 This is Anna Adamek in Ottawa. Could you give me your name? Yes, good morning. My name is Glenn Nolan. And could you tell me maybe something about yourself, about your, let's start with your childhood? Where were you born? Sure, I was born in Northeastern Ontario in a small community called Schaplo, and I was raised in a very traditional Kree family that kind of lived off the land, had very little access to, you know, modern amenities, running water, power. We had outdoor privies and we heated with wood. And what were your hobbies when you were a child? Well, I did just hanging out in the bush, playing with my cousins, playing everything from exploring, you know, the bush and trying to chase rabbits and just getting into mischief. And could you talk maybe a bit about your primary and secondary education? Well, we moved around a bit because my dad was in in mining, eventually took a job as a miner in a local mine. And I went to primary school there, moved to other towns and cities in Ontario, kind of following my father as he worked at different mining operations and ended up in Atacocon, which is in Northwestern Ontario doing high school. And then I went off to Sioux College in the mid-70s to get a diploma in geological technician. And then went back to school in the 90s to get my teaching degree. So you said your father was in mining. Could you give me the name of your father? Yeah, my dad is, his name was Ken Nolan and he comes from our community is the Miss Naby Cree and we were just next to a coal mine that started in the late 1940s and would hire from the local workforce, men from our community and eventually my dad took a job there. And what did your mother do? My mom was a homemaker, but she also had her own business, especially at the mine site. She did the laundry service for the single men. So we had a number of single men that lived at the mine and she would do their bedding, which was a contract with the mining company, but she also did the men's private clothing and she did all that. It was kind of amazing because she did it year-round. There were no dryers at the time, so she hung everything up outside in the winter until it froze and then she would bring it in and hang clothes up in that kitchen near the wood stove. So she was busy and she did all that with a ringer washer and when she became, I guess, made more money, she could do more washing, so she had a second ringer washer. And that kept her pretty busy, plus raising nine kids. What was her name? Her name is Helen. So did your parents encourage you to go to mining or geology? They encouraged me to stay in mining because all my older brothers worked in a mine or started off in the mine as a young man and ended up getting some sort of trade and moving on. Some of them moved on, some of them stayed in mining for the rest of their professional careers. And my mom, when I said I wanted to go away to school, she said, well, you can get a job as a tradesperson, you know, welder or mechanic at the local mining at Akoken when I was in high school. And I thought, no, it doesn't get me out into the bush, which is where I really wanted to be. And by happenstance, I ended up in the geology program at Sue College and found out that this was going to keep me in the bush. I can work outside all the time. And so that's why I stayed with it. At Sue College, did you have any notable teachers, someone you really said, someone who you considered your mentor at the time? Not so much. I mean, there was a, we had some good professors there. Manfred Engel, who was a mine engineer from Germany, was one of our professors. And he's memorable because he was very flamboyant and loved his stories about working in the coal mines in Germany and working in other mines around Europe. But I would say the person that really sparked my interest in mining from the exploration side was a geologist by the name of Ray Bernatches. He worked at the Steepe Rock Iron Minas in the lab there. And on weekends, he would go and prospect. And he took me under his wing one summer when I was a summer student at one of the mines in Atakoken. And I would go with him on weekends and do some exploration, just prospecting, going around collecting samples, drilling the fuel crops and just walking around the bush. And I said to Ray, is this, you can get paid for this. And he says, absolutely. And I thought, wow, you can get paid to do this. This is something I want to do. So you mentioned Ray, are there any other people you consider your mentors? Well, once I got into the industry, there is an individual that I worked for when I worked at Kaminko Limited, which is no longer a company. It's actually now tech, natural resources, I believe it's called. Anyway, tech and tech and Kaminko merged back in the 80s. And before then I worked for Al Scott. He is the geophysicist at Kaminko. And he really inspired me on my work. He trusted me. He I guess he valued what I was able to to offer to the company and offer to his program. And he kept me inspired to to even try to do more. And I love doing the work that he offered for me as an employee. But he also gave me a lot of freedom to do things my way. And I was able to, I think, contribute something to the company through through my initiatives. You said you wanted to be outside. You wanted to work in the forest with nature. So was that one of the main reasons why you chose industry over academia? Oh, you know what? Growing up, I don't even think that was a thought to to be in academia. You go to work and academia was not something where I consider to work. You go and study and then you get a job. So I don't think that, you know, it's it's unlike I think when you're when you're from a family that is basically blue collar workers. The thought is, do you want to be a blue collar worker and work with your hands? Be a mechanic or a welder or something in that line? Or do you want to do something a little different and to do a little something a little different is not going into academia. It was, OK, I can still work with my hands, but I can be outside. What is it that I can do? And, you know, prospecting and doing geophysics and doing geology was was the kind of direction