 This is an interview with Jim Finch. My name is Eric Wyden Hammer. We're in Toronto. So maybe you can begin with just the basic questions. Could you give us your name and age? My name is James Finch. Commonly referred to as Jim Finch and I'll be 68 next month. Where are you born? I was born in Birmingham in England, the United Kingdom. What did your parents do? Well, for most of the time that I can remember, my mom was a housewife, but she was a secretary for a period of time while I was growing up. So she was a secretary. My father worked for a wood distribution company, Timber. He was a timber merchant, timber salesman. As a child, what did you do to pass the time? I do to pass the time, other than being at school, etc. But a memory is playing outdoors a lot. I mean, you often hear that being discussed right now. In those things, kids watch videos or there's more concerns about kids playing outside. It would be an exaggeration to say that he kicked you out at nine in the morning and told you to come back when you got dark. But it was a long, long life. We spent a lot of time outside of school, a lot of time outside playing with friends. So we were not far from what was known as an ordinary lane. It was a very country-kind area, not so much now, but certainly was then. And so there were a lot of opportunities to play in the country, effectively in the country. Did you have an early interest in the world of science or engineering? I would have said that that was a... I mean, I guess at school I was always okay at mathematics and physics and chemistry. For casual reading, I probably did more reading in history than I did in science. But I was always fascinated by biographies. It nearly mattered what field they were in. They could have been biographies of film stars, they could have been biographies of military figures, and certainly included biographies of figures in the science world. It was always a question to me of what distinguished them, how did they get to where they were? I wouldn't say I was trying to model it on that, but I was always fascinated by how people got to where they were. Biographies were something I always enjoyed reading. I still did. Can you tell us about your early education and where you went to school? I went to school at the Church of England Primary School, which would... Well, you walked to school and walked home for lunch. It would have been about, I guess, 15, 20 minutes walk from where I was. It was a typical education for somebody in the UK at that time. The big feature was that you had to be prepared for what was referred to as the 11+. This was a very dramatic exam. On the results of that exam, you either went to grammar school, or you went to... Let's refer to them as they were then a secondary modern school, where you'd be more expected to do trades. But I did pass the 11+, after a lot of anxiety. I did get to what was referred to then, a few still left at grammar school. The training there was expecting you might go to university. That would be the expectation at the end of that. Where did you go to university? I went to the University of Birmingham in Wellington, several reasons why that was chosen. It was very common in England to go to a different city for university, but there were reasons to study. Were there any classes or subjects that you particularly liked or disliked? Why? Are we talking about undergraduate or are we talking about high school? How about undergraduate? I might go back and say one of the things I enjoyed towards the end of my time at high school, grammar school, was courses in geology. They had somebody that came in and said, as part of the curriculum, we didn't have to pass or take geology, but it was often because the staff member was interested and I enjoyed that. I think that built on a long interest in geography, which was probably my favourite subject all the way through. I was recognised I wasn't going to get much further with geography, so of course one wanted to do maths and physics in order to get a job. But in terms of what interested me at school, geography and history were two things, and geography morphed into geology, so it was quite a comfortable connection. What brought you to Canada? I probably would have asked the questions a little more what took me into the department I was in, because through that department is really where the story starts to unfold. The reasons that I went to the department of mineral engineering at the University of Birmingham was partly because they didn't, in fact, send a flyer around, so it was the first time I'd ever heard of this particular subject. But not very much about it, I actually applied to do geology, and when I went, as you did in England, you went to an interview at the university and you were interviewed by somebody in the geology department. You're rather cryptically asked how my feet were, which is funny, you should mention that, because I do get listed very easily. It was one of those features of the Finch family that we always got listed very easily if we went for a long walk. And he says, well, you know, the only job you can get is traipsing the Arabian desert looking for oil. So I said, well, that obviously doesn't sound too attractive to me. He said, why don't you walk up the hill, and he was a short walk over there. I go to the mineral engineering department, they do a lot of geology, but you get a job. I always thanked him, I can't remember his name now, of course, but I always thanked that individual for being up front. He probably had some grime that he was venting on me, but I was grateful for that, and so I went up to the department of mineral engineering. Did you enjoy the program? I enjoyed the program. I enjoyed the first person I met because he wasn't expecting me, so he was in the middle of an experiment. He was leaning over this, well, let's call it a tank, a small tank, and he was scraping things off the top. And it