More than 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, of the
mechanics of industry financing, and of 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.
Drawing new lessons from the turbulent period between 2005 and 2023,
this new edition of 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.
