 So please state your full name. My name is Jonathan Phillip Peck. And your age? 56. And where were you born? I was born here in Montreal, 1960. And when you were a child, what did your parents do? My parents were both teachers, elementary school on my mother's side, and college and university. And ultimately, I kept coming back to high school on my father's side, so language specialists. And what were your interests as a child in your past times? They varied. They moved from all different types of careers to, again, to the one that I'm in currently, which I never anticipated, actually, when I was a kid. So that only came later in life. And how about at school? What would you consider to be your strengths as a kid and going into high school? Torturing my teachers was one of my strengths. I would think that I was an average student, but reasonably consistent in terms of grades and interests across the board. I didn't really have any one topic that I was particularly interested in. Science isn't mass, maybe, but really, my calling towards that end in science and engineering was mainly when I hit the college level. And it wasn't prior to that. So what, if you, I guess, didn't have specific interests until college, how did you know what to get into? I tried a variety of different things. So I went through the CESHEP system here in Quebec. And I didn't finish the DEC or the degree from CESHEP. I went to John Abbott College. But I ended up going to Ontario after three semesters at CESHEP. I ended up in mechanical engineering at University of Ottawa. And that inspired me to go down one direction. But then I decided that wasn't enough. And I came back to Concordia mainly because I wanted to be a civil engineer at the time. And from civil engineering, I discovered geology. From geology, I went into geology. And from geology, I went into mining. That's kind of the route that happened. But that was, again, late in my career. I was 22 at the time. And what ended up attracting you to mining? What's appealing to you? The practical aspects of mining. The fact that it's working with your hands, it's working with a variety of different knowledge that traditional engineering doesn't really need. It's a jack of all trades, really. And so it combined mechanical engineering with the civil engineering with geology. And it put it all into one job. Plus it was outdoors. It was an interesting area. Big equipment, open pit mines. That's really what attracted me. And so what was your degree when you completed it? I completed it. My first degree was in geology, geological sciences, Concordia, 84. And from there, I already had quite a bit of background in terms of an engineering degree. And I carried that forward to McGill, where I was then able to get into the masters of engineering program. And it was inspired through a prof there that in fact, we've talked about in the past, Malcolm Scoble. So he was the one that drew me out of the geology program into mining. So because it was at McGill actually doing a masters in geological sciences as well. Geotech engineering, when Malcolm pulled me across. Okay. And what was your thesis or most prominent work? Well, the thesis I started on, it was related to automation to some extent, but it was monitoring machines, looking at large blast-hole drills. And that's the work that attracted me. So Malcolm had a project that was funded by Natural Science and Engineering Research Council. It was a collaborative research development project with Ford and Coal at the time. This was about 1987. And so that became the core of my thesis as a result. But it was that that inspired me in. And that was the basis for me staying within mining, doing a masters degree, and then finally my PhD. So that was it. And what would you consider to be your first official job within the mining? After I graduated, 89, I took on the responsibilities primarily at an academic perspective. I was running an automation robotics lab at McGill, which was joint with a coal polytechnic called CCARM, CCARM, Canadian Center for Automation Robotics. And it was, there was a director there, a fellow named Andre Pichet, who was ex-Naranda Research, who was running the group at the executive level. And I was the McGill Laboratory Manager. And so that was my first job after graduating with my PhD and stayed there until the funding ran out in 1992. And how was, back in the late 80s, early 90s, how did robotics look at mining automation? Early stages. In fact, CCARM was one of the first centers in the world to look at this whole aspect of applying automation robotics to mining. But in 89 through 92, it was pretty early stages for it. There was a prof that was brought across to run that center eventually, a fellow named John Edwards, who came from the UK, where he had been working for the National Coal Board and doing quite a bit of work in terms of large machine automation. And so he was brought across to be the expert to port that expertise into mining here in Canada. But it was very early stages. The machines were still heavily geared around manned operation. The technology wasn't ready for prime time. It was really early stages. This is, again, 89 to 92, before really there was a lot of different technologies around including smartphones or anything else like that. It was very, again, very little on the market that you could work with. You had to build everything from scratch. So from there maybe take me quickly through your career and we'll maybe I'll stop you afterwards. So after CCARM in 92, again with the drying up of the funding, the whole group was let go because there was no further opportunities to fund it through McGill. Federal government, provincial government funds were gone. I basically closed the group down in 92 around June of that year. I took the whole team outside and at that point incorporated Aquila Mining Systems which was the company that I ran for many years. So it was the embodiment of all the technology that we developed within