now. But yeah, I was really appreciative of the fact that she helped me with that. That was in 92, early 92. I still own that property. I had an option to Ramber company that I was involved with over there in the Ramber mine. It's just south of the Ramber mine in Baybird area. So that's three different gold zones on it, but Chrissy was the one that I really found. There was another zone up there that has gold mineralization in it that showed up in till samples, which are the glacial things. It took me 17 years to trace that back source over the years. It's something like Chuck Bipke, except it's not exciting, which Chuck Bipke tracing the diamonds back 300 kilometers to source to find the caddy and these things. But again, coming back to problems in our industry, that's another thing that really bothered me because there were people walking around, and Chuck Bipke was walking around talking about these Kimberlite indicator minerals. And there were some very knowledgeable people involved in that. Hugo Dummit, guys like that who really knew their stuff had studied it and everything. But I knew I heard people walking around at the PDAC saying, this guy's crazy. He thinks there's diamonds in Canada. Well, you know, another example is Shawn Ryan and the white-gold discoveries in the Yukon area. I've never worked in the Yukon, but I know people that have. And I've asked them, this is probably 10 years ago, where did all of the plaster gold in Yukon, where did it come from? Well, don't know, it's all gone now. There's nothing left. Well, Shawn Ryan proved that wrong. And I think that's where it's still coming from. It's in there, it's in the rocks, and they just weren't using the right type of things to discover it. So Shawn Ryan goes in with a new technique. But again, who was working with him? He was working off prospector grants, living in an unheeded shack in his wife for years. So to me, that's one of the biggest problems. We've got people in this industry that will really be naysayers and really put people down that are doing things a little different. Excuse me a minute. Okay, so the next question seems like a loaded question, but there's no wrong answer. It's just mouthful to hear. So in your opinion, are there any events, people, inventions, disasters, anything whatsoever, really, that you believe must be mentioned when talking about the natural resources history in Canada? Well, I think I talked about it earlier was discovery of diamonds because that's one of the things that's happened in my lifetime that nobody looked for diamonds when I was in university. It was the early 80s really before that became something that we should do, right? It's expensive, it's not for juniors, but it showed it could be done. And again, comes down to a guy like Chuck Pipkey who said this, I believe there's diamonds here and he went at it and discovery of the white gold stuff by Sean Ryan up in the Yukon. It's a similar type of situation, areas where people said, wrote it and had written it off and said, just doesn't exist, you know, the gold's gone, all that plastic gold, well, yeah, it was in the earth, but now it's been all put in the rivers and it's gone. Well, he proved it wrong. So I think those type of things show people, they've got a question what they're told. Boise Bay is an example too in Newfoundland Labrador. Boise Bay was in an area that nobody was looking. There were companies, Falcon Bridge, for example, was looking in Labrador prior to the discovery of Boise Bay, but they weren't looking in that area because it really didn't fit the models of what people thought they should be looking for. So I think sometimes we're too model oriented, we're too oriented towards what's been done in the past, what's been found elsewhere. That's important because obviously it makes sense if you're looking for a cabalda or what they call sheet basalt type of sin, you have to look for those type of deposits in the same type of rocks that make sense. But there's always people finding something new. And I think what we have to do is accept that that's going to happen and not talk about people that have different ideas until we know really what's going on because these are the people that find things that then become in the mainstream and we look for other places. So it's going to keep happening. But I think diamonds, the white bull stuff in the Yukon more recently, Hemelow is another one. I mean, Hemelow, there were lots of little deposits around in Ontario and that part of Ontario. But people were not really spending any time there. The junior companies found it and really that's one of the problems I'm seeing in today's world is the junior companies that have made a lot of these discoveries, don't have the money, can't raise the money anymore in today's world. Hopefully that will turn around but we'll have to see. Thank you. More of a social question here but I always like to ask this one, how present or absent were women throughout your career? And I mean from start to finish might be very different. Oh, well start to finish, yeah, for sure. I mean, I was told when I used to come down doing interviewing for summer students when I first started with Miranda here in Newpena and my district geologist who was my boss told me not to, we could interview women but we wouldn't hire them. So I made the mistake at one point of telling some of the women when we're