that I took. What was your first job? My first full time job was with a company called Amock, was a French national French company that was exploring for uranium. And actually, they had a mine in Northern Saskatchewan called the Carswell Lake mine or no, Clough Lake mine. And I worked at their exploration camp, which was at Carswell Lake just north of Clough Lake. And that was my first full time job. So after I finished school at Sioux College, I took a job with Amock and it sort of helped me to while I'd done some of the work before, some of the geophysics before, previous summers. This was my first time where I had my own crew. And, you know, again, it really kind of cemented the fact that I loved being out in a bush. And this offered me a lot of freedom on traveling around, being in different places, you know, using unique methods of travel, motorboats to get to different sites, helicopters, fixed wing planes. And it really was something that kept me inspired that this was something I really enjoyed to do. Could you outline quickly your career for me? Well, I started off in 79 with that full time job. But previous to that, I did work at an iron mine, an open pit iron mine in Atacocon called Kalinore. And another American company that was operating in Canada. And it was one of the two mines in Atacocon. And most young people work there, you know, that were in high school, they got jobs, especially if your parents, one of your parents worked there, you would get a summer job. And it kind of exposed me to a number of areas within a mining operation, an open pit operation that I think was kind of unique today. My first season there, I was basically janitorial support and I did some painting. And my boss at the time worked in the pit. I had to clean washrooms. And she said I was the best toilet bowl cleaner. And I took pride in that. And it was something I guess my parents always said, if you're going to do a job, do it well. And so surely it was always complementary in how clean my washrooms were. The next year, they elevated me to running supplies to different parts of the mine from the warehouse. And when I wasn't busy doing that, they had me doing other things like driving truck, those big haul trucks. I got trained on that. I got trained as a blaster's helper. So I got to mix chemicals and dynamite and blow things up. That was fun. That was only for two weeks. So I got these short term placements where people would go away for holidays. But it still was not, I wasn't out in the bush. And I kept thinking, you know, it's fun, but I don't want to make a career out of it. And so that's when I decided, because I know some of my colleagues that I went to school with, that took jobs and mines and became part of the mining operation. I took a different path and I decided that this was something that I wanted to pursue, which was the exploration site. And that led me to traveling all over Northern Canada, experiencing some truly remote and beautiful areas that I got to be part of an exploration program. Sometimes just a couple of us out working for a couple of weeks at a time in a very remote area, got to just experience, you know, what can has to offer in the way of scenery and diversity in its landscape. And so I did that for a couple of years, worked for Kaminko, and then I started my own company and became a contractor. Just at the time when a lot of companies seemed to be getting rid of their exploration companies, exploration departments, and moving into hiring more contractors to do the work. What was the name of the company? Talisman Consulting. And we, it was myself, and then I would hire my team to go and work, started off just doing geophysics. That evolved into building camps for larger exploration projects, and then eventually managing those camps. So I did everything from staking claims to cutting the lines to do the geophysics and to do the mapping, to putting the camps up, establishing the camps, and then managing the camps even with companies having their crews stay in there. And, but it also demanded a tremendous amount of my time so that in around 1989, 1990, I sold that business because my son, who was quite young at the time, didn't like me being away from home. So... And where did you live at the time? I lived in Atacocon, and so I started off living in Vancouver for a number of years, and started the business there, and then I went, I moved back to Ontario to work at the Hemlow Development, and at Hemlow, it was just starting to get started, and there was a lot of contract work there, so I moved to Atacocon because I went to high school there and it was a convenient location, and moved my family there, and I would commute to Marathon every week and work for the week and come home on weekends. That got to be too much as well, and so it was all part of the process, and that's the industry at that time was not very family friendly. You were gone for months at a time, and it just became very tough for my wife and for my young family to have me gone for that long. So you sold your company, and then what? Well, I... It's the next step. Well, I continued to advise, you know, work in winters doing small geophysical jobs, and mostly in the far north, I kind of specialized in some winter cold weather geophysics, which is always a challenge, trying to keep your instruments operating in extreme cold conditions, so I developed a few ideas that I was able to keep my instruments operating, and I worked up in some fairly remote northern locations. Could you describe one of those innovations for me? I was just battery packs that I could put inside my coat as opposed to in the instrument that you couldn't put in your coat, and so it wasn't anything extremely innovative, but it just allowed me to keep my batteries warm, basically. And sometimes they would have batteries that were specialty batteries, but I would just rig up, you know, desal batteries with the same voltage that would do the same kind of job, power the instrument, but it would allow me to work all day in minus 30 weather, whereas you wouldn't be able to do that with most of the instruments that just the battery life wouldn't be long enough. So one of