CCARM. We kind of pulled it through that company and chose the ones that had the most merit terms of actual products that the industry was looking for. And you have examples of, I guess, your best products? Well, the monitoring, we proved to the world. I would think that we could create ruggedized industrial level computer platforms that would actually survive on mobile mining equipment. Starting with Blastle Drills, we did our first project with New Brunswick Coal in 1993. That was the first purchase order that I got through Aquila. So it was, again, early stages, but we built and adapted industrial level on an assembly line to use in mobile mining machine applications. And we could see that there was just an incredible amount of interest in that sort of level of product. So we decided to expand upon it and we took it to the next level from monitoring to high precision GPS adaptation. And everything is a question of timing because around 93, 94, GPS receivers were coming down in size, they were becoming more robust, they were becoming faster in terms of update rates and accuracy. And we just found that the confluence of our product demand was right at the right time with respect to these GPS receivers. So by 94, we had a GPS guidance solution, not only for drills, but also for electric cable channels. And that was the beginning of the product line that we developed with Aquila, so. You're getting, continue, then. So 94, 94 was the first commercial version of a high precision GPS system for Blasso drills. We worked in concert as we've always done. We've always had a partnership with the mining industry in Canada. And we found supportive people within New Brunswick Coal, a fellow named Andy Cormier, who was the CEO of the company, and 93 who funded us and believed in us. And we deployed a solution that met his specific needs for New Brunswick Coal. And another big sponsor of ours was Ford & Coal and particular people like Don Shilak and also Jim Popovich, who at the time was the CEO of Ford & Coal. And they believed in technology and they wanted to see it adapted and they could see the avenues for where it would make a big difference within mining. And again, through their support and funding, 93, 94, they were really the reasons why we got into the GPS guidance market. I've proven that it would work, but we didn't quite have the financing to support it. But they gave us a bridging loan of half a million dollars with the opportunity for us to return that in terms of royalty payments to them. Although they didn't believe it at the time that they'd ever see a dime back. They didn't see all their money back and more than that. So it worked out well. And it was that partnership that allowed those products to be, again, made correctly in terms of meeting customer needs and being able to be deployed correctly such that the client could use it and support it properly. And that was, again, that's always been our mantra in terms of doing these products. And how were you guys among the first to develop this? We were the first in. There had been nobody since that time or at that particular time in the history that had ever looked at the synthesis between onboard monitoring and the use of high precision GPS. Caterpillar, in fact, was at that time playing with some of those components in the 94-95 timeframe. But we can honestly say that we were one of the first ones out with a unit on blasto drills and also one on cable shovels. And so, again, there were people looking at and recognizing where these new technologies, these new enabling technologies like GPS could be utilized. But we were the first one to really put a commercial product out there. So. For someone who is listening to this and doesn't necessarily know much about mining and how that works, how is a GPS system important and how has that applied? Well, everything's about accuracy. I mean, mining is really looking at a three-dimensional image of what's in the ground, again, which is defined through your initial program of exploring. So going in and trying to define what the ore body or the resource is. And then once you have that plan in the three-dimensional model is how do you then go after each piece of it and take the various slices off accurately? Because, of course, it comes back to how much ore you take versus the waste material. And so, GPS allows you to stay closer to that plan of how you go after and extract the ore body by having the capabilities of plus or minus five centimeters accuracy in three dimensions. It allows you to be very detailed and very accurate with respect to going after that ore body. And every little improvement in accuracy means millions of dollars. And so that's really what GPS is all about. And your other the automation systems must have been also helped with safety? Well, automation comes into play because, again, like anything else, mining can be a dangerous industry to work in. Big machines with high voltage on board, high hydraulic pressures, dust and noise and everything else. Could you take the operator away from that hazard zone? And the answer is, you can. And the key is to having some technologies that will allow you to do that. One of them is automation. Whether it's automation while you're drilling the hole or while you're operating the machine, which, again, it's still at this point in time today. Some of that is still in its infancies. But the fact is we try to do certain parts of the drilling process that would be conducive to automation, such as when the operator needs to drill a hole from one position to another in the elevation. And so we automated that process. And subsequent to that and where we are today is trying to automate the whole process so you can get the operator fully off the machine. It was just a stage in that whole automation sequence. Did you, with the whole automation system, did you, you said you worked with CAT? Yes. Well, yeah, 96, we, well, 95, I'll go back up a bit. 95 is when we started talking to Trimble