 Okay. So, we would begin as far as 19th 2015. This is an interview with Chuck Edwards, taking place in Saskatoon. The interviewer is Eric Wydenhammer. If you could start by giving us your name and age to begin with. My name is Chuck Edwards and I'm 71. Let me just zoom in a little bit here so that I get the tripod out of the screen. And where were you born? I was born in Arbita. It's on the Sagina River. I was born there because my father worked for Alkan. Did your father work for Alkan? My mother did. My mother, after she got married, was a mother. But she did have a master's degree in chemistry. What did you do as a child to pass the time? When I was young, I played. I grew up in St. Lambert. It was a small town. It was right across the river from Montreal, across the Victoria Bridge. It's where the first lock is. When I was there, it was about 10,000 people. There was a lot of empty space. There were open fields. It was a great swamp for you to play in. My parents didn't know about it. So yeah, growing up, I played sports. I liked to swim and ran around. Was it a very common community? When I was there, about 50-50. It was interesting. They were a separate community. We went to different schools. We went to different churches. Not so much in Greece, but we went to high schools. We started playing organized sports. It was bilingual because we were all well-informed. They used whatever language was handy at the time. Football, hockey, there was nobody trying to make sure it was in English half the time or French half the time. Whatever it was, they just used it. Later, when I worked here in the federal government, they wanted me to go to language training. I went to the first session in a room like this. I said, I don't really need this. I grew up speaking French. So I talked to him for a while. He says, where did you learn that? I said, playing hockey. He says, I know what you mean, but it's not polite. Did you find you had an early passion for science or engineering or metallurgy in particular? I had a passion for science. I like science and math. My father had a Ph.D. in chemistry. He probably wouldn't have been better off in his life than a professor, instead of working for an Alcantara company like that. I got a lot of chemistry lectures over dinner. I was actually in second-year university before I learned any chemistry from anybody but my father. What I didn't know was what I wanted to be. I knew what I wanted to do just generally. My mother tells a story that she knew before I did because here I turned five. Somewhere I was four. We built what I would call a fort. We basically wouldn't lean against the house. I can remember building it myself, but obviously I didn't. My mother says while my father was building it, my brother was there with a hammer, which is dangerous because he's not good with tools. I spent my time with a notebook in my eyes. So she built it. I was actually in grade 10. We didn't have much in the way. We had no career training at all. We had a sort of career day once a year, some people couldn't even talk to you for a while. Well, until I was in grade 10, I figured I'd be a mountain because they had the best outfit. But the guy came out in grade 10. When I was in grade 10, I started talking about what I was doing. And I said, that's what I want to do. What do you do? He said, why am I an engineer? I said, all right. That was it. I was lucky you showed up. Could you tell us a little bit more about your education and the university? Well, I went to grade school in high school in St. Lambert. With Schomblin County High School, I think their name is changed now. But St. Lambert was a fairly affluent town city. And our school was very, very academically oriented. For most of this, it was an assumption running on a university. So the question was, what's the meaning of the study? And in a high school graduate class, when I graduated, I don't remember anybody who didn't go to university. So it was that kind of school. But I decided I wanted to go to Queens. So I spent another year in high school in Montreal, getting my grade 12. So we went to Queens. What classes did you enjoy when you were at university? I liked pretty much everything except organic chemistry, which it really just was. I mean, I understood it. I liked the physical chemistry. I was lucky. I took a course that may have disappeared from Queens, but it was called engineering chemistry. And you were taught in the chemistry department mostly. But then you also took the basic course that engineering did. So first year in the field school, in the survey, you did some civil, some mechanical geology, that kind of thing. So as I said, it was filled your time. I remember in my first year, I had one spare, one one spare in a whole week. So it kind of resented. Because there were a whole bunch of people in most of my chemistry classes who were in arts and science chemistry. And they had like 12 spares. But hey, I didn't, it was a, it was a very, very good. It was initially designed to produce chemists for not research chemists, but VSE chemists that work in industry. But it had drifted a lot, a lot since I was there. A number of us went to law school. A number of us went on to graduate school. There were a few of us that actually went like that, who went to work in industry instead of as chemists. So what made you, how did you become interested in mining and metallurgy? Well, it was an accident. The actual, when I went back to grad school, I actually thought I would be a professor. But a few years in grad school indicated to me that I didn't want to spend the rest of my life in a university. So I was sort of erring off. And after I left school, I had a trouble getting a job for a while. And Hinkle offered me a job. He was just a temporary job at their research lab in Mississauga doing vocation research. Because I knew enough surface chemistry to do that. So I got on with Hinkle and I guess I did a good job because they kept me on and that was it. So I've been in mining and metallurgy ever since. And it's not, frankly, before I did that, when I was in grad school, I certainly wasn't preparing to be in the mining industry. But I wasn't preparing to be in any industry. I was just carrying on this fairly exotic research and we were going to see what happened afterwards. So in the end, it's all application of math, physics, chemistry, one