the things I ended up doing was I moved into tourism during the summer months, because it allowed me to be with my family and it allowed me to take my kids on some of the wilderness tours that I did with mostly Europeans. So I would bring in, I had a cultural tourism program and would educate Europeans about my culture, my pre-culture and what my family, who my family was and some of the stories I could relate to them from our culture. And then I got back into this mining sector in a big way, advising my community of Ms. Naby Cree of the potential for mining. There was a few companies that were knocking on the door of my community, asking for their participation in the sector. And around that same time, I decided that I wanted to enter politics and I ran for chief of my community. And once I became chief, I was also very active in negotiating with companies on agreements, looking for opportunities to supply those companies, those mining projects with various services. What was your goal or what was your approach to these negotiations? Well, first of all, was to explain who we were to the company and that we wanted to talk, that we weren't there to oppose projects that included us, that were sustainable, that had environment as a priority to protect and that the jobs, some of the jobs and some of the business opportunities came to my community. And companies at the beginning were a little reluctant because I think we brought a different approach to the table when it came to having these discussions and some of the companies were I think a little surprised because we had a different approach when it came to negotiating with the companies. And I think it opened up the eyes of some of the mining executives that we dealt with. And it then led me as the chief to start working with the prospectors and developers association of Canada to try to bring out more stories about companies working well with communities, communities working well with companies, maybe discuss areas of conflict and how to resolve those conflicts. When is this happening? This is in the early 2000s. And a person now who is a good friend of mine asked me to join the board of PDC. So I ran for a position on the board and I got in and a few, I think years after that we, well, we're very active on bringing an Aboriginal program to the convention. The convention, the PDC convention is the largest mining related convention in the world. So we've had upwards of 30,000 delegates come through over the three days that we are holding the convention in Toronto. It's been 85 years as an operation. It brings together the companies from across the globe to meet, I think we had 125 countries represented. So everyone comes from across Canada and around the globe to meet during that week because it is a place that is a great place to network, look for financing to sell your properties or to find partners for your properties. It's also a great place for suppliers to try to market what they can offer to projects. So I thought it was a good opportunity for me to offer a world view that is different from the mining perspective. As a First Nation person and a leader, I thought that we had a unique story to tell and share. And I believe by working with the industry, we could build a common purpose to work together. And that led to I think a very successful Aboriginal program that was started in 2004 and it's grown every year and still one of the top attractions for the convention. Even though it's a mining convention, we have a lot of Aboriginal content now. We signed the first agreement with the Assembly of First Nations of any outside organization to work with them to share information as it was with the Assembly of First Nations. And that was signed in 2008 at the convention. Took a lot of negotiations with the team for the National Chief Phil Fontaine at the time. And then I was my role on the board. Somebody suggested that I run for an executive position on the board and I got elected as second vice president which is you then move up to first vice president after two years and then so on until you become president. And so in 2011, 2012 or 2012, 2013, I was president of the BDAC and I'm very always honored to have been given that recognition by my peers in the industry. They trusted in me that I could lead an organization that has 10,000 members across the globe that speaks for the industry but also brings together perspectives from indigenous people and the mining sector together in a common voice that leads to a collective growth. Absolutely. So you own your own company, you are a chief of your community, you are a president of BDAC, you are a VP of another company. What are you the most proud of in terms of your career? You know, I think it's giving back. My father and my mother were committed to working in the community, volunteering their times, doing a number of things to make our community better. And I remember that as a young kid and my father was one of the first Aboriginal people to be on a school board. And we still have the letter from the Lieutenant Governor thanking him for his service as a board member on the school board. He didn't do that because he wanted it to be the first. I think he did it because he felt he had a duty to give back. So I saw that and I try to lead my life where I contribute through volunteerism. That's, I think, my career has allowed me to do that. You know, it's provided me with a foundation of wellness, foundation of support and care that now I can give back. And even today, my wife and I still do a lot of volunteering. And so that's to me, those other things, yeah, they're good, but being able to give back is even better. Could you talk about the most memorable project that you were involved with? Oh, there's so many of them. They're, you know, whether it was spectacular scenery that I was working in or the number of kilometers I walked in a single day to conduct surveys because I had to get done flying for hours and hours to get to a project site by helicopter and having to stay overnight on the land because helicopters broke down and couldn't pick us up or having a windstorm up in the Hyardic and not being able to travel and being