Navigation. At the time, they were one of the key players in the high precision GPS market. Today they're the dominant player. But they came and approached this because they had a problem. They had a client in South Africa that was looking for a high precision GPS system for drills. They didn't have the capacity to deliver one. And they came to us to partner on that particular project. As a result of that, they purchased a minority interest in us in a kilomotting systems. And at the time, we didn't know it, but they were also partnering with Caterpillar. And as a result of Trimble taking and investment in us, Caterpillar subsequently came after us in 96. And they bought a majority stake in us in September of 96. And so that's how we forged the partnership with Caterpillar and became part of that organization, at least from the point of view of the mining technology side. And in retrospect, you'd say that was a good thing? It was a good thing. It was a great thing. If we hadn't joined with Caterpillar, we would have been competing with them. So better to work with the large US companies than to try to fight them. And I think together with Caterpillar, we did some amazing things. And we put our minds together and we put our best foot forward to come up with products that today are considered the industry standard. And from my perspective, that's probably the biggest legacy we have. We pushed the envelope. We delivered these products that were fairly innovative at the time. And basically, nobody's caught up to that product today. It is the standard by which every other product out there is compared. Which is a very nice thing to have. So, and we did it with Caterpillar and Trimble. So. Did the automation systems make it to the oil sands? I don't know, did they work with the 400 ton trucks and things like that? They did, but we didn't have much of a direction with respect to the autonomous haul truck programs, which are really where things are at today. If you look at autonomous haul trucks, they started back in 96. They probably started a little bit before that with Caterpillar. 95 is a research project within them. But we weren't involved in that. We stuck to blast oil drills and cable shovels with Caterpillar. That was the main focus. But many of the technologies that came out as a result of the developments we did are affiliated or associated with the autonomous haul trucks today. So, again, it all builds up towards higher levels of automation eventually. And I think we may not have had anything direct to do with autonomous haul trucks back when, but certainly indirectly, some of the technologies we did use will feed into it. Yeah, yeah. So, after CAT, so Akila's been purchased by CAT, what next, what happened? So we, 96 Caterpillar, bought a majority stake and I had, I remained the CEO of Akila Munning Systems. So we grew, we grew substantially larger than we, you know, we were at the time of the acquisition. Always based out of Montreal, by the way? Always based out of Montreal. Yeah, we were based downtown Montreal, you know, right in, in Centretown. And the company grew to a fair size, probably at maximum size, we were 50, 52 people. So we were a significant player in the industry and we were one of the few at the time. I mean, as I say, we had a gap of many years where we were the only one in that marketplace. And there were others that were competing with us, but they were, you know, far behind. And so we had really had a dominant position, but the industry through its fluctuations going up and down from 96, 96 was a down year, 2000 was a down year. It was a struggle for those four years, just trying to get out there. The products were not cheap, they were new. People were a little bit skeptical. The industry in general is always a little hesitant about changing their ways. And so we had to fight those hurdles as well to get the products accepted. And so we spent four to five years really pushing the envelope in terms of getting the technologies adopted and accepted and proven out. But it was a tough time. And through it into 2002, I stayed on as CEO and then I decided that it was time for the whole change to occur. And I left the company or at least left my position as CEO and became a different or played a different role within Caterpillar for the next two years until about 2004. Which was, what was the role? The role was new product introduction and development manager for the complete product line. So beyond just the Achilles stuff, I went on to do more technologies as well. Mindstar was one of them, the fleet management system and Cat's own products were under that umbrella. So I did that for two years. It's been interesting, the things you... Interesting and frustrating. Again, working with a large US company was a different story. And it was no longer my game because Caterpillar owned 100% of the company then. And so it was really dictated by their process and by their people and so on. And like any big company, there's strengths and weaknesses of it. So I stayed on until 2004. 2004, I decided that was it. And I think we agreed to part ways amicably, but it was time to leave. And so 2004 was when I formed my new company, PekTech, the one I'm in now. Where we are filming currently. Correct. And that, be more out. Yep. So could you talk a bit about PekTech? What is PekTech? How does it start? PekTech started as a result of the experience that I had built up through Caterpillar and Aquila and having worked in the industry for many years up to that point. And our role that I saw, I didn't want to get back into product development. I wanted to basically help clients identify their technology needs and then help them go out and find the right solutions. Find in the sense that we wouldn't build something, we would go and buy it off the shelf and help them integrate it. In other words, help them buy it, help them integrate it, help them deploy it, help them support it. So given that most clients were still unaware