 Alright, so we are here today with Mr. Rob McEwen and it is July 22, 2015 in Toronto. The interview as usual will be William McCrae. So we'll start with a few basic questions. So could you please state your full name? Robert R. McEwen. And your age? 65. And where were you born? Toronto. And as a child what did your parents do for a living? My father was in the investment industry, broker, fund manager. My mother and early on was physiotherapist and then a host wife and someone who inspired her children to reach, to test boundaries, to pursue their artistic side. And she also volunteered for hospitals and art galleries. And you were saying to pursue their artistic side, what did you have our interest in the arts or anything like that when you were a child or? Absolutely. A lot of drawing, sketching. In fact, I expected to be an architect from grade 2 to grade 12, that was where I was going. My father, on the other hand, he introduced me to the market when I was 10 and 11 he had me charting stocks and then I invested my first investment when I was 12. What did you invest in? It was an insurance company and it went up ninefold in 18 months so it was a pretty good investment. Yeah, you got a pretty good allowance. I made it though. Yeah, yeah. But I mean at the age of 12. Yeah, $200 became $1,800 so it was in a short period of time and I thought the market was like that but that was, that's why I call that my worst investment because it made me think. It spoiled you. That's what happens when you put money in the market. It took about 30 years to repeat that. Oh yeah. Yeah, there you go. Other than drawing, sketching and investing, what other past times did you do as a child? Pretty much played every sport there was. Became a very active water skier, competitive water skier. Recreational racing downhill skiing? Same here. There was always something to do. I like being active. Okay, good. And as we'll go into it further in the interview, you eventually worked with the natural resources industry but was there a passion or even just an interest early on in sciences or engineering or anything of the sort? I always had an interest in good math skills and science, technology always intrigued me so I always was looking at how things were made, building. Okay, and what about your education? High school, I was in a boarding school north of Toronto and then I went to spend a year in Europe and then came back, went to Western, did an economics degree or a BA with an economics major and then worked for three years in the investment industry then came, went back and did an MBA focusing on finance and marketing. Was it always, I mean as a child was that going to be your path, finance or investments? No, architecture was going to be. I guess my year in Europe dissuaded me from that. How so? My marks weren't that good. Okay. And I thought where am I going to go? And my father was in business so I write business. Okay. So I started off to go in undergraduate program and then decided to do an MBA as opposed to an undergraduate. Okay. So Western for the undergraduate and Schulich for the graduate. And there I was president of students council and advisor to the deans and a small business consultant as well. Okay. And throughout your years in university, did you enjoy economics? Yes, economic history more. What I mean is it wasn't a mistake to have not tried for architecture and get yourself into something completely different? It's curious. For many years I thought I had abandoned architecture and one day, many years later after I was building Gold Corp, I looked back and I said well I'm really doing financial architecture because I put a number of companies together and created a new entity. Okay. And I never really left it, I just got pushed aside. Okay. Different type of architecture. Yes. And so what was your first, what would you consider your first official job? My first official job. Oh. Let's say after school, after university. After undergraduate I went and worked for my father's firm and I did research in sales and that was for three years and that was in the investment industry and it was focused on the gold market, gold stocks, gold bullion, a lot of foreign gold stocks. So that was exposure and I guess gold and libertarian views on government and the value of gold and the debasement of currency. We're all dinner conversations growing up. So it was sort of, in a way that aspect of mining was infused into my cells as I was nourished. So the interest for gold at least was already there. Gold and an illustration of the discoveries and the wealth it creates, and the value for the individuals involved but for the country as a whole. And did you have at that point a mentor or someone who you look back and really affected your shape kind of the path you took? Over my career there would have been, there were several people that contributed. I suppose there was a professor, a business professor at Western and I think about student politics and I'd never really given any thought but I ran for undergraduate president at Western and came in second. But I was a late entry and I thought, well if I'd worked a little harder I could have become, I could have become president. And then when I went and did the MBA I found myself being attracted like a light to a moth, you know a moth to a light. When I asked for a class rep and I got elected and the elections came up the next year and the president came along and said, well I'd like you to run for president. There were a couple others but I figured I jumped in and I won that and then was president of the Graduate Student Council as well for the whole university. And then a couple of others and I just found myself moving in those directions. Where rather than, you know, you step forward and take the responsibility and you can control your life better. You can set the agenda rather than having someone else set it for you. So the first three years were in the investment industry. I guess I graduated in 1973. By January of 1974 they had just legalized gold in America, made it legal for American Stone Gold after 30 