turned out he was doing a flodation experiment, and he was only marginally interested in me at this time. He was quite fascinated by what he could see going on, and he had a big shock up there after a while. No, I wasn't very welcome there. It was a small program. There were only 20 of us, 24, I think, started the program. We did a lot of courses in chemical engineering, but there was 124. So, yeah, I enjoyed the program. One of the things they did was get you summer employment. So I did work one summer in the UK, and it would have been, I guess that would have been 1968, 67. And then in 1968, yes, 1968, they arranged for me to work in Northern Australia. They called Matt Eiser, Matt Eiser Mines, famous in our business, Matt Eiser Mines. And, well, I thoroughly enjoyed that. I mean, that was just a fascinating, certainly that, you know, the world was opening up, you know, what, you're 19, 20 years old, and I enjoyed that immensely. So it sort of comes back to you asking why Canada, because when I got back to the UK, having seen Australia, I was keen to see other parts of the world. Perhaps it was part of me that didn't want to stay in Birmingham either, and I wanted to see other things. So I applied to several universities, not back in Australia, maybe one or two, but I was looking perhaps a bit closer to hand, that probably invited me to factor, but I looked at those schools in North America, the United States, and Canada. And the only one that replied with a personal letter from the chairman of the department, the late Bill Williams, that was the only one from the New York University. So I really did look beyond that. I thought that was, you know, a personal touch there. I thought, even at my age, you know, I appreciated that. And in fact, somebody from the department, Gordon Smith, who's actually here at this meeting, he came over and interviewed me. So they made efforts to attract me, and I was certainly very keen to broaden my outlook on the world, and travel to Canada. Did you enjoy Montreal? Yeah, I would always say England promises summer and never delivers. It promises winter, doesn't deliver the summer. Montreal delivered both in Spain, and I actually enjoyed the winters more than the summers. The summers, Cunin Park was really not very pleasant for me. My feet blistered, remember? That was a combination that I didn't enjoy. But the winters, we were from around the world. The guy who showed me how to cross-country ski was from New Zealand. We were people from South Africa, people from, of course, Canada, the United States Island. It was another Scotland. So we, yeah, we got on very well. So there was good social life, and the program was good. I was given a lot of freedom from my PhD, and I appreciated that. What did you choose your PhD work in, and what was it in? Well, my undergraduate program, of all the things that we did, all the topics that we covered, mineral processing was the one that I found the most attractive. You know, we did pyro, we did hydro, and we did ceramics and various other aspects that could be broadly classified under metallurgical engineering. But really to me, the one series of topics, subjects was mineral processing, was the one that was an attractive thing. So my desire was to do a PhD in mineral processing. Whatever they gave me as a task, you know, I would be quite happy to look at that. And I did work for William Smith, and he worked in flotation, so we started in flotation. What did that lead to, to your first job in Canada? Well, I've been at the university ever since. I arrived there in 1969, and I got a Master's degree in 71, a PhD in 73. And Bill Williams, the guy who, the Prof who had written to me the personal letter, we were still getting on very well. And he'd seen what I was capable of doing, and he offered me a job at McGill. I had a job offer at the University of New South Wales as well. So it was an interesting choice. But people said, well, why don't you move? I said, well, I made a big move coming from England to Canada. I don't necessarily have to prove I can move yet again. So the idea of continuing work at McGill, he offered me a couple of very interesting courses to cover. And I got married at this point. My wife was working as a physiotherapist in the local hospital. It was a good match. So I said yes, and it never worked anywhere else. So this was a very natural transition from graduate work and then into teaching? Yeah. And, you know, we're talking the late 60s, early 70s, so programs were trying to expand. And so in that regard, it was supposed to be a little easier to find employment as a young professor because the universities were looking for people to build their programs. Do you tell us what some of the industrial workplaces that you were involved with through your economic work? Well, I'd have to go back and say Bill Williams was a big help here. He knew that I'd satisfied the requirements as far as research potential, at least. And, you know, I'd already published four or five papers at this juncture, which was what he noticed. But in 1974, he arranged for me to work at Pine Point Lions in the Northwest Heritage Lake, through his contacts at Comenco. And, well, I mean, I thoroughly enjoyed that. In 1975, I worked for Comenco again, but at the Solomon Concentrator in British Columbia. And then in 1977, I went back to Pine Point Lions. We typically would work for three months. The university didn't see the mind. I think it's much more difficult to do that sort of thing now. Nobody made me sign confidentiality agreements or anything. And I would literally disappear towards the middle of May and come back at the end of August, the beginning of September. So I enjoyed that ability to get out there and work in industry. They would give me projects to do, but I'd also end up working as a general engineer on thought. So I went back in 1977 and I went back in 1981. Yeah, well, Pine Point Lions was