of most of the technology needs. And again, suppliers tend to sell things in a manner that convinces you they have all the answers. But the question still remains is, there's many gaps within what they offer and what the client actually needs. So our role was to come in and help the client do a better job of bridging to the supplier and making sure that he got the right solution deployed in his operation. So we sat mainly on the customer side. And through the course of four years, we decided that finally in 2007 that we could identify a lot of areas where we as product development people could become engaged. And so we saw opportunities jump into the market again. And in 2007, I decided to do that. We got involved in some product development work with a particular client, Western Canada. And that was the beginning of where we are today where we're actually a company of consulting services and also product development and product sales. And so we diversified in 2007 to enable that to occur. Just couldn't resist staying out of the industry again. So since that time, we've done a number of projects to develop some reasonably innovative solutions. And we continue to do so at this present time, which also includes having a renewed partnership with our friends at Caterpillar as of 2015. So it's all good. Good. What are the, actually first question, if you had to give a percentage of consulting versus product development, what would you say? Probably equally divided now. If you'd asked me this about a year and a half ago, we've been, probably the balance was in favor of the consulting. But now I think it's starting to shift more towards product end. The consulting is still very good and we still do a lot of it. But again, giving a product or having a product in a direction as well tends to skew our views a bit in terms of the customer because we have a bias towards our own products, obviously, versus competitive ones. So it's changing a bit. We still can maintain a firewall between our consulting and our products, but it becomes a little bit more difficult as we tend to get out into the industry. So I'd say right now it's probably 50-50, consulting and products, but I think it's shifting higher towards the product end over the next two years. So you see yourself kind of returning to your roots? Kind of, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's going back the way that we started, but it's a comfortable way to be because I mean, that's where we started. So we have the history and we have the legacy to build upon as well, and that helps. And how would you say the mining sector and economy is doing nowadays? Is it on an up-swing thing? It's always cyclical. It's always cyclical, but it's been flat for the last couple of years. I mean, it's a harder sell these days that I can tell you, but it was hard back in the Aquila days as well. The products are not cheap, and to get $100,000 to half a million dollars out of a customer for a particular product is a hard sell unless the return on investment is there. And this is part of history is that business case becomes more clear and as more people move towards more automation and the operations, it's an easier sell. But I'd still say the industry is a little flat at this present time, you know, January 2017. And time will tell whether or not it improves this year. So. And out of PekTech, what would say are your proudest because naive, I mean, maybe very recent but proudest products that you've developed or worked on? Well, we've done two, the significance. One is the UGPS Rapid Mapper product, which is a solution that was based on state-of-the-art technology. Again, almost in the same vein as what we realized with GPS at the time. Enabling technologies, in this case, the enabling technologies were LiDAR devices. In other words, laser type scanning devices that give you three-dimensional capabilities. And the formation of that product was based upon a need from a customer. Again, it was driven by needs of Barrick Gold who needed a better solution for underground positioning in the absence of obviously space-based satellites. And so UGPS came around as that result. But the fact was, is it evolved beyond just a positioning system into one that provided 3D mapping of an underground opening so that you can do again that comes back to accuracy, comes back to being able to understand where you are and what you're doing in three-dimensional space such that you can compare it to some plan that you have regarding how to get that ore out of the ground. And so UGPS has been a good product and it was through a relationship again with a customer and we're quite proud of our development history with customers. The second product would be the autonomous drilling product that we developed in collaboration with Tech, which was the company that eventually bought Ford and Coal. So a lot of the legacy is of being the leader in technology development was reflected in the fact that Tech believed in us given our past history with them over the past 20 years. And they also funded the development of this autonomous drilling product. And as a result of that, we've been able to get credibility and footprint in the industry to go off and sell that to a number of other clients. And this is why Caterpillar and I came back together because it made sense for us to cooperate in that regard. And again, given the legacy that we had, we had a history with Cat. So it made perfect sense for us to come together on this drill product again. And that's why we're together today. What is that drill product, the autonomous drill product? It's a, yeah, no, it's for open pit. It's for large blast-hole drills. I mean, one thing in technology development you always have to realize is that what you know is what you know. It's sometimes hard to go off into a widely different area than your own core competencies and experience. And so we stayed, the underground product that we did with UGPS was a different thing, but it