years of it being illegal. Gold hit $200 an ounce in the beginning of January and two years later in 96, or 86, 76 sorry, getting years mixed up. In 76 it was down to about $92.96 an ounce, two years later. And at that point all the gold stocks and everything had dropped away. I went back to school and then came out, took a trip that went around the world in a converted army truck, drove out of London and drove through Europe and then through the Middle East and the Far East. And it was a real eye-opener. It was like opening up the National Geographic and stepping into the picture and as you did that you threw away your watch. And you started seeing the world as it really is rather than what it's in North America. And then after that I joined Merrill Lynch. When I graduated I found that if you could market yourself, there was only one student council president, there were only 12 small business consultants at school, there was only one advisor to the deans. I view myself as a package good and it's on a shelf. And in the supermarket you want to be basically three to four and a half feet above the floor on the shelf and you want as much shelf space as possible so that people naturally reach for you. And that was how I looked at positioning myself going through school, that how could I become a compelling hire. So there were a number of companies that came along and said, we'd like you to start right after school. And I said, no, I'm taking a trip and I'd like to start six months later. A number of them said, well, our program starts right away. And I said, okay, well I'm not working for you. And Merrill was good enough and they said, sure, we'll hire you. And I worked there for two years and then I left them and joined my father and bought an interest in his firm and then eventually bought him out. What was his firm called? It was started off McEwen Securities and then he bought into another firm. It became McEwen Eason. And then there were some people who came, their brokerage firm was bought by the bank Montreal and it became Deacon Morgan McEwen Eason. And today it's Dundee Securities. And at the time did he also invest so a lot? Is there a lot of gold? A lot of gold. Okay, for him as well. And there I met a number of people in the mining industry that there were prospectors, promoters. And I got looking at them and thinking, some of these guys are really good at nailing deposits and say that's going to be a big one and they did become a big one. There's one gentleman, Murray Peasam, who was quite a promoter and he was a very colorful individual, maybe a little exuberant at times, but he put Hemlo on the map, he put LaRange and Saskatchewan, SK Creek in BC. And this guy just seemed to see projects and some of them grew into quite significant deposits. And that told me that there were still more deposits to be found in the world and there was still more wealth to be created. And so after 18 years in the investment industry, I decided to take a closed-in investment company that was running and jump into a hostile takeover battle and do a broadside on the hostile bidder by basically getting 51% of the vote by offering a higher price than the hostile was offering. And we had to go through courts because the hostile didn't like it, but we ultimately won. I thought I would continue doing the financial architecture in the company, structural, and let the operators run it and four months down the road, I decided that wasn't a good idea. And so within a year of buying control of two mining companies, I took out boards of directors of both companies, took out senior management and stepped in as a CEO and built a new management team. Why not those people? I didn't think the way I thought they should. They weren't going, I'd made a large bet and I had the wrong team. They weren't ready to change with you? They wouldn't change. And the head of operations basically went, mining is all about drilling, blasting, mucking. And the only way we're going to improve our profitability is Mother Nature's kind to us. I said no, it doesn't work that way. Drilling, blasting, mucking, at a profit. If we don't operate at a profit, we shouldn't be in business. And that, I went through three or four heads of operations until we got people who thought the right way. What were the name of those two companies? Dickinson Mines and Morf Resources. Okay. Basically, there was an eight-year period where I took a string of five companies and did three corporate restructurings to create Gold Corp, as we know it today. Well, not quite as we know it today, but as it was in the early 2000s and then I added Wheaton River to that and stepped out. But before that, just going back a bit, my first exposure to mining came right after, it was a summer after first-year university, and a friend of mine at university came from Sudbury and he said, you know, you can get a good summer job up in Sudbury. They pay well. So Buddy and I hopped on his motorcycle and we went up to Sudbury, almost froze to death getting up there in late April. But we got up there and they put us into a one-week training program, and then there was a test. And I remember, as soon as my buddy wrote the test, he was gone. He didn't want to work in Sudbury. Oh, no? No. So he went back home. And he's the one who brought you up there? Yes. But I remember they put us through the training program. They gave us a couple of hours to write a test. I finished the test in maybe 20 minutes. And as I was walking towards the front of the room to hand my test in, and the instructor had, you know, the supervisor had left the room, but a fellow stopped me. And he asked, what's the answer to this question? And it was about putting a, how you prepare a stick of dynamite for a fuse. And the question was, do you use a spike or a wooden plunger? And I thought about it for a moment. And then I said, spike. And that's the wrong answer, because a spike can create a spark, and this little dynamite can blow up in your hand. But I figured if he could, if he hadn't learned that in the first week, I didn't want to be working underground with