interviewing that they should apply, make sure they go to the ones that would hire them. Of course, I got into quite a bit of trouble on that because I'm not supposed to be saying that sort of thing but I was trying to help them saying, look, it's not up to me. I can't make that decision because I have a boss but in today's world it's very, what we see in most in most or sciences departments now you probably see 50-50 and sometimes more than 50-50 women. So it's becoming much more commonplace. Women can do just about everything that men can do so, you know, it's mineral exploration. The brains are there, they're smart girls, they work hard and you're seeing more and more of that and I think that's going to continue. A big problem in exploration right now is that nobody's hiring anybody. So, you know, is that going to continue? I'm hoping things will turn around. We have young students now, guys and women that can't get jobs in exploration so what they're doing, they're working at Tim Hortons, they're working at Solby's, whatever they can do. They're graduate geologists which is terrible at this time. Hopefully it'll turn around. Yeah, very cyclical industry. What was the exact reason that was given from your boss? Boss just didn't want to hire women. That was it. Didn't want them in the camps and didn't want that so that was the decision. He wouldn't do it. Now there were other companies that were hiring women and working with them, you know, had them integrated into the camps and stuff like that. You have to make certain provisions if you're going to do that but, you know, they were doing it but the Norenda at the time was not doing it. At least, certainly not a Newfoundland. So, just to finish off, a few closing questions. This also didn't sound like a broad question but we can split it in half. What are you proudest of the life and what you say in life and also professionally?  So, what you want to do with that, if you want to have a family that's happy, you want to have a family that's successful. I mean, I'm talking your kids now. I mean, as parents, that's what your job is to raise kids that move on, become successful and then you've done your job, etc. As I said before, when I was in the early days of mineral exploration, I wasn't home as much as I should have. So, it was up to my wife Kay to do the parenting as such and she did a very good job with her kids. So, you know, those are the type of things. I was there as much as I could be but we just weren't there as much as we should have been. In today's world, we would be there a lot more.  My daughter lives in the States, my son's here in St. John's. Both have very good jobs. One's an engineer, the other's a chiropractor and they both have families of their own. So, we have grandchildren and, you know, that's what I'm, I guess, what I'm proud of. And professionally, if you could. Professionally, I guess the fact that, you know, it's one of those things. You work towards different things. You asked about organizations. I've always believed that organizations are important in our industry and there's some of us that believe that there's other people that just have nothing to do with them and they might be members but they really don't do other than that. They pay their dues but they don't take part in it. I think you talked about getting the word out on mineral exploration, the mining, how to people on, on generally being proactive. We didn't have organizations. I don't think that would be done at all. So, I think that's very important. So, I'm proud that I've been recognized a number of times through a few different things. I'm a fellow geoscientist in Canada. That was a couple of years ago I got that. I got a jubilee medal for services to the mining industry. I got, you know, I'm an honorary member of the CIM, Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy, Newfoundland section here, which means, you know, that we get honored every year. We get to go to the dinner for a few things like that and you get recognized for that. I got a distinguished service award for the PDAC, you know, for the work I did with them and the fact that I was president of the PDAC.  I think that's, you know, that's very important to, to, when you can say you've been president of an association like that, I think it's very important. I think it's, it shows recognition of, of what you put into it. And I, I believe that that's, that's probably the biggest accomplishment on that type of thing.  I've been involved with that, even though I wasn't the only one, I was part of it. I think some of the stuff that I've got in my gold zones south of Bramble will ultimately prove out to be something that, whether I'll be involved in it or not, I don't know. But, you know, those types of things. So I've had success. And when I look back at it, first of all, you, you know, I'm not recognized as a mind finder, like some of the people in this, in this country, right? And I, and I, but I think I've contributed, I guess that's what I'm saying. And the last question, if you were to speak to someone much younger, I mean, we talked about kids a while ago in the Geo Center. So if you were talking to someone much younger, like a student, for example, what would be the most important life lesson or piece of advice you could give them looking forward to their career? That's a difficult one. I guess it depends at what stage they're at and how committed they are. Mineral exploration isn't easy. We've talked about how cyclical it is. It isn't something that you can start off with. When I started out of university, I started with one company I worked with them for 17 years. I don't see that happening to too many people coming out right now. First of all, it's difficult to get a job and then it's difficult to maintain that job because the majority of jobs are in the junior companies that are reflective of that cyclical cycle and success oriented. So you might have two or three years work and then all of a sudden you can't raise money. So what do you do?  