stuck away from camp for the night. Those are, you know, it has nothing to do with mining. It's all part of the mining experience, but it was something that, you know, I still look back and go, wow, that actually happened to me. You know, my career's taken me to Latin America and I've done some, you know, when I was a kid, I used to, my dad was a guide and some of his clients would send us National Geographic that they had read and they'd send it up to us and I remember going through the magazine when I was a young kid and seeing images of jungles and Africa and I always thought, I'd love to do that. In fact, all my time I'd spend in the bush, I'd make believe I was either in a desert or a mountain or a jungle and so I've actually had to live, I got to live that life. You know, I've got to climb mountains, I've got to run wild rivers. I've worked in the Amazon, I've worked in other jungles. I've partnered with indigenous people in Ecuador and Peru. I have wonderful relations in Guyana and Venezuela, Guatemala, Honduras, you know, I keep pinching myself that I got to do all this because of the career choice that I made and that to me is very, I've been a very fortunate person to have experienced these experiences and got to do things that I only dreamed of as a young man, a kid. Now the most difficult project or the most challenging project that you were involved with? Right now there's, as the vice president of government relations with Noron Resources we're developing a mine in Northern Ontario. It's the first time a mine has been developed in that region, we're about 500 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, no roads into the area. It's a large wetland, the third largest wetland in the world. A lot of physical challenges, you know, distance from roads and so on, wetlands and just the isolation. Those are challenges, those are all technical challenges and can be dealt with. The most challenging part is that some of the community members still don't trust us. Even with our best methods and best efforts, we still haven't completely built the trust that is needed for some of our community partners and that has been the most challenging, it's been very frustrating as an indigenous leader, former chief, I appreciate their concerns but I also know the benefits that come from being involved in a mining project and that it's not for five years, it's not for 10 years, it's generational. The benefits that will come out of their participation will have a different community in three generations from now. The way my community has seen that kind of growth, personal growth, as well as monetary growth. I mean, I don't want to say that that's the only reason you're in mining is to have wealth, financial wealth, but it's a reality, the industry pays very well and if you're working in the industry, whether you're a shovel operator, whether you run heavy equipment, you're a mechanic, geologist, an accountant, or an executive, you get paid well. And this has been transformative for my community working in the mineral industry, but it's also, I believe, an opportunity for communities to derive that same benefit in the north, but we can't get through that trust factor. That's been the single largest challenge or the challenge that we're faced with right now. We haven't talked yet about your current position, so can you tell me when you joined the company how your career developed within this specific company? Yeah, I'll go back. I knew the gentleman who's passed on now, unfortunately, his name is Paul Semple, and I built a relationship with him when I first started, when I was first elected as chief and I would go to the mining conferences and representing my community, and I met Paul, and Paul was an engineer, a mining engineer, and had worked across the globe and we struck up a friendship and a lot of common interests outside of mining. But he carried himself about his concern for bringing indigenous people into the mining sector. So I think he was beyond thinking much earlier than most people about how important this was in projects. So we maintained our contact over the years from early 2000s and then in 2009 I was contacted by Paul to sit on an advisory committee for Norant. Norant had just gone through a change of board members and executives, and he thought that I would make a good fit to advise them on indigenous relations, Aboriginal relations, and within a couple of months he offered me a full-time job. And so I started with Norant in 2009 as the vice president for Aboriginal Affairs and my role was to build relations with the communities. So we ended up hiring some local community members that has leave zones, and we were in the communities often, we were spending quite a bit of time talking with community members, not just the leadership, and we were making some progress on building those relations. And then we made outreach to some of our community members that we were working with to offer them positions within Norant, and then we have one in particular that we've promoted, who's now taken over my position as a manager of Aboriginal relations or community relations. And for me, that made me feel like we're doing what we need to do, which is bring people in, give them the mentoring they need, and then allowing them to foster their own ability within the organization and grow within Norant. And then once they have that capability, new capabilities, put them in the positions that they can thrive in. And we're doing that, whether it's at the camp or whether it's in our office in Thunder Bay or in Toronto. And then at one point, two years ago, my president and CEO, Alan Coots, thought that I would be a good fit if I was looking after government relations because ironically, when I was chief, this is what I was doing, meeting with government officials on a regular basis. And yes, it does seem to be a good fit. And then now that we have an individual kind of doing my job, previous job, so I'm really fortunate that I moved in with almost nine years with the company and kind of had expanded opportunities and new requirements for fulfilling my role with Norant. In your opinion, what are the major changes that you