a guy like that. So, I said, spike, and walked on. I don't think he got hired. And while I was working underground, my first job down there, the first task I had to do was, often they had backfill spills where the pumping material back in basically sand back into the mine to fill the voids that have been created. And these pipes frequently broke, and they filled the ditches. And so the students would be given shovels, and they have to dig it out. Of course. So that was the first, and then they... What kind of mine was it? It was in Sudbury, Incoe, and Nicol Mon. Nicol, yeah. And I would, even, well I guess the first time we went underground, we were walking down this spiral ramp from one level to another. And I guess the truck drivers, they'd see a group of students, so they'd want to give them a bit of a jolt. So the truck would backfire as it's coming down the ramp. And everybody just thought the place was caving in. And you didn't have much room between the truck and you. There were little holes cut in the wall that you'd tuck in. Oh yeah. The truck would just brush by. So that was mining, and it was heavy equipment, very steel, hard surfaces, loud noises, lots of dust, and sometimes smoke. So did you like that, or no? Well I looked at it and I thought, you know, you could do a lot of these things better. You don't need these heavy steel pipes. You could use plastic. And I wanted around... I was given a lot of opportunity. They had me drilling on a jack leg, they had me driving the truck that delivered the shovels to the other students when there was a spill. Then they put me on a large rig, which... a jumbo drill and trained me on that. And at the end of the summer they asked me if I'd... if I'd like a scholarship and the study mining. And I said, well thanks very much. I've already covered off my university expenses going forward. And I don't really think mining's in my life. And I found that when I look back on it, I'm really ironic back then because I've made a career into a mining industry. So in the investment industry, research, sales, investment banking, I ran a number of mutual funds that invested in gold bullion and gold shares internationally. I controlled... controlling shareholder of a Toronto Stock Exchange member firm. And then one day I brought some partners in, they were... I'll call them boat people. They were coming from a bank purchase of a large brokerage firm and they didn't want to go to the bank. Our business had high payouts, much more freewheeling and attracted large producers. And I realized then that we went from 20 people to 120 in a year. And it happened to hit the market on a very strong upward move. And my dividends were greater than... my annual dividends were greater than my invested capital. Which I went, well, so it's a pretty good idea to have a lot of people working for you. And I remember having, before we moved, I had to crawl over two desks to get to my desk every morning and evening to get out. Because we just packed in there, but it was all about making money and not having a lot of extra expenses. And when the market went down, you cut your expenses quickly. When the market went up, you could take some more on. So I'm looking at the mining industry, having observed a number of people that had made a fortune, lost a fortune, made a fortune, lost a fortune. Those are two things that mining and finance have in common. I mean, a lot of times they're both interconnected, but it's a very fluctuating business. Yes, very cyclical. So I was attracted to it. And I thought it'd be interesting. I viewed the mining industry. The probability of making a big discovery is very low. But the possibility exists. And in a number of industries, that just doesn't happen. So as I said earlier on, I jumped in to this hostile takeover battle. I'd watched the company for a number of years that was subject to the hostile bid. And I actually had a deal that someone reneged on where I was going to become a large shareholder of that company. And I sat with one company trying, thinking of making the bid, and then I switched to another company I controlled, and we made a bid. But going into the industry, since I'd never operated, been in an operational capacity, I asked a lot of questions. And I was always asking, why? Why do you do it this way? And they said, well, they give me this answer. We've always done it this way. But does that mean that's the right way to do it? Well, what other way is there? So I had the advantage of being an outsider in an industry that was very, for the large part, rooted in its ways. There was a great deal of inertia, and I really don't like inertia. And I don't like answers that are... We've always done it this way. I guess some people might call me a shitster. Disruptor. And so I'd ask the question if I didn't get the right answer. I'd keep asking questions. And then I'd want to make changes. Since I was chairman, the CEO, and the largest individual shareholder, I could, in effect, make those changes. And so, Gold Corp, when I... Or the Dickinson mine that I bought had been going since the late 40s. It had been starved of capital for about 15 years. The company had diversified into industrial minerals because it didn't like the union. There was an aggressive union. Steelworkers' chapter up at... or local up there. It was high cost. And since they hadn't invested for about 15 years, it was nearing the end of its life. But right next door was the Campbell Mine owned by Placer Dome, and it had been the recipient of more than $100 million in the same period of time. It was quite profitable. It was non-union. And so, I looked at my first... The first thing I did when I became CEO was to go call up the union, their head office here in Toronto, and say, could I come in and talk to you? I'd like to talk about your experience with other models of cooperating with management. Do you have any of them? Because from what I understand, the relationship that our union and management have with is terrible. And there have been a number of strikes and there were very aggressive... And the union said, I