You know, as you go on with experience and that you will rise up in the ranks and the higher you get, the less likely you are to get laid off, but companies close.  So it's a difficult thing. I guess you're going to stay in mineral exploration. You're going to get into it and stay in it. You have to be committed. You have to expect that these things are going to happen and you have to prepare for those. So that means when times are good, you can make very good money, but don't spend it off. Put it aside. Plan for these downturns. And even if the downturns don't happen to you specifically, because there are still people working through this really tough time, there are people working and making very good money all the way through. And I weathered a number of these in the past. Now this has been an unusually long and unusually strong and unusually down. But these do happen in our industry because we're commodity driven. We're cyclical in the sense of commodity prices. We're price takers, not price makers. We can't set the price. So world prices set the price. So if copper is down and you're working in a copper deposit or working, looking for copper deposit, or if your silver price is down, you're looking for silver deposit, you're going to be affected in some way. So let's say, when times are good, you'll make very good time. You're very good money. Enjoy life while you're doing it, because that's what I like about this. No day was the same. Every day was different. So there's a lot of potential in that. But plan for the future and say, okay, we're going to have some tough times. We've got a plan so we can ride those out. Is there anything else you'd like to add? I don't think so. I think you've covered everything. You've got a pretty good idea where I come from. I think I'm stuck. Right on. Well, thanks a lot for your time. No problem. Thank you.


Hello everyone and welcome to NewsClick. Tamil director Paar Ranjith got into controversy over his speech on Emperor Rajaraja Cholan. His comment that suggested Dalit's operative under Chola dynasty disturbed a section of people and a case is booked against him. Today we have with us Professor Seelakshmanan, Faculty of Madras Institute of Development Studies and a member of Dalit Intellectuals Collective to discuss about this issue. Welcome sir. What about Paar Ranjith sir? What is your opinion? Paar Ranjith is a very talented director, artist and also committed political activist which rare complement in contemporary Tamil cinema industry. Issue now with Ranjith in the early week of June. He attended a memorial meeting of TM Mani, allies for Umar Paruk. It is a fourth year memorial meeting organized by Neelam, Neelapooligal Katchi. So in that he was invited to deliver lecture, speak in the podium, speak in the memorial meeting. So Ranjith was prepared when of collecting the book written by Umar Paruk, TM Mani allies and that book title I forgot I had not recollected but you can get it. So based on that book he spoke three important things. One during a Chola period, the land from the poor and working class particularly marginalized are Dalit beings taken away and given to others particularly there though Ranjith did not say this but given to the dominant caste but generally the history it is a fact in the history those who are done a great amount of time in terms of writing ancient Tamil history particularly Neelam Daswasri and Dharmakumar who was a professor in Delhi School of Economics who wrote in 1969 land and caste and also Burtonstein one of the very important historian in the South India. They made a very profound observation that land during a Chola period and also other dynasty given to three main category or group. First comes the Brahmin and where the Brahmodayam concept of Brahmodayam emerges it is very much in the fact. Second the Vellalas next to the Brahmin and their next to the Brahmin dominant caste they also got a enormous land from the dynasty and the ruler and that is a temple Hindu temples and till Tamil Nadu temple owns highest land than the Tamil Nadu state itself. So those then the final fourth is land to the village. Land given to village is a collective endeavor because land treats are came to exist only after colonial state established before there was no land treat land patta is not there but it's all in the traditional way of owning land. So Brahmins non-Brahmin Vellalas and the temple own highest amount of land and control of land between given land given to village and control over land in the village by the temple is totally different. Temple control is even we all know who is controlling the temple and benefit if your control is with somebody else and the benefit also corner by them. So therefore Ranjith made a statement that Tamil Nadu temples