could see throughout your career in relations between mining industry and indigenous communities? Well, I think it's more the fact that we've identified areas that companies need to fulfill in establishing relations with communities. Back in the 40s and 50s, mining companies were already hiring indigenous people. They just didn't make it a big issue that, oh, we've got to hire so many, 10% or 20% of indigenous from the local population. They never said, oh, we've got to have a procurement policy for business, First Nation business or indigenous business. They never did that, but they were, as I mentioned earlier, my father, I have uncles, I have great uncles, my grandfather, my brothers, my cousins, you know, dozens of them worked for the mine. It wasn't a big operation, but dozens of them. And the majority of them went on to expand their careers that started with either electrical or mechanical and taking them off to, those opportunities are those new skills to other places. Some of my brothers stayed in the mining industry, some of my cousins stayed in the mining industry and continue to be, even today, their children are working in the industry. But today, there's regulations that say you've got to consult. Mostly the government has to consult, but some of that obligation is for the companies to make sure that the information about the project is accurate, and the best way to do that is to do the work themselves on informing the communities of what it is they're doing. And, you know, recently, there was a call to actions for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. And I believe, you know, before that report came out, I believe that we've been doing it as an industry. We've been reaching out to the communities, helping them on a number of fronts. You know, I look at my own father. He had a grade three education when he entered the mine in whatever year that was. And he ended up, the mind said, you've got to get, you're very good, Ken, at what you're doing, but you need to get a ticket. So you're a good welder, so now you've got to go to school, but you need your grade 10. So my dad would sit at the kitchen table doing his lessons with my older sisters, my older brothers. It was kind of interesting to think back on it. But the company wanted him to get his education. That's part of, I'm not sure what number it is actually, but education is important. Health care. You know, the mine offered, it was a company town, but the mine offered nursing service. We never had that. Our community never had nursing. Health care, not in the same way. Better housing. Even though the housing from today's standards would be substandard, it was better housing than what we had. We had run water. We had flush toilets. That was the first time I ever saw a tub coming into the mine. The mine community. Power. Turn on the switch and you've got power. So I think the companies that have been doing that a long time has just never been structured. Today though, companies are really, really want to ensure that if they're going to put efforts into this relationship building that the communities are part of that decision making of where the effort is best spent and where the money is best spent so that more is accomplished. So I think that's the difference. 40 years ago there wasn't any talk about reconciliation or consultation or engagement. Things just happened. Today we're obligated to consult, to engage communities and by simply having those relations built we're doing that, we're accomplishing those goals and we're able to say we're addressing health issues or addressing educational issues or addressing social development issues at our mindsites and helping the communities just by having a healthy workforce that goes home to a community every two weeks we're going to be creating more healthier communities as well. What is your advice to someone who's starting in this career or to a student who's considering this career? Well, I've had the good fortune of speaking to a number of universities and to students that are either close to graduating or in the middle of their their programs two years in or three years into their their degree and I say you know from my perspective there's a lot of positive opportunities that come from the mining sector. There are some challenges you know you tend to have to leave home to I mean if you have a family but if that's something if it's something that excites you about being in new places and discovering new areas or I mean not necessarily discovering something but just being there for the first time and if you like being outside and if you like you know traveling to different countries and meeting new people this is a really neat career. There's so many positive things that kind of evolve out of that and your career can take you in a number of different directions starting off as a geoscientist or as a mine engineer that can lead you to doing some pretty amazing things and you know we talked earlier about some of the financial leaders and what they've done with their accumulated wealth is they've given back to universities and given back to charities, other charities so it's not just about them, it's about what they can do to make the world a better place. Is there anything guys you would like to add? Nothing. I wouldn't be sitting here if I didn't make that decision when I was seventeen or eighteen years old that I wanted to look at exploration, mining exploration as a career, still was kind of nebulous, it wasn't something that I totally understood until I got into it but I was able to get a passion for being outside and I realized that mining exploration was a vehicle to keep me outside as often as possible and I didn't realize the extent of how much I would travel I didn't realize the extent of where I would be twenty years later or forty years later after starting my career back in the seventies and where that's taken me geographically across the globe and I always shake my head thinking I came from such a remote disadvantaged community and to where I am today you know, having these opportunities presented to me is I couldn't be happier. Thank you very much for this interview. You're welcome.