doesn't, it takes some underground knowledge, but it's really understanding the fusion between embedded platform, software, and sensing. That's really the key. That's what UGPS is. But the drill product is one that goes right back to our roots in terms of having pioneered high precision GPS and drills. And this builds upon that. It's an incremental process where by you then go through the process of looking at the drilling cycle in terms of what it does as a machine and look for how you put it all together in an automated package so that the operator doesn't have to be anywhere near the machine. And so what this device does, it allows for a drill to continue to drill from a hole to hole because it moves from hole to hole and does a series of drilling removal of the drill steel and then it essentially moves to the next hole. All that's automated. And so put in a direction, put in a map of what you want it to do, it goes off and does it without the operator being involved. And so it's a semi-autonomous solution because there is some part of the process once it reaches the end of its path that an operator has to get involved. And by nature of the definition of autonomous, autonomous means no human intervention, it's more of an automated system. But it's one that, it's not a large market base currently for any supplier. And given that CAD is a very large drill supplier in the world, there's the market that we can go after. And so this is why we've teamed with them. But it is, it's a very unique product in that sense. And one that customers are demanding. So again, timing is everything. Absolutely. Looking forward, and this can be a, there's no limit to this question, it'd be more of a fun question, but where do you see the next big technology in mining? What is it? Well, if you read the, read the press releases of all these companies that are doing digital strategies or digitalization strategies, it's all about collecting data and doing analytics on that data. And one thing I can say is that there's lots of data that's been collected over time in mining from various, you know, devices on all sorts of machines. But people have made very poor use of the data. They haven't really taken it together into a larger analytics package, big data, you know, the internet of things, and use that to make, you know, some decisions based upon the outcomes or the information that's from that. And I think that's going to be the trend. It's not so much there's any real breakthrough type solutions that are coming. I think the solution is of combining everything is really the future. That's where things are going. So it's again, making more effective use of data that you already have available. And if there's gaps in that, today's world there's tons of sensors out there and there's a lot more of a choice in terms of how to, you know, get information off a particular component or a particular machine that again, just rolls up into this larger big data type concept. But I think it's having the facility to monitor, transmit, analyze, and make sense of that information in a shorter time period that's going to be a key game changer in mining. What do you think of, that's been around 2000, Robin McEwen with the Gold Corp challenge where he basically opened data, right? He threw absolutely everything he had on their red lake mine and said, world makes sense of this information. Well, again, that's an interesting concept. I mean, it's giving a data set. And again, hopefully the data set is correct. But what came out of it was a cheap way to have a bunch of people go out and hack it and see if there were any other different ways to slice and dice that information from which to make the right assessment. And I think it's happening. There's a number of companies that are trying to do hackathons and trying to inspire people to look at things a little bit differently because sometimes in one industry, you have a mindset and you tend to approach it from the front versus from different directions. And I think getting different opinions or different viewpoints is very important. And I think that is also happening within the standard information side of mining as well. This is where analytics comes in, is different ways to sort of process the data and as opposed to the old way. So I think that's totally appropriate. And Barrick has done some things recently, as I said, they're throwing out some concepts and inviting technology people to come in and hack solutions. In other words, work with them in a more of an agile, scrum type manner to come up with ideas that may be throwing ideas at the wall. But sometimes those ideas stick and I'm all for it. I think we need to mix it up. There's a shift to it seems to, a lot of these mining companies seem to be less secretive now, or at least mining seemed to, used to be a very secretive, conservative business. Correct. And now it's at least some of them trying the opposite. There's more collaboration out there between parties and I think people realize that holding intellectual property, let's just look at it in the context of technology, everybody's heard quite a bit about Rio Tinto and one of the future type projects and they tried to retain all that IP internally. The problem with doing so is that you don't continue to develop it because it's so unique to the people that are there at the time and those people leave which Rio has laid off tens of thousands of people, that IP all leaves with them and therefore the IP that you developed six years ago is totally obsolete because it's not evolved. So it allows you to get the lead on your competitor but I don't think there's lots of value in terms of just possessing it all and holding it in. So in many cases when we work with a customer they give us all the IP. We have provisions with respect to the fact that they've given us or transferred the IP to us for a dollar or whatever the legal agreement is that we will give them preferred pricing, we'll give them royalties on the