a big component of the industrial experience that I've been able to bring to the classroom. They do it with sort of mind losses? That's it. In fact, I believe, if I remember the big sign as we went to work every morning, it was the largest open-bed lensing mine in the world at that time. And yeah, so a lot of people worked there. A lot of people came through there. So a good opportunity to learn the basics of industrial mineral processing as opposed to research mineral processing. Did you notice any differences between the academic and the industrial work environment? Oh, well, yes. I mean, I think when we started back in the 60s, early 70s, there was probably suspicions, perhaps too strong a word, but you've got the sense that the industrial people really didn't think there was much... You had some basic training, but really the army job training was what was important. And I think it was difficult for me to raise research funds in those days. So they didn't seem to see there was much value in industrial money going into academic university research. That has changed. But that was the sense I had then that, yes, you need to train undergraduates, but the research career that you want, what's the link to industry. I think we've worked on that and we've been reasonably successful at working at that interface, but there was a sense of a division at the time that we didn't have much to offer in terms of research. Did you often travel for work and experience other academic or professional cultures? Well, there was an opportunity for Savannah. There was a lot of travelling. I got more involved in industrial contract work, but it was all done through a natural sciences and engineering research council, at least collaborative research. There was a lot of travel associated with that. Practically every year for, I don't know how many years, you know, you go to Winnipeg and they're up to Thompson and over the flint line and do these sorts of trips and add to trial in British Columbia. That was a common trip. In terms of other academic experiences and interactions, I had a sabbatical at the University of Leeds back in the UK in 1981 and then I've had two sabbatical since then which certainly had an impact because I've really enjoyed working there. There's the Julius Krutschner Memorial Research Institute in Brisbane in Australia. I first went there as a student in 1968 because I met people doing their PhDs who were at the JK because I carried their buckets. That was my introduction to the President's research, was carrying buckets for these individuals who were doing their research. They invited me down to Brisbane and I went down to be shown around the JK. So I've had a long association, a long interaction with the JK but I'm very well with their director, Alvin Lynch, who's retired now. So I went there for a sabbatical in 1993 and I went there again in 2010. Yeah, that's been a highlight of my interactions in terms of the academic career, was the interactions with the JK. Circumstances are different in Australia. Is the work culture different or are there similarities? I don't think I was there long enough to get other than a superficial sense. It did seem as if the student salaries and stipends were a lot higher in Australia than they are in Canada. That's a plus and a minus really. Yeah, that was certainly one big difference. The thing that I learned at the JK was they had really shown the way as to how you can make industrial type research valid both academically as well as, of course, having some practical output. I mean, to me they were the leaders in making that link. And I wouldn't say I, you know, well, I borrowed from them. I could see what they were doing and I could see that that was a very valid way for a researcher in the minerals business and the engineering business to make a mark. What sort of steps were they taking that you thought could be implemented in Canada or better implemented in Canada? Well, their research money largely seemed to me to come through a minor. The Australian Reynolds Industries Research Association. It's now a minor international. It's quite international. But that seemed to be a very successful vehicle. It was designed to bring together industrial need with research potential, research deliverables. And Canada didn't really have anything quite like that. In the early 80s, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council they created strategic grants, which were sort of longer term. But now the money has started to get a little bit more substantial. And then they developed these collaborative research and development grants which were aimed at getting industry partnerships to work with universities. That's not quite the Amira model, but you can see it's sort of heading in that direction. And then in the 90s, I forget now the acronym for the first one, but it's the current term. We have these consortia and I'm struggling to remember what the original name was. Camero is the current name. And Canada is an industrial research organisation. I think it's been there for about 10 or 15 years. So that is close to the model of Amira. So I won't say I had any involvement in making that connection. But I think people noticed what was going on in Australia and saw that as potentially useful and valuable model for delivering research dollars to bringing research and industry money together with research deliverers. Yeah, I think that was something we learned from the Australians. We didn't create the same level of salaries that they did in Australia. So I think whether that's good or bad depends on which way you're looking at it. What sorts of social activities are you involved with at work or after work? Well, I wouldn't say that the environment was such that we did a lot of outside activities together. We were work colleagues, but I played golf with a couple of guys who have long since retired. Yeah, that's an interesting question. You