remember walking into their office and everybody's looking at me and saying, we don't have CEOs of companies coming up to talk to us. I said, well, that's okay. Let's make it a start. And that started a dialogue with senior management of the union. And at the mindset, every time I went out, I'd have dinner with the union executive just to figure out what are their concerns and share with them my view of the world and the economics. And we developed a pretty good dialogue. But at one point, the price of gold was falling through the 90s and in 86... Or falling through the 80s and in 86, we'd gone through... We'd had two collective agreements already. And it... Sorry, I'm confusing. In 96, we had... By 96, we'd had two collective agreements. In 1989, I bought control. In 1990, I stepped in. That makes sense because you had said you had been in the finance industry business for 18 years. So, I had said to them, the gold price was down. I think the gold price had got to about 380. And our cost of production in cash cost was 360. So, fully loaded cost was above the gold price. And I said to the union, it's not going to work. And we tore up the collective agreement that had been established over since the union was there in the early 50s, which I didn't think was very good. And I said, look, we're in business to make money. If we don't make money, this mine's going to be shut down. I see a way of keeping it going by changing our operating relationship. In first and foremost, you have to understand that we're in business to make money. If we make money, we can share it. If we don't make money, we can't share it. And the community loses as well. Second, safety is not the exclusive preserve of management. It is a mutual responsibility of labor and management. And they found those two thoughts, rather, they were opposed to them. And I said, in terms of technology and training, I'd like to broaden the skill set of everyone so they have better opportunities if they happen to go to another mine or even within their own mine. And they didn't like that training. And then when we rewrote their collective agreement, they said, we're going out on strike. And the strike lasted 46 months. It was one of the longest industrial strikes in North America. The longest in the mining industry. And during the course of that strike, I got death threats. My home here in Toronto, we replaced all the basement and ground floor glass with bulletproof glass. There were two occasions where the Metropolis SWAT team showed up at the house. And it was very tense, and it was sad watching the community shrivel because of the lack of economic activity. We didn't... When the strike started, we stopped producing gold. And I said, I just stepped up the exploration budget. I said to our geologists, you have an opportunity to explore this mine. You have a free hand. But once the strike's over, you won't. So I want you to run at 150% of what you think you could run. And because this is going to be a short time period. I said, I don't know how long the strike is going to last when it started, but I have a feeling it could be longer than we see. And each time we went back to the table, normally the union will... They'll have high demands, the management has low offer, and the lines will come together, intersect, somewhere out in the future. In our case, the union was here, we were here, and it looked like a parallelogram. Each time I went back to the table, I offered them less. The gold price was lower, and they were costing me money. And they found that a little unusual. When we had the death threat, we just signed a deal, a bought deal with RBC Dominant Securities, for $60 million. And I called... We just signed it, and then right after we signed it, I got a letter came in, and it was from the mine, and they'd received it, and it was the death threat. They basically said, if you think you're going to break us, you're not, and if you want blood, we'll give you blood. Everybody who helped, she was a target, and at the bottom they said, remember, yellow knife. And that's where the same union was involved, and nine people were killed on the plant at the bomb, in the mine. Now, what I found, I found the death threat not a little unsettling, but also humorous, because they gave me 30 days to correct my actions, but they didn't date it. So, you know, well, when's this start? So, we'd had this signed deal for $60 million of a bought deal, where the broker gives you a check and takes your share. And I called up the chairman of the brokerage firm, from Tony Fowle, and I said, Tony, I've just got this death threat, and I've decided I'm going to run an ad in the local paper. I'm going to run this letter, I'm going to publish it, with a few deletions to respect civility, and I'm going to put a $35,000 reward on the head, a bounty on the head of the person who wrote the letter. What kind of bounty? $35,000 cash. But to say who it is, essentially, to find out. And I said, this will... Not another threat, is what I was asking. Not a counter threat. Well, in a sense, whoever wrote it, now had someone could turn them in and get $35,000 into an account. So, when I was talking to the broker, I said, investment banker, this is going to go in the local press, it might get some larger press, and that might affect the stock that you've just bought from me. So, I'm going to give you 24 hours, and give you the opportunity to back out of this bought deal. And I said, we're going to be financing in the future, and obviously now's not the time to do it. So, they came back the next day and said, well, we'd like to back out. We don't have an obligation. And they then said, but we'd still like to market you. And I said, well, that's ridiculous. You don't go marketing after you pull the bought deal. They said, oh, no, there's good demand. I said, all right, all humor you. So, we went out, we marketed, and they came back a week later. We've got strong, strong demand. And I said, Tony, at what price? Well, it's at a lower price, obviously. I said, I'm only selling stock at this price. I'm not selling it at a higher