product that we commercially exploit but they also know that we'll continue to commercially exploit the product so the IP is actually growing and they recognize they'll get the improvements that are coming about as a result of us going fully to market. So it's a much better relationship in the long run and most mining companies wanna stay mining, they're not a technology company. They use technology but it's not there, it's not their core expertise. So it's better to put it out and get it used in the industry to learn. That's generally how it works. I'll keep going a bit on these kind of questions, get more into the social questions. And this next one's no wrong answer but just yes, no and why. Do you believe there's a disconnect between the mining industry but we could also say more probably the natural resource industry and the general public in Canada? Absolutely, there's a massive disconnect. When you tell people that you're in mining industry and they go, mining, what's that? And then I just sort of hold up my smartphone and I say, you see this thing here? Without mining, you don't have this and they go, wow, that's really intense and the answer is, again, most people don't really know. They don't know where metals or minerals come from and they really don't recognize how it contributes to the country as a whole or to industry as a whole and I think that is a big challenge and most people see mining, they see the bad side of mining as well. It's a funny industry but it's like any other industry. What makes the news more so is the bad situations, the sensational stuff versus the successes and when you look at other mining countries of the world and I've been to all of them, you realize how good Canada is at what it does in terms of extracting ore from the ground. I don't think most Canadians know that. I think if they had to say, is Canada mining jurisdiction number one, most wouldn't know. Secondly, if you had to say, is mining a clean industry or a safe industry in Canada, they probably would say no because they see nothing but the bad. They talk about oil sands or people slamming their oil sands or some other disaster elsewhere in Canada and that becomes the focus point of the news and it tends to condition people's mindsets. So I'd say that yeah, there is a disconnect big time. And do you think the, it is true that seems that the media, as for anything they'll go with what's sexier and usually which is more negative, but do you think the industry is also doing enough to include and help the people understand what they truly do? I think there's lots of groups that are trying to do things. I mean, I can remember back to the Mining Association of BC, this is back in the early 90s and there was a particular gentleman there that was trying to reach out to the universities and high schools and colleges to sort of dispel all the misconceptions of mining and trying to profile them in a much different way. And yeah, I was a struggle back then but I'm sure that other groups have seen the same thing. I mean, you can keep talking about it and promoting it, but again, people that are out in the communities and the mining areas recognize the value. People in cities don't realize it because it's not around them. They don't see it, they don't experience it. Their mother or father doesn't get up every day and go to a mine, but so there's a disconnect between urban centers and out in the regions for sure. And I think that's how to bridge that gap. It's a tough one. It's very tough. Next question is Abe. It's an earful, again, no wrong answer. In your opinion, are there any events, people, inventions, contributions, disasters, anything really that must be mentioned when talking about the history of the natural resources in Canada? There's always lessons learned. I mean, there's a tremendous line of different events that have occurred that from which hopefully you recover from, but you also learn from. Tailings, pawn failures and things like that, which we recently had in British Columbia. You'd think that would be over in this day and age, but it's not. There's a number of different things like that. But look, I think some of those disasters have certainly from a Canadian perspective has happened less and less. The footprint upon the earth or the footprint of mining in general is only a certain reduction you can do. I mean, an open pit's an open pit, but I think Canadians have been looking for new technologies for extracting ore. And I'm certainly working with a lot of them now that are looking to be much more sensitive and being able to work in areas like Nunavut, where the environmental footprint needs to be minimalized by every degree, plus you're dealing in a harsh environment in general and indigenous people around. So Canadians are inspired by that to try to do things differently. And I think they certainly are very conscious of past issues and problems in the mining industry in general in Canada that they're building on. And so they look to the future to see how they can avoid doing those things again or again doing things differently. And I think that's, those are lessons that every mining engineer, at least I know in Canada, is conscious of. But any one instance, hard to say. I don't know if you've ever seen the movie by the NFB or something called The Whole Story. It's something to take a look at. Yeah, it's very interesting. What's that one about? It's about mining in Canada, Sudbury and some of the other gold mining areas of Canada. So it's, again, it's got a certain perspective on it, but it also doesn't promote some of the value of it. If you suddenly said, we're not going to do any mining, then what would the society look like here in Canada? If we didn't have minerals to rely on? Yeah, we can recycle a lot, but you still need to replenish the inventories with new minerals, especially if we have such demands from society on consumer-driven products. So it's, again, you can always see things in different light. And