know, in retirement, I've made far more friends that would never anything to do with anything that I had as a background from business. Now, I don't think that the social side was a particularly significant component of my work career. Well, yeah, Christmas time isn't we have the usual things, but I've often wondered about that. Yeah, anyway, I don't know how common that is, but certainly in my experience that was the way it worked. So I guess this question would pretend to both professors and the students. Did you notice social problems like drug, alcohol abuse and fidelity or abuse problems in your line of work? Standard question. Standard question. Well, I mean, my wife would be the first to say, but I'd have to agree with her that I can walk through life and not notice any of these things. Of course, they do come across your desk occasionally. My involvement with students, I can't right now think of any examples. Students certainly not well, you know, medical problems that have made them force them out of the program. But I can't remember anything that was related to it. It's certainly not been a big comparison of what I've run into, either from colleagues or students. Could you describe the variety of topics that you've studied in your economic research? Some of the range of issues that you've studied? Well, I think, in any respects, quite broad, the research work I did with Gordon Smith, that was very fundamental work on measuring service tension and resorption rates. We made links to floatation, observations that we've made. The first big research area I got into that was magnetic separation. There was a topic I kept reading about called high-gradient magnetic separation. And I struggled to understand exactly what the configurations were that were doing this. And eventually realized what they were doing. And at a conference, actually, an AIRE conference, Reagan Institute of Mining Engineering in Dallas, we met people from the national bit of magnet labs in MIT. And we went down to see what they were doing. They were the guys who were promoting this high-gradient magnetic work for their own physics reasons, not mineral processing, although they recognize now that there was a potential application. They were actually searching for magnetic monopoles, and they figured the way to do it is to lower this magnet that they designed off the boat in the Caribbean and drench the mud and see if they could find a monopole. And in doing that, of course, they realized they were actually separating more compared from another bit of mineral processing applications. So for a dollar, they sold me their superconducting magnet and we brought it up to McGill. So we were able, with the physics department at McGill, certainly in mineral processing research in Canada, I think it would have been the first superconducting high-gradient magnetic separator. So that was the first we did. And we graduated about five or six master students and at least one or two PhDs on that topic. Then the next... So that was an interesting topic. I wanted to know about it. And then I started reading about what was referred to as column fluctuation. And this was a Canadian development. The column company of Canada was in Dorval. And again, what exactly is this compared to conventional floatation? And so we got involved in that. Miranda had just put in, really, let's say the first commercial columns at Leninga, Spain, they had this problem at about 14 cleaning stages for molly. They were able to reduce that to three or four stages and the molly recovery went up. And everything, you know, this is a breakthrough technology for them. They're like having your backs against the wall, you know, to come up with something new. So then we proposed to them how to scale up. You know, what to do in order to... What lab test would you do? What test would be? What would you measure to try to scale this up? And that was the start of work with Miranda Research Centre and the Technology Centre as it became. And they provided the research funds, a nice scholarship for Glen Dobby. And Glen Dobby and I worked on column floatation for the next five, ten years. We wrote a book that came out in 1990 on column floatation. And he set up his own company, which initially was working in the sizing and selling of the column. So that was an interest there in the machines. Then in the mid-eighties, there was a lot of interest in electric chemistry, the electric chemistry of floatation. So again, you know, he said, what on earth is this? You know, you've heard of electric chemistry, but here it's been applied to mineral processing. That's actually, from an understanding point of view, it was one of the toughest things I tried to get into to see if I could do some research. And we got some money, one of these strategic plans. We were able to hire quite a senior guy, really, who resulted in me. But he came with this strength in fundamental chemistry, physical chemistry. And so we were able to get into this electric chemistry. And so that kept me another ten years of research work in that. But in between times, one of the things I found when I was working at Pine Point, and as we've learned again this morning, the grinding or combination step is key to, it's to prepare the material for separation. So that's its problem. And I would notice, as many had before, that when you looked at the individual minerals and the streams coming in, they were very different in title size distribution. And so we started asking questions as to whether this was differences in their softness, differences in their grindability. But in fact, it turns out that one of the biggest factors is their differences in density. Because part of the process is to classify using effectively their settling rates in water, called hydrocycline. So we set about developing, doing the sampling, making the measurements as low as the size-by-size nettle analysis. And