price. So, we didn't do a deal. Six months later, we raised $90 million and 50% higher. The interesting about Red Lake was it just kept pushing it. We got to a point where our engineering staff said, well, we have a large enough resource to find that we can put it in production. And I asked them, well, how much? What's the size of plant? And they said, well, based on what we found, we'll build this. And I said, well, we've been finding gold at a higher rate than that. And if that keeps up, you're going to build too small a plant. Yeah, but we're only going to build based on what we have. And I said, but if you look at the consistency at which we're finding the gold, there's a good chance we'll find a lot more. And I'd rather have a 10-year mine than a 20-year mine. Get the money out of the ground faster. So we ended up building a mine that was bigger than justified based on what we found, but we found much more. So at the end of the day, we decided to build. We built a very modern plant, wired with fiber optics, webcams all underneath. You could connect anywhere in the world and discuss with management. The operator's a problem. 39 places in the mine. And this has been an old mine that had grown in increments and was very inefficient. So it was nice to see that technology coming into the mining industry. Then the union came along and I said, well, we've got the mine built. We had a camp on site, contract workers. And we had to deal with getting through the picket line all the time. I guess a couple other things that were unusual. We went up one day, directors, to talk about shortly after the strike. Well, not shortly. A couple of years or two later when we were going to build a new mine. And I said, well, let's get all the union members and their spouses and their significant others to come to a meeting where we can explain the union tried to get everybody to boycott it. But the night before we were up there, before the meeting, we'd finished a management meeting and I was walking down the main street of the town, Bombertown. And I was looking in a head frame that Campbell had built. I said, we're going to build a new one of those one day. And this is around 11 o'clock at night. And half a mile down the road is our mine entrance. And earlier in the day, I'd asked my manager to drive me by and he said, no, I just got a new truck. I'll probably throw a stone at my truck and wreck the paint. So I had that in my mind. And I said, I'm going to walk down at the picket line. Now I thought, as I was walking down there, are they going to kill me? No. Are they going to push me around, beat me up, leave me in the ditch? Unlandry. Are they going to yell at me? Quite probably. So I walked down. This is a small town in Northern Ontario after 11 o'clock. And I arrive at the gate and they have their bonfire going and there are guys with their pickets on. And I say, hi. Hi. I don't know who I am. And they have their trailer. And out of the trailer comes one of the union executives. He goes, he says they were, do you know who this guy is? And before he could say it, he said, well, I'm the guy that has you on strike. What? And I said, yeah, what are you doing here? I just wanted to talk. And they went, oh, do you want a coke? And we talked for about two hours on batting mosquitoes. And the next day everybody in the town seemed to be talking about that. And then we had our meeting in the Legion Hall and just described our plans going forward. Because I like making sure that everybody has, will be very transparent in what we're doing. And so our union experience was very different. But I think you just have to look at all parties. And the union had always been successful getting their way in the past. Previous management said cave for whatever reason. And I just felt it was important. And I'd have to say, at one point I was in and out of the labor board. Because the union protests and I go in, we'd always take them to court every time they broke the law. But the police didn't want to enforce the law because they were unionized as much as they should have. The labor board was very sympathetic to the union. And I remember one day, 46 months down the road, the union came along and headed the union and said, Rob, could we go out for a coffee? Just the two of us. Sure. So I get there and we sit down and he said, this has been a terrible strike. I said, what do you mean? You've destroyed our property. You've given me a death threat. And I haven't produced anything. It's costing us over a million dollars a year. Okay. I said, I want to accept your last offer. And we offered them cash, a slight increase, and shares by way of stock options. And at first they were really confused by the stock options. They thought they had to put up money to come back to work. Okay. But they didn't. And he said, we're not, I don't think we're going to have a good relationship going forward. So we're going to leave. I beg your pardon? We're going to leave? Yeah, we're going to decertify. Oh, all right. So why don't you think about it. Here's my home number. Call me tonight if you'd like to meet tomorrow. And I'll get our lawyer and myself in your office. And we'll sign a deal. So, oh, that sounds interesting. Right after I met with him, I called up our labor lawyer and our labor negotiator and spoke to both of them and said, guys, this is what I've just been told. And they said, that's impossible. This never happened. Well, that's what it is. We meet at the office at 9 o'clock. And they came at 9 o'clock and I asked Harry, Harry Hine, could you explain to my friends here what you told me last night? So, well, we're going to leave. And we'll sign an agreement and we're never coming back and we'll give you a letter saying we're never coming back. So he said his piece and my guys are looking at me like, what's next? And I went, you have five minutes. I went into the next room. We signed the deal. And it was done. And I said, well, how are you going to get the union local to go along with this? I'll deal with it. So he went up to the mine site, got the local executive to sit down