The Whole Story gives you sort of a one-sided look at things, but, you know, so it's those sorts of things that people tend to look at. And in today's world, I mean, we talk about false news, it all on the, through social media. I mean, hard to ignore. Again, people are influenced heavily by what they read, whether it's from a reliable source or not. And there's a lot of that on mining, you know, so. Well, that's people, I guess. Well, mining watch is another one. And mining watch tends to be somewhat, you know, focused on the negative versus the positive. And they're a very aggressive group, and that's fine. I mean, you always need a balance in anything, and it's always good to ask the hard questions, and hopefully you get the right answers. And I, but again, it does tend to skew people's viewpoint. If you don't want to read the other side of the story, you can always read, you know, the other extreme. And that tends to become, you know, what you believe in. So, that's mining. A few perspective questions here, looking back at your career, and this is usually what people find the toughest, this question is, what has been the most challenging or difficult, either project or part of your career? Well, I've had some challenging projects. I've had some challenging products. I've had some challenging clients. I've had some technical hurdles that we've had to overcome. All of the above, but it's part of the growth of a company. It's by having some failures in your career and having some failures as part of being a product developer that makes you stronger the next time around. Mining is an interesting industry in that it's everywhere. And so some of the places you have to go and do work in are in the middle of nowhere. And language can be a barrier. Cultural differences can be a barrier, not only with the language, but also with just the environment and the way that the people work. All of those things have been hurdles to us in the past. I mean, we've done work as far away as, you know, South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe. And, you know, again, those are in isolated areas, but we've done work as well in Latin America in some places that are extremely isolated as well. And they all carry with it certain challenges. So, again, dealing with clients sometimes and making sure that their expectations are calibrated with yours and you deliver the right product. It, there's been a few of those in my time, but nothing that hasn't allowed us to continue. It hasn't sunk the company or, you know, we just use those as lessons learned and we deal with it and engineer a solution around it and deal with the customer in the right manner, commercially and openly. So the best way to get through these things in mining, and I can tell you is it's better to tell them the bad news and be honest about it than to, you know, to lie and or, you know, diminish the issues. Best thing is to come out straight and just tell them. So. The whole transparency. Absolutely. Absolutely. What's the next one I wanted to ask you? I'll ask you one about women in mining. Yep. Throughout your career and you've done, like I said, you've traveled a lot. You've worked for different companies, with different companies, different clients. How present or absent have women been throughout your career and has that changed? And if so, how so? Very few in the beginning. And I started my career in mining in about 89, but were there, you know, women that came into the industry after that point in time? I'd say slowly. It's still a fairly man dominated industry. There's no doubt about it. It's a male dominated industry. And it really comes back to, you know, the fact that this is an industry that it's not viewed as being very innovative. It's not viewed as being very conducive to a young woman that wants to get into a suitable career. It doesn't appeal to people that have been growing up in urban environments to go to the remote. It's the exception. There are some that prefer that, but it's been tough. It's not easy for women, as I said, given the domination by males. But I've seen it change. Some of the people that I deal with today in consulting projects that I have, those interfaces are women. And they're women that have a long career in mining, demonstrated a great capacity for knowledge of mining and have been able to fight through the hurdles that they face. And they're now in fairly senior positions. And you can see it right across the industry. I mean, Barrick, their VP innovation strategy, a woman named Michelle Ash is there now. She was a Rio Tinto person. I deal with another woman at Agnico Eagle, Dominique Baudry. She's the manager of innovation. So she's come a long way. And basically, they've gotten to their positions because they have good knowledge and they're capable people. So, but it is still in the minority. It's just not an easy environment for them sometimes. Yeah, whether it's wanted or not, it's not necessarily the most appealing thing. It's all men, for example. Well, it is, I think, but again, it comes back to the challenges of modern life. I mean, if you're going to have a family and where do you want to raise them and what do you want to do? Raising them out in small towns is not all that easy either. It's challenging. It's limited in terms of services, in terms of a variety of different things. So most people want to give the best of their family. So after a period of time, if you graduate, again, do a lot of women come back to the urban centers and looking for jobs, mainly in big cities. And I don't know, I think it's the same with some of the young male graduates that come out. So I don't think it's just a question of men or women. It's a question of just the mentality, sometimes of the people that are graduating. What do they want from life? Do they really want to go and sacrifice in their view four to 10 years out in the middle of nowhere? And the answer is, I'd say the vast majority probably don't. They want to quickly rise