way or the other. Do you remember anything, particularly about your first day on the job at Hinkle? Yes, I met a lot of people. And I had some difficulty in university the last few years I was there. So I made a cut of the fuss. But one of the fellows who had been in undergrad with me was over there in the lab. And the thing that startled me was, I guess he told some stories. But when people met me a couple of days later, they came back that most people had one of two comments. And one was, if you really did what I heard you did, you're crazy. And the other one was, you're not as big as we thought you'd be. So that's what I remember. I also remember that the lab we worked in, the Met Lab, was in the basement of the building. And it was, there were no windows in the basement. It was all gray. I mean, the counter did the laptop and gray in, so it was gray and the desk was gray. A couple of us, the first few weeks I was there, asked the thing, you know, tune it up, make it a little brighter. And what we got told us, oh, we're going to put up some nice pictures. So they did. And the pictures they put up were charcoal drawings of the cooperations. Oh, goodness. That's really nice. So it was a great place to work. How long did you work there? And where did you go afterwards? I was two years there, basically doing vocation research. And at the time, INCO had a mine in the Manitoba called Pipe Mine. It was an open pit. It was relatively cheap to mine, but the ore had a lot of asbestos in it. And it didn't process properly. It didn't be old processes. So I spent most of that two years looking at pipe ore, trying to figure out how to deal with it. And it actually made some really interesting discoveries. And after I've been there a couple of years, the barefoot worst, I went up to, set me up to Thompson to talk to the people there about processing pipe ore. And when I arrived, they'd been told ahead of time that I was the corporate expert on processing pipe ore, which was natural. And in fact, I'd been in the lab. I hadn't been in the industry before. So luckily, I arrived early in the day, and I had a couple of friends there already, and they toured me through the mill. So by the time I came to my talk in the afternoon, I could actually talk, but I couldn't see it. So that was, and then not long after that, I got asked to go to Thompson to set up part of the mill to actually run the pipe ore. So I did that. So your research ideas were implemented in processing the ore? Yeah, oh yeah. And they still are. I was in Thompson a few weeks ago on a job for a plastic wheeler here. And the basics of the process they're using dealing with these high magnies and oxide ores are basically who came out of my research back in the 70s. So it was nice to see it. It was actually useful research. So what was your, how did you proceed towards the uranium industry? Well, I worked for INCO and I was there a couple of years and things were slowing down. So I was looking for another job and there was a job open in Ottawa for the elder on the field. So I went down into the mill and they hired me there. So that was my first, I'd been aware of uranium and nuclear power and so on beforehand. But my father graduated his PhD. He was in the States. And his professors say he had a job for him but he had to stay in the States for and it was very hush hush and he wanted. And my father said he wanted to go back to Canada so he went to our writer for help. And the job he turned down was with the Manhattan Brooklyn. So I'd been aware of giving uranium and daily. Del Dorado was a good place for me. It was a lot of fun. How did you eventually become involved with Amac Foster Wheeler? I've been here for almost seven years now. So I'd known that the job I had before this was chemical. And I was there. The director of engineering projects. So I did a lot of hiring of consultants when I was there. And when I decided it was chemical I aimed it for the wind and debris so that I knew from working with Amac people that it would be a good place to work for so long so I came here. And then returning to Amac Foster Wheeler for a while. So what sort of research was done at Camico? Camico originally had a... Well, I was in the research lab in Ottawa and we were doing a lot of research. There were discovered, you know, in the drug orgy who cast in the city of the... What they were finding in exploration was processable. We did a lot of work on trying to improve operations. At the time, Del Dorado owned... When I was there, owned the big uranium mine. They owned those give-or-much. We did a lot of work there on improving the operation. And I was lucky because in my fourth year an undergrad at Queens took a course in the computer program. So that would have been 1964-65. That was the first year Queens took a computer program. So for most people my age, I was sort of ahead of the curve on using computers. And when I was at Del Dorado we were having a lot of trouble with some of the leaching and give-or-much. So we actually, we had, before I arrived there we developed really nice little apparatus that had the superbly nubic, the leaching equipment and the give-or-much over a tank like this was a thousand times smaller than the equipment. But we did a factorial design test. And it turned out that the way we thought the process, the leaching process, what affected the leaching process, they were highly confounded. And we hadn't realized that before. So the result of that was we got the platforming and your best ever did. So that was the last fact. This was an application of computers? Well, it was an application of, it's a factorial design. It's a statistical way to design experiments so you get the most information on the least work. And you don't do the variables one variable at a time. They're all packed at the same time so you can find out how they're confounded. So that was, that was interesting. And one of the projects we bought at the time was a key like federal government that changed the rules so that a foreign company couldn't own 100% of the uranium operation. Elder Addo got part of the key leak projects. And our co-partner on that didn't have much experience in uranium processing. So Elder Addo carried the load there. And I was assigned to come here to Saskatoon for subunions and also other places where the actual testing was big too. I actually, I still