and said, it's been a long strike. You fought hard. But this is a deal that you've got on the table and you're going to accept it. And if you don't accept it, there's no more strike pay. And they went ballistic. And they said, we're going to sue you. We're going to sue the U.S. headquarters of this union. You had us freezing our butts off for four years almost. Yeah. And you just pack it in. There were 180 men that went out on strike. And we took back 45 after we trained them and selected the ones that had the right attitudes. Without a union. Without a union. And from producing 50,000 ounces a year at $360 cost to producing over 500,000 ounces a year at $60 cost. With less men. We increased, we hired others. We were hiring on the basis of skills and attitude. But there was a 64 change in the economics. The options we gave to all the union members, including the ones that didn't come back, within the space of two years were worth $30,000. And I'd have to say a proud moment for me was to see our new minds starting up and exceeding all expectations, getting a payback in a year and a half on our investment and watching Red Lake come back to life. Because it wilted because of our strike. And in the next two years after our strike, Red Lake was one of the most actively explored districts for gold in the world. And part of that was due to something else we did called the Gold Corp Challenge, which was an internet contest where we basically asked the world to tell us where we'd find the next 6 million ounces of gold in our mind. We gave away all of our proprietary data. Well, how did that work? What was the deal with that? So you wanted to find out new areas that should be mined? Yeah. For gold specifically? No. I believe that there was much more gold to be found in the mind. Okay. And I hoped there was much more. So we were going along, exploring, and each year we were finding more gold. And when we were looking to make a decision on how big a physical plant we were going to, a new one we were going to build, I wanted to know if we were scaling it properly. So I went to our chief geologist and said, Steve, how much more gold is there here? And he said, I don't know. I said, that's a lousy answer. He said, all right, how long is it going to take you to find out? And he and Jill's both, well, we don't know. Another lousy answer. So I'm thinking about this, and I said, how do you get on top of this? Every time I look up to the mind, I'd walk around the exploration department, I'd talk to most of the geologists, and I found that some of them had different ideas than the people managing it. So, well, maybe there's some ideas that haven't surfaced. We should have a brainstorming session. So I asked the geological department, the exploration department, put on a brainstorming session for two days. And they said, here are the instructions. I want you to talk about all the ideas you haven't shared and all the ideas that your boss shot down. So I was going to be a fly on the wall, and this session started. It didn't take very long. Within about two minutes, after the head of exploration started the session, I said, time out. Would you mind sitting down? And I got up and I said, I'd like to hear from this individual. He had the least tenure. The little guy. He was, yeah, well, he was new. He was experienced, but new. And he had a dissenting view. And I said, I'd like to hear about the last idea that your boss shot down. And in this room where they're both in the room and everybody else, there were about 14, 15 of us in the room, you could see, you just imagine this arc of electricity going across the room. And it almost went, if you say that, it was the boss saying, if you say that, you're fired. And I sensed the tension. So I just sort of ran into it and said, I'd like to put it on the table right now. If anybody threatens anyone of firing, the person making that threatening statement, I'm going to fire right now. And they're going to go to the store. There's some nervous laughter. And about three weeks earlier, I had fired one of our managers at an industrial mineral place. So they knew it wasn't an idle threat. Our industrial mineral fellow, we had an operation in New Brunswick called Havelock Line and have been going since 1938. The fellow running it, all our managers would come in every quarter and I'd just say to them, give me one sentence of how you feel. And this fellow said, I feel like the Maytag man. And he went, Maytag man? Is that the guy in the commercial? He's a service man and he's got, he's phone in front of him, he's got his elbow here and there's cobwebs between his elbows, his arms, his bicep and forearm. I said, you're telling me there's nothing you can do to this operation that's going since 1938. There's no new markets to open up. There's no efficiencies. There's no training. He said, yes, yes, yes. I said, that's impossible. And I said, Len, see that door? You're going out the door and you're never coming back. And so it was just, there's always something to be done. It is not sit still and wait. So the guys in Red Lake were well aware that it wasn't an idle threat. Anyhow, so the brainstorming goes on. People have shared ideas. It's really getting exciting because there are a lot of new concept surfacing and the group is seeing the potential. And at the end of two days, they run out the door full of energy, new focus and excited. I walk out the door and think, well, that was good. How do we make it better? And I thought, well, maybe the next one we have will invite government geologists, our retired geologists. Why don't we invite the guys from next door class or don't come in? Because they know about this area as well. I'm thinking, well, that's not a bad start. And it's like a seed germinating, this seed of a thought. And I kept thinking about it. And I thought, hmm, probably. I mean, we're in a Greenstone Belt. And there's a Greenstone Belt on every continent. So maybe there are experts on other continents that have different ideas. But how do we get to them? So I had that thought in one part of my brain. The other part, I