developed some very simple models of the grinding circuit at Pine Point that quite clearly show where these differences were coming from. And it would resolve some questions people had in mind. It wasn't that kind, it was finer than the zinc kind. Well, it's actually because they're different in density. And so questions that the operators would have, it was nice to be able to provide fairly obvious answers, but nevertheless quite clear answers as to what these issues were. So we did quite a bit of work in combination as well, but always based upon the idea of trying to understand mineral behavior as opposed to just the average. You described in some layman's terms where flotation fits into the process of smelting and refining parametrically? Well, yes. I get that question asked almost every other day with the people that you now socialize with. Well, what did you do? You said, oh, where did you spend the rest of your time? Well, you became known as Mr. Buddles, you know, because that was one of the features of that process. So where does it fit in? Well, we've got material in the ground. So you've got rocks. The rocks contain valuable components, they're literally valuable. I mean, there's always a monetary association with this business. So the mine is going to extract the ore, you know, extract the rocks with the valuable material in it. The mineral processor then is going to try to select the one mineral relative to another. So first of all, you have to break the material so that, you know, if you looked at a specimen you'd see different particles would be different minerals. So they've been broken away from each other, liberated is the word. Now you've got to physically separate the one from the other. You know, you've broken them apart, but they're obviously still mixed. And now you've got to separate them apart. And the mineral processing is the art and science, of doing that by exploiting physical properties. We're not going to break chemical bonds, it goes in as lead sulfide, it comes out as lead sulfide, but it'll go in with these particles, it might be 5% lead sulfide, but when you have finished separating that from the rest, it's going to be 80-90% lead sulfide. And now you can afford to break chemical bonds using smelting and hydrometallic. You can put the chemicals, put the heat in, and break these bonds to get the metal out. So you've got the ore extraction, the mineral extraction, and then the metal extraction. And by far the most versatile method of separating particles is by flotation. And it's versatile because by the choice of chemicals, you can alter the wettability of these particles. So it's like mixing, well, let me be a little careful making those analogies, but you've got particles which have different levels of wettability. And the analogy I was going to draw is if you try to mix flour into water, it's quite clear that it doesn't want to, because this is a very hydrophobic material. You've got to really work at it to get the water to wet it. So by putting chemicals in, I can make, let's go back to the lead sulfide, galena is the mineral, I can make it, reject water. So now when I blow air bubbles past it, it'll cling to the air bubble and be brought to the top. Literally float. And so because you've got this ability to control the system through the chemicals that you use, it becomes a very versatile process. And developed the arguments over exact time. It had a bit, around about 1905, was when the first big process, industrial process, went in in Australia to recover, to begin with sulfide minerals. And then the process became so versatile, it's used for a multitude of different industrial, non-sulfide minerals. And it's used in, there is in bitumen recovery, oil refinery waste, cleanup, you know, droplets of oil will be flooded out by attaching to air bubbles. So it started as a process for mineral separation, and it would be very successful. And it was broadened into other separation processes that were required. What are some of the challenges that you face in your work? Well, you know, finding money is always a challenge. I remember once you'd gone on to this research grant train, that the issue was the grant's going to run out next year, you know, better get another one. And so if you were successful, the thing kept growing. So managing the size of the group, it's not a problem, it's not a prototype, but that was one of the things I noticed, that if you weren't careful, just speaking individually, the group would get so big that it really was very uncomfortable. We got up to 16 grad students at one point, and I was rattled. I mean, this was, I couldn't keep track of what was going on. Now some groups are like bigger, and some groups are like smaller, and they want to manage and balance the funding and the people. Obviously you didn't want to shrink to zero, but you didn't want to keep growing. And that was a feature that I came to appreciate how to do that. Say no sometimes. What's the most difficult project that you participated in? Ah! Well, I'm going to have to say, because I just said this two weeks ago, and they asked me to write a preface for this book, that I was checking my emails about three or four years ago, and I had a request from an old friend, Barry Wells, who had written really the classical textbook in normal processing, normal processing technology, back in the 70s, and he was looking at somebody that would help him, largely do it, take on the task of the eighth edition. And for reasons that at some point, I wondered why, I said yes, so that took me about two years. I was getting close to retirement, I did plan to retire, so I'd already let the group run down a little bit. We had a new staff member, so he was actually taking up a lot of the reins, the group's still big, but my direct supervision numbers had gone down. But I still had the resources, I still had the contacts, so that was the biggest task I'd taken