up in the ranks and settle down in a comfortable job in an urban environment in most cases. I mean, we've seen the change and I've seen the change within the hiring of people, just given that change in mentality. So it's just the nature of the current generation to some extent. So again, I don't think it's a man or woman thing. It's more the way that particular mindset is these days. Would you consider to have one or many mentors through your career? Well, one key one is Malcolm Scobal. I mean, Malcolm would be my biggest mentor. He, again, being at McGill in a master's program in geotech engineering and then taking Malcolm's course, it was one of my inspirations for getting into mining. I just thought it was very cool. It was a great industry in the sense that there were so many different facets to it. It didn't seem to be focused on any one particular area. It seems to be very broad. I saw the opportunities of being there and Malcolm was the one that inspired me. He encouraged me to get into the industry. He dragged me across into a master's, didn't drag me across, but inspired me to come across to a master's with him at McGill as my thesis advisor and he gave me all the leeway to do what I wanted, which was good because I'm not one to be overly managed. I kind of like by freedom. I kind of like to do my own thing and Malcolm gave me that latitude. And it's for that reason, I probably was able to complete my master's and PhD in a reasonably quick time. They're done four years total and it was well worth it. So Malcolm would be the key instigator of a lot of what I did and what I became. I learned a lot from Malcolm. I'll ask you a few last questions. What are you proudest of throughout your professional life? Probably a keel of mining systems was a proud moment. And in fact, I'm flying to Denver the 19th through 20th of February because I've actually been inducted into the Technology Hall of Fame through the International Mining Journal. And it's really for that legacy for Akila. And Akila was a pioneer in many ways. And I look at it and I look back and I said, how did we do it? But it was just a question of being in the right place at the right time with the right ideas and the right people. It wasn't certainly only me. It was the group of people that we had that were able to persevere and work through some challenging times to deliver some interesting products. So I'd say Akila was probably yet because that set me up for my next phase of career which was where I am today. That legacy in mine, or behind me, it was an easy thing to build upon because automatically you can go to people and make the connection and say, well, we were Akila Mining Systems and they go instant recognition. So they know you've done it before, you could probably do it again. So I'd say that was it. But also for the training of people, I mean, if we look at the roots of people that we trained through Akila and also through PecTech, there's been a number of highly qualified people that have come through the organization, have gone off to do wonderful things with other companies. So we actually trained a lot of interesting people and those people were, you know, have gone on to contribute quite a bit to other companies. So including within Caterpillar and Trimble and other large companies like that. So that's also the training aspect and again, development of people is also a big thing that I'm proud of. And last question, if you're speaking to a student, someone much younger, for example, what would be the one life lesson or piece of advice you would give them looking forward if they're going to, maybe, go into mining or something like that? Mining is a great career and to be honest with you, it's what you make of it. There's no instruction manual when you come out of mining. You can walk into a whole bunch of different things. It really depends on what you want to do. People can either feed you what you're going to do or you can define for yourself what you want to do. And again, it depends on the company you're getting into. But there's always a mentor like Malcolm around the rim that will allow you to have the latitude to think outside the box. And I think the key is don't think too close to what your job description is. Try to see opportunities and go after them. And one thing that is always recognized in mining is somebody that goes the extra mile, somebody that takes the initiative on its own, on their own to go off in a certain tangent and take responsibility for a project. And I think that's the interesting thing about mining, which is not as structured as other industries, certainly not as other engineering disciplines where it's very well-defined. Because it is an engineering thing in which there's a liability associated with it. Mining has liability and you have some constraints, but in the world of technology and mining, doors open, massive amounts of opportunities, especially these days. This, the next five to 10 years in mining is going to be very exciting, especially with respect to the application of technologies that have been proven in other industries coming into mining. There's going to be more and more of that. So this is a great opportunity to be there. And hopefully the mining companies recognize it, so that they need to continue to recruit from universities and support them. That would be the biggest challenge that I see coming up is that connection that industry actually hires students, which when industry is down, they don't hire students, which is a problem, so. To a brighter future. Absolutely. Is there anything else you'd like to add? No, I think that's fine. I think, look, it's been a great run, good and a great career. I'm not done yet. I've got another five to 10 years to go and watch this space. There'll be more coming out of this in due course. So we're not done innovating by any means. We're going to continue to push the envelope and we'll be here doing that for the next many years. Well, thank you. Thank you.