belong to a business association which is called Young Presidents. YPO, it's an international organization. And they put on educational courses at schools all around the world. So I had signed up for one at MIT in Boston and it was a course on information technologies. And I thought, in any industry needs information technology, it's mining industry. So I enrolled in the course. And there were 40 of us from around the world and they went from serial entrepreneurs from California that had started up and sold three or four companies to complete neophytes. There was a guy from China that had 600 music stores and he wanted to expand from there. So we had the Dean of the Business School, the Dean of the Artificial Intelligence and the Dean of their Information Technology hitting us with ideas for a week. And in the second day, right after lunch, one of them started talking about Linux and open source code and that's when the light bulb just exploded and I went, there's a template I'm looking for. So after the course, I ran back home and said, okay, we're going to take all of our proprietary data that spans 50 years. We're going to throw it up on the web and ask the world to tell us where they think we would find the next six million ounces of gold in our mine and we're going to offer prizes of half a million dollars. Okay, Seth. I was wondering how that would work. And we launched it at the PDAC in 2000 and it really had some interesting elements because I'd always gone up to the mine before that and it said, do you have a model in this mine? And they said, well, we have several models. We have one for the upper level and one for the lower level and one partially developed for the middle. So why haven't you put them all together? And they said, well, they're all on different standards. Well, why don't you put it on the same standard? Well, that takes more time and work. So when we announced this contest, they went, well, we're not ready. And I said, well, we have six months to get it ready, the database. And then our head of exploration went, what happens if the market doesn't agree with how we've calculated this? And I said, well, you think this is a world-class deposit, right? You think that you're doing the best way of analyzing it and assessing it, right? So that won't be questioned. So there was a lot of nervousness around it and then I said, well, maybe someone's going to take us over if they get all this information. Well, if someone's taking us over, they're going to pay a premium. You have options. You're going to get a higher price. If they don't take it over and we make a bigger discovery, your career is going to be pretty good because your name is going to be on the front of this report and we're distributing it to every mining school in the world. And we were a little company, and I remember going to meetings. What were you guys called at? Goldcorn. Okay, so it was Goldcorn. Yeah, Dickinson and Worf got merged into Goldcorn during those three corporate restructures. But you had to sell people on the benefits. What is the benefit? What's the benefit to Will doing an interview? And in this case, it was Jill and Steve, and I said, look, your name are going to be on the front of this report and be circulated around the world. This is a very important discovery and you're going to be doing something very unusual and you're going to get a lot of profile. It's going to open doors. And if we make a discovery as a result of this, share price goes up and you have shares, your options go up and your career is guaranteed. It creates all sorts of opportunities. So they were doing that. And just before we launched, all the geologists went because it was sort of a blind contest. We didn't give any of our own targets. It was just pushing boundaries. And I think in the GoldCorp Challenge, it took a small Canadian mining company and put it on an international stage. It totally differentiated us from the rest. People go, what is a mining company doing with the internet? Businessweek named us as one of the 50 most innovative companies on the web shortly in about 2003. Native Business named us as one of the most innovative companies in Canada. There have been a number of books where we've been featured in it. Wikonomics. The World of Splat. A whole bunch of other things. And it's been very exciting in that and it really shows that the biggest gold mine in the world lurks between everybody's ears and if you can connect those thoughts, you can create very powerful opportunities. And it paid off? Were there outsiders who did give you good information and they got the reward? Absolutely. It was much like a sporting event. We had semifinals and finals. We selected a panel of international judges. South Africa, Australia, US, Canada. And there were five judges and they looked at the submissions. There's Bob Mason. He was a professor emeritus at Queens. He helped structure this and he contacted five people and said, these guys, they're really excited to be a judge I've spoken to. I remember calling up Bob and I said, I got this idea and I'd like to bounce it off you. And he said, well, he listened and I said, I'll call you back in a couple of days until you think. He called me first thing the next morning and said, Rob, I haven't slept all night. I've been on the phone talking to people all around the world. I have your panel of judges for you. This is the most exciting idea I've heard in my life. And all the other judges are the same way. This is just off the charts in terms. Yeah, pretty unorthodox when it comes to mining. So they were charged with picking their top 25 submissions. And then we got them all together because they all had different 25s. There were some common factors and they picked a group 25. And we paid each group $10,000. And so that was a quarter million. There was three finalists and we said, refine your submissions. There's another quarter million to be had. The judges came up with a first, second and a tie for third. So I increased the prize money rather than divide it between the thirds. The first two, the first prize went, it