up, was writing that, editing, writing that book. It took me the best part of two years. I'll probably have to say, I don't want to do that again. So if that's a measure of what was the most difficult, I think that's it, I don't want to do it again. You had a work in a particularly dysfunctional job or organization? Well, at some point, you find most of these organizations a bit dysfunctional. I remember, McGill was going through a period in the 90s, when it was really a serious shortage of funding, and so now everything was being looked at with a very close eye, and life became uncomfortable, but we were not different from virtually any other university, and a lot of businesses were going through some tough times in those days, and the mining industry goes through those tough times, it seems about every 15 to 20 years, that goes through really tough times, so I can't never complain about that. The job at the university was always, relatively speaking, secure compared to anything else that you could have imagined over that period of time when you were associated with the mining business. Disfunctional? No, I think, apart from the occasional tips and disagreements, that's not been a feature at all. It's been a very pleasant working environment. What's your fondest memory that released your work? That should be a spontaneous answer. It's always been the stews. I've thoroughly enjoyed supervising stews. I supervise 50 PhDs, for example, and yeah, that's been one of the highlights of the careers, the interaction with the stews. Some of them are brilliant, but they would take me in directions that I didn't know I was going to go, and I really enjoyed that. I learned a lot from them, I hope they learned a lot from me. At the graduate level, the interaction with the graduate stews. Undergraduate school? Yeah, but you know, the classes got big, it was difficult to follow what was going on. Still bumped into many stews at the undergraduate level that are all over the country here at this conference free time. But I have to say, it was really the research stews that made the job a real challenge and a real pleasure to go through that, and lots of different topics we covered. As I say, some of the stews, all were good, some were just outstanding, and that's always been a thrill for me to be associated with that. While they're getting their PhD defence, and know that they didn't just wow you, they wowed the other people as well. So yeah, that's good to be part of that. That was good, that was good. Oh, prison for absent were women in your workplace? Well, it's always been a concern at the university and engineering that there are never enough women in there. Chemical engineering seem to have resolved that, there were far more it seemed than chemical engineering for example and mechanical. I know you're asking specifically about mining and metallurgical engineering, but my sense is that there's always been quite a number. One of the first papers I wrote was with Olga Makrychenko. I don't know where she is now, but we did some work on grinding and mineral distributions and grinding circuits. I remember her very well. I don't think there were any other lady or students in the class at the time. But if you look at the progress over the years, there's always been women in the group. Certainly in the research group there's always been. I think right now there's probably 40% are women. And the only graduate program certainly had a steady number of women in the business. So I think mining and metallurgy might be doing a little better than some of the other engineering disciplines. Chemical engineering being a notable exception. I don't have statistics on that. It's just when I look around there's been a steady number of women in the undergraduate program. Certainly in the graduate program that was always true. How has your own work affected industry in Canada? How has my work affected industry in Canada? The contributions that you did. You should ask other people, but there are two things that immediately come to mind as being things that probably are a good contribution in the sense that I won awards for that work. That was common flow notion. We resolved issues on scale up and test work and we wrote a book and it's still referred to. And at least one company actually more than one used that information to become to sell and promote common flow notion work. I think we can be quite proud of that. These spin-ups are encouraged. It was never something that I set out deliberately to do. I'm not an entrepreneur, I'm not a businessman. But we're certainly glad to see that students were willing to take that gamble and take the next step to commercialize these ideas. And the other was to understand more the research level really. Understand what was going on in these big columns and mechanical cells. Where you're blowing air in and making one millimeter bubbles swarms on them in a slurry of particles of less than 900 micrometers a minute. It's a very complex system. You could try to write down some mathematical equations but we always felt that if we wanted to do something in terms of control in the process, you've got to measure. You've got to measure. That's a series of what we referred to as gas dispersion sensors. So we would measure bubble cells. We would measure the gas content in the cell. Developed sensors to do that. And the gas velocities in the cell. So when you put that together you could characterize the generally people referred to as hydrodynamics. More like aero hydrodynamics. She got water as well as that. And you could characterize these cells very well. And I see that still being being referred to. Still being used. People want to model or characterize. They will use these measurements and very often use the sensors that we develop. And so we would award for the metallurgical society for that innovation. And that comes only if there's an industrial application and