have it because I found it later but they wrote a little four page memo playing back to auto one time and said basically this is not going very well. The test work is not well planned and we'll manage. And we better put somebody who knows what they're doing on this job or we're going to lose our shirt. But I found it. Nothing happened. A fellow who grabbed a lab came into my office and said, you know, we've got to go downtown. They want to see it. So we went down there. What are their VP operations in big, big, big deaths and nothing on it except mine done well. And I thought, oh shit. I'm in trouble. And he said, we've read your memo and we agree and you're it. What do you mean? I mean, you're taking charge for us. I'm all out of testing. So I ended up, I was telling the truth. I was slightly out of my depth. But, you know, I think what that happens, what you do is you make like a buck, you know, call them, kind of like hell underneath. And so I ended up being one of the two design engineers for Keelik. So, which was fine. Could you describe some of the technologies involved in finding Keelik? Well, Keelik, Keelik at the time. The average grade of your bodies there was two and a half, three, three and a half percent. Which by today's at the best standard is not my grade. Today's at the best of my high grade is 20 percent. But at three and a half percent was the highest grade anybody's seen at the time. And still by global standards it's very high. So there was a lot of worry about how to process the high grade organ. And also the organ had nickel in it. Which some of the at the best, so that complicated things. So we did a lot of work on looking at various reaching systems. And we ended up with auto-plays. Which worked very well. Great machines. We had a lot of work on designing the blending system. So we kept it because with a high grade or everybody like that there's some very high grade spots. It's a real overage spot. So we had them blend them to get a steady feed to a nuke. We had a lot of discussions at the time whether we'd use a SAG mill. At the time SAG mills were relatively new. Today they're standard stuff. But they were unproven at the time. And we ended up going with a SAG mill after the startup. And again, it worked like a charm. And one of the discussions was whether to recover the nickel. Fortunately it got pushed aside and nickel wasn't recovered. But there was a lot of work to make sure that you could extract virtually all the uranium and have virtually none of the nickel end up in your product. So it was a, the unit operations were not much different from the past. But we did a lot of new work because of the high grade. And in the end, at the time the mill happened to start up about the time uranium prices were high. So it made a ton of money. Still is. So do you travel much for your work? Did you work in other countries? I have. I haven't traveled much recently than last year or two, but since I've, well since I've worked for AEMEC I've been in Africa several times. I've been in Australia half a dozen times. I've stayed several times in a South American place. So it's so... The part of this job is in the consulting staff that we're willing to travel. I must admit I've been traveling much fun anymore. The first time I flew I went from Montreal down to New York City. When I landed in New York City coming in from the ocean all the lights out I was just so excited. Now I got on a plane. It's long enough to get me there on time so I asked for it. But what I do find is going to those other places meeting the new people being in that environment that's wonderful. So it's just traveling back and forth. So did you do any insights on the particular characteristics of business or engineering culture in Canada? I think the engineering culture in Canada is pretty south. Especially in the uranium industry one thing that surprised me is that I found that there is a there's a Canadian way of doing things there's an American way of doing things that are pretty close. There's an Australian way of doing things which is quite different. And then there's Eurasian way of doing things which is quite different. And it's just all those industries the uranium industry isn't very fake. But it's just all those those different areas where they're called different universes and all those things. And I read some when I was a chemical I would do diligence on a property that they were thinking about and I saw the test work and the test work was just they said well it works we're over here. But they didn't read the literature from Canada. So one of the things I've been doing here at Amon Foster Wheeler is preparing our uranium move to basically be able to say no matter where you are we can bring to your project the best available global technology. Not the best available local technology tailored for you. I think we're in a position to do that now. And I find that really satisfying. I've been very frustrated looking at something and saying well they turned that down and I know it works because they were Australian and the operation was in Canada. So let's say Amon Foster Wheeler's role in the uranium industry with service? Well Amon Foster Wheeler's big company now are 40,000 people. And for the uranium especially I think it's important to be on the ground where you're going to build operations. And we are, we have offices basically in every uranium active area in the world. And we can provide essentially create a concept to close it. So if you're an exploration company we can help in designing and analyzing your drill program. We can take your drill results and test work and design a mill for you and tailings handling and pull a treatment to our metal protection. Then we can design a mill for you and we can help you commission it and we can help you fix it up or optimize it as you're running and when time comes to decommissioning we can do that too. So the part I had to do was mill design. So it'll be the company can do that essentially. And AMAC owns a certain series of technologies and a certain mill setup? No, we don't own the technology. We're aware of it. And parts of it we're experts in. But no, we don't. AMAC doesn't develop. We sometimes we recently did test work to develop innovative flow sheets or innovative operations. Could you describe your involvement with CIM? I've been involved with CIM pretty