was a collaborative effort between two consulting firms out of Australia that had never been here. None of the contestants had ever been to the mine. But these two consulting groups found themselves sitting in a reception room in Australia going to talk to a large mining company. I guess a meeting had backed up and they found them both looking at each other. One guy said, I think I have, there's a contest in Cannons. I'd like to enter, but I can't do all of it. The other guy said, I could do it. So they went together on it. And after the contest, revenue, they were coming back and forth to Canada so much after they were declared the winner that revenue Canada said you have to file taxes in Canada. Second place, Marco Day went on to, he was hired as president of one company who's founded a number of companies since then. Third place, there was a Russian and he said deliver my money to London and don't run any ads in Russia. And the first, the winner, the winners, their submission was a very sophisticated computer graphic, 3D computer graphic. And when I saw it, I almost fell out of my chair. When I picked myself up, I got on the phone and I called three institutional investors and I said, can you give me five minutes of your time to each one of them? And that afternoon I went out and showed them to them. They'd heard the Gold Corp story for a number of years, but had never bought. And after seeing them at the end of the day, there was 15 million, orders for 15 million shares of Gold Corp that went in that afternoon from those three guys. Because it was just so clear. And it just further encouraged innovation in Gold Corp and empowered everybody to look for new ways of doing things. And what was the rule for you guys? Could you only select the first place? Like the area they gave you? No, there were... Or did you have... There were 100... Were you allowed to access or capitalize on the submissions of all of the candidates? Oh, and everybody. The candidates signed off on any proprietary right when they joined the contest. And it was... They generated... That group of 25 generated 110 exploration targets. And 50% of them were brand new to us. And we hit when we drilled 80%. So very high hit rate. No one had ever visited. And it just goes to show you could get a lot of people looking at a problem statement. There was no way you'd ever be able to go out and talk to 25 different consulting firms and get them to look at your problem statement in the time frames that we did. So the Gold Corp challenge is... It's led to all sorts of other things in my life. So it was a lot of fun. So just a couple of summaries. Yeah, sure. Can I... I'll go with one other question. We'll switch it up a little bit because we've been talking about the mines in Canada. But now maybe switch to mines outside of Canada. Looking back at one of the recent unfortunate events. The robbery. Yeah, the robbery in Mexico. Yes. So we could talk a bit about that. But how challenging is it for Canadian companies to operate in foreign, often crime or drug plagued regions? Well, there's a culture of difference. Criminal elements are more visible there. Security is something that we don't think about in Canada. Have to think about it, usually. But down there, it's something you want to keep in the back of your mind and sometimes move it right to the forefront. It's a different setting. The political system works differently. There's opportunity. You can often get permitted faster than Canada. They've taken the best of our systems and incorporated it and sort of leapfrogged ahead of what we do in Canada. We've become overly regulated and the time frames to bring projects on are very, very long. They're ridiculously long. For a country that wants to build employment and see a technological-based build, we should be getting off our ass and getting the government to move a lot faster. But that's another part of the world. I would like to say that mining has allowed me to support medical research. My wife and I set up a center for regenerative medicine and stem cell research in the largest research hospital in the country. Out of that have come a number of things. We have an annual prize we give out internationally. $100,000 a year for the most innovative work in stem cell research in the world. I'm going for five years now. Our first recipient was a Japanese researcher that found a way to take a skin cell and reverse engineer it into a stem cell and a stem cell can make any part of your body. He received that five years ago, two years after our award. He won the Nobel Prize for the same one. I'm trying to figure out how we get some more Nobel Prize winners. You could be the next producer of Nobel Prize winners. It would be nice to be a predictor in there. There's a leadership program at a school that I went to north of Toronto that's produced some very skilled high school students, entrepreneurial, and a lot of leadership and entrepreneurial skills being given to them. They're running a lot faster than most people. There was an order of Canada, which was an incredible award, very humbling. One of the highest. You also received the Queen Diamond Jubilee Award recently. Queen Diamond Jubilee. There's been a few along the way. Is that mostly for your philanthropy? Because you've given a lot in health care and also in education. Mining Man of the Year. I was pretty happy with that. But it was a work of a lot of people that contributed to that. I think it's a great industry. I think there's a lot of land mass in Canada that needs to be developed. If the government wants to do something, it should be putting in some infrastructure. Maybe to assert sovereignty in the Arctic, we should be building a couple of roads north to the Arctic and then crossing the country. We have to resolve the First Nations issues quickly. Otherwise, when they can build a 59-story building in China in 30 days, we can't even get to one meeting in 30 days. We're way behind the curve. But right now I have to interrupt the meeting. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you very much. You're welcome.