a demonstrated industrial use of that. So by the time we got it I don't count but I'm pretty sure at the time we got it we were only the second university to get that award. Most of the others of course are going to be from industrial groups that are developing things. So, yeah, I think we probably had an impact from that. And from those measurements we learned a lot about the process that we've used in our course seminars at McGill. Short courses. And I've been on the road many times giving courses and lectures to show what we've done and how you can use this information for plant improvements. What do you believe to be your biggest contribution or accomplishment in the world of metallurgy? I'm going to say graduating 50 PhDs and 73 Master's students. I mean I long lost track of where they've all gone and what they're all doing but I can't but believe that they themselves have made an impact. So through me I've had an impact way beyond what I believe and I believe in a cute track of. So I'll mention personally co-floatation and gas dispersion sensors but I think the big one is all those students that passed through McGill and worked with me and got on to around the world. Do you feel that the relationship between academic metallurgists and metallurgists working in industry has changed over time? I think it's changed. I think it's got a lot better. I think there's an appreciation on the industrial side that we may approach things differently but we're all trying to do the same thing. We're trying to improve. We're trying to do it energy wise, environmental wise. Yes we have to write academic papers that sometimes sound a little bit diffused from what the industry is but that's part of our product that a big component of what we want to do is to make improvements that reflect on the way the industry works. So I said earlier on I thought there was a level of suspicion. Suspicion at this end? We feel we have much to contribute from a research side. Always undergraduates of course. But I think that's changed quite a lot over the last 40 years and we will be invited to, not just me, metallurgists now, research metallurgists get invited to comment and contribute in industrial workshops and I think things are a lot better in terms of the two components of the industry and the academic side in that way. How has the proportion of industry sponsored research relative to say government sponsored research changed in Canada over time? Well when I started it was very modest in all government and at different levels of government. There was some provincial funding and there was funding through the mines branch and NG Mines and EMI and NG Mines of Research and to some extent that money still exists not the mines branch money. But what did increase was substantially in my view the funding from the federal government, from the natural sciences and engineering research council strategic grants for me the big ones, these CIDs. Now there was a vehicle by which we could get industrial money matched and so it wasn't necessarily like that but basically what it comes in matched and so both sides are encouraging the other side to get into the research business. There was some initial suspicions I mean companies would want to know why why do they want to put money in to help us develop a scale up procedure for columns what's in it for them? And then is the fact that they are trying to promote research and if you're going to put money in they're going to help attract that money while putting their money in. So we want to increase the amount of research dollars that comes from industry one way of doing it is to use federal money as the seeds, as the attractors. So that was a real change for me in the environment in the 80s late 80s to notice, to take note of the fact that we could access this and I got good industrial contacts at this point. Pilots have been working. I mean the first group we worked with was Cominco, I worked at one point and I knew the people in the research groups of these companies, in particular Cominco at the beginning and then Inco I knew the people there and they'd seen me work they trusted what I do and now there was a vehicle by which we could actually come together another vehicle which started and I was lucky enough to take advantage of with these research chairs and Inco approached me at the early 90s and we had a research chair with Inco although now it's got eight different companies associated with it and it's another aspect of that collaborative research that the NSERP wanted to promote and I succeeded, it was a huge component of my research career was being able to access those funds and it was a lot easier to access those funds than my counterparts say in Australia where this matching idea was less well developed the Amara funding was Amara funding, it was not Amara funding to attract federal funding whereas here we did it with that mix and that made life a lot easier you weren't the industry would realise there was definitely a component of fundamental work that needed to be done and to satisfy the NSERP component of the money coming in so you had this very nice play fundamental work we wanted to do practical work that we wanted to see come out of it as well so it wasn't an easy thing to match or an easy thing to make but that was very well for us because I know in discussions with my Australia counterparts they were much more constrained, it was for example difficult for them to get into conflict because they didn't have a contract to earn money and I said well we started working out because we had a little money left over the year, we did enough to be able to find out it worked and then we looked for money I found it seemed a bit more constrained on where they could just blue sky spend some money because it was a little more contractual than what we were dealing with in Canada so I think that was a big plus for me and I think a big plus for Canadian