are having a lot of land and third thing which is also not to spoken is the position of women in the ancient time particularly Sola time where the Sola kingdom we have a Devadasi system and so on so forth. So I am not authority on ancient history or Tamil Nadu history Sola dynasty I am a political scientist maybe one can call it political history I have some knowledge so there is a fact but if at all Ranjith spoke anything without evidence or anything without out of conducts there could be a debate and discussion can be engaged not in a way of curtailing is once freedom of expression not only Ranjith anybody for that matter freedom of expression freedom of descent is a core element of or core component of the democracy. Democracy should not be stopped election and election result democracy is behind the election and democracy is a way of life and democracy it is a it is descent and democracy freedom of expression liberty individual liberty personal all the sick encompassed embodied in the concept of democracy and which one has to adhere to but what happened to Ranjith is a very very unfortunate and it should not be happened and underlining fact which require Ranjith also spoke that we need to deconstruct our own our own understandings because generally Sola being celebrated Sola dynasty is being celebrated for many so many account no question but why not Sola said everybody has a merits and demerits two side of the coin so Ranjith is deconstructing our own public or a common notion of history common notion he was actually deconstructing the entire public notion or a common understanding of history so that is a point which is Ranjith is making and another thing he said in late 80s particularly when the identity politics emerges in the beginning and also even early 19th century also when the is a golden period of caste formation on eyes would say because every community every cause a small small cause group come together in order to corner the state benefit colonial state benefit they make a number high and plea for a certain benefit from the state similarly what happens now the identity politics in a late 80s people have trying to construct their own history when they construct their own history that were the starting point is we are descendant of the ruler descendant of that dynasty this dynasty ultimately nobody has a subject now if even all even among the Dalits non-Dalits and others also claim themselves we are descendant of Chola descendant of Pandian we are big rulers all this thing so Ranjith is giving a knock that don't claim those nonsensical claim which is actually is not so therefore Ranjith is not attacking one or another particular caste group he was critical of entire caste group which claims a descendancy from the dynasty all the as well rulers many communities caste groups and all these people are coming against Ranjith why do you think you know they are coming with such an anger towards him no not a community particular caste group such anti Ranjith forces mainly from the Indutva brigades or a reactionary forces and second is some of them are from Tamil nationalist and they are pseudo Tamil nationalist because they neither they know history nor they know culture they are one who are very very fresh in terms of anti in terms of against Ranjith and this also has undercurrent because the reason is Ranjith from the beginning day one onwards almost is declared very openly that I am a Dalits I am come from the oppressed of the oppressed and I have no same and also I have no pride of it and he was a one who was very vocal in terms of anti caste project and also he was a very powerful very internalized Ambedkar ideals and Ambedkar thought nobody can challenge Ambedkar because that is what wherever he goes he starts with the JBL which is very very new phenomena second thing is in the film industry unlike Ranjith none of other personalities in the film industry able to neither assert themselves by their self nor incorporate the way in which the assertive and positive energy of the community and also he was asserting himself that is I am not afraid of anything and in a way he is also risking so that is the people think Dalits should not speak openly Dalits should not speak truth Dalits have no intelligent of their own but that is a disproved and Ranjith during all through he was anti Indutua forces and the Kala was a one direct critic on Indutua forces and even during election because he is not stand as isolated himself he was an activist he is a very very powerful activist he made a lot of initiatives and brought and made it it's a meaningful take an example of Kastas collective of Madras the Nativity Music or Bonham festival or even a library initiative in Kugai and also he was wherever atrocities happening wherever atrocities happening he was a neat suicide he was a one who organized and violence wherever happens he goes and he send his team from Nelam Panbatum I am group go and intervene so this this never seen in the film industry person coming in participating everyday politics and everyday activities in the society and is critical of the state and the central government as well


Hello everyone, this is financial author Ahmed Dunn of Ahmed Dunn.com on this channel you'll find financial, travel and more videos just like the one you're watching right now. If you like what you see, please give it a thumbs up and consider subscribing.