continuously since I started in 1974. And one thing I found with CIM is that the more involved you are the more fun it is. It's a great organization. Wonderful people. You make friends for life. And in CIM I've had most positions that exist in a chair of a local branch in three different places. I'm the chair of a local branch here now because nobody else wants to do it. I've been a district vice president the chair of the community of processors and I was president of CIM a few years back. So very fulfilling. It's just wonderful. Are you involved with any other professional organizations? Not really. I'm a professional engineer but I'm not involved in the committees or the management. So I'm involved, I belong to a car club. But not professionally. Professionally it's been CIM and especially in CIM the Canadian river flow sensors. You've been described as a public advocate for nuclear power. Can you describe how the conversation around nuclear power has changed over time? Well the nuclear power I think it's unfortunate that nuclear industry is born out of a ball rather than a ball. But I do think that nuclear power is the answer. You'll see up to two issues. It's also on a on a lifetime basis because it's as clean as wind and so. So I had the opportunity because I was a Syria distinguished lecturer. The title of my talk was the role of uranium and nuclear power in combating over time to change. And I gave that talk 30 or 40 times. So it's a there's some places that had a lot of opposition in other places people just sort of odd because I tried to make the case. So that I've been in an adequate position like that for decades now. So I don't give that talk much anymore. But every now and then somebody wants it so I'll do it again. You find that public attitudes have changed over time? Public attitudes what most people know about nuclear power is the accidents. So you know what you know what we're pushing. But the fact that you have those are both very bad accidents. Neither of them were caused by the technology they were caused by essentially incompetent or stupid people. So it's the same argument for no automobiles. Stop using cars because they kill people and make the same response. So it's the same argument for no automobiles. Part of the nuclear part of the part of the opposition to nuclear not just nuclear power but the whole nuclear industry is not rational. It's not based on fact it's always emotional. So it's religious. Which are you know much argument there. So I guess human factors and safety culture these are all big issues in the sort of industry. Yeah given the number of reactors there are on the planet and the number of hours they can run it the safety performance is pretty good. Chernobyl was caught by a batch of Soviet Army people and went in and shut down the computer and tried to run the planet outside the design parameters and Fukushima essentially the earthquake shook the plant and the plant shut down exactly the way they're supposed to be. It was the tsunami that took them out and the tsunami caused it took out their backup power. That's what caused the real damage. If there hadn't been a tsunami they would have been shut down and restarted. How has the global demand for mined uranium affected your field over time? The more demand there is the more projects there are. If you're working for a company like Chernobyl then the more demand there is the more company the more cash the company has to build on new projects and developments and so on. So essentially then like all design engineers consulting groups and operating you know it's a metal place goes up and down and your fortune goes up and down. What do you think the prospects are for the industry in the near term? I think the price will go up. It's beginning to, one of the things that's kept it down the last a while was the after she and Japan shut down all its reactors. They're beginning to restart those reactors. That doesn't mean much in the global supply and demand but it means a lot emotionally. So just the perception. And given the number of reactors that are running and the reactors being built there's going to have to be more uranium production fairly soon. So I'll expect the price to come up because the price where it is is too low to get new operators into operation. How present or absent were women in your workplace throughout your career? Fairly absent. I mean the mining industry is fairly conservative in that regard. It's not as bad as it used to be. I mean when I started to start at first year in Queens you have your orientation and so on. And the guys I was in science 65 so these guys in science 64 were talking about one of the things they were proudest of was that they had a woman in their class the year before. And a batch of them decided they didn't want a woman. So what they told us is they dated her out. They just bothered her so much. Let's go to coffee and some movie and stuff like that. They made sure she failed her exams at Christmas that she was bought. And they were proud of it. And even then I was appalled. But an engineering agenda in the four years I was Queens we had no women in our class. I had a class, a graduating class, about 200. None. That's changed. I got it. And the mining industry is concerned as it is and is sort of behind behind the curve. When I worked in when I worked in Tom's I was in what we call Mill Cross's technology that I was considering like to get into operations. So I went to talk to the mill superintendent and he said I couldn't get a job in operations because I didn't weigh enough. He said oh that's a rule. So I went and asked one of the guys who didn't want to tell me he says well the purpose of the rule is to keep women out of the workforce. So and that's there are still and are still places where it's considered unlucky to have a woman to go under from. I've seen that. So that's going. It's disappeared. But it hasn't gone away totally. I have every sense of this. I have five daughters and when they were growing up I was told you can do anything you feel like. Women are not tough enough they don't understand math. It's just bullshit. Did any of your daughters come to engineering? No. Have you ever worked in a particularly dysfunctional job or organization anything memorable? Well one plus that worked they had a large manual of ethics and but it wasn't and there were times when people