research What do you feel are the biggest Canadian contributions to mineralogy in your field? Well I'd like to get back on that and what I would do is immediately go to this book that was written the component that I'm thinking of the 50th anniversary of the volume of the Vettelogical Society and that volume deliberately set out to identify what were the things over the last 50 years that Canada brought and so there's a long list in there and it would be a bit unfair to pick and choose right now things that are in there that relate to me, compilations in there, these gastus verb censors are in there but there's much more and so yeah I really would need a little bit of time to think about that but that book is the source of those. We've asked the same question as a society, what did we do in that sense, what did we do that had an impact on the metallurgical businesses at all so I think I'll keep clear of that comment I will miss some important ones that I don't intend to Would you say it was your greatest mentor or had the greatest impact in your life or career? I mean he was the one who wrote the sorry, he was the one who wrote the letter that attracted me to McGill in the first place we didn't always and he watched what he did kind of 100% sure why he took a particular interest I don't think he had a particular interest in me over anybody else but he noticed that I was publishing and then he had this opening in the department he offered me that job so oh yes, a big influence the next not the next but another contribution he made to my career was helping me work out the details of getting this insert research chair he was the chair of the department so he's actually the one applying on your behalf because he wouldn't and he guided me through all the ropes on that he knew the system was much better than I did and he was very good at helping anybody he saw his role as being the department I wouldn't even say Bill Williams was going to check in the department came first and so all the people who worked in the department benefited and a big influence on Michael I was lucky enough in two aspects when he retired they asked me to be the master segment so I thoroughly enjoyed being able to give back a little bit what I remembered and had interacted over the years and continued to work together after he retired one of the things he set himself to do was some work we're a co-op program now but even before that the students always had some work and that was one of his big tasks was to provide and find some work he found me some work back in 74 as I said and so when he retired he continued that work and I became part of the committee that helped him find these places you'd better say no to Bill that was the other thing you learned you told you to do something you'd better go and do yeah, I think without a doubt in professional biggest influence is the late Bill Williams one of the most important lessons that you've learned in life never regret there's always choices to make and so you make a choice go for it go as hard as you can just wish you'd done something else now that might be clever in the sense that everything seems to have worked out and I might be the first to say it's been a very it's been a very satisfied career but I've always said that to myself so I try to avoid looking back and wishing I'd done something else so making a decision goes for it in a sense a little bit of consequence but that's it probably it's choices you don't know which one is going to work out how it's going to work out but that's part of life making choices and whatever what are you proudest of in life? I'm very proud of the book that I've just finished I kept saying to my wife that you'll be very proud of me right now so you can see what I'm coming from I'm very very happy about it fantastic 4 years she's I like to say that she's American she doesn't always go with that since she's spent most of her life in Canada but you know all the guys from Birmingham from Dallas this is really great and we've had a wonderful time together and 2 children and so when it came to retirement it was in the sense of another brand I don't need to be at the office to feel fulfilled I'm quite happy to do all the other things that life's got and right now that's exactly what we're what we're doing salt bars board of cottage in my lake next to a golf course we joined the canoe club the singing club yeah it's great we have a lot of the time together so yeah that's what I would pick is there anything else you'd like to add to the interview before we finish any information you'd like on the record do we get a chance to see what it is before it gets published or when does it go from here I believe that it's edited and it'll end up on a website great deal of detail but I think that's the eventual plan to split it on a website and I believe it says somewhere around here that you'll be contacted before that happens I can't think of anything I think we've covered it all for a lot of grant everything from where I went to primary school all the way up to retirement that's a lifespan now I can't think of anything else can you these are all the the reply questions has anything come up in previous interviews that you'd say well I wish they included that as part of the questions well I've often found that I haven't done a lot of these we chat with people after the interviews and they tell you more interesting things even the cameras are all in yeah I was trying to ignore the camera there and you know even if I've read these questions beforehand it's what am I going to do scripted no so there's a certain reality in the spontaneous questions or spontaneous answers thinking about them afterwards you know you try to put things in a certain order and make things flow in a particular way but then that's not necessarily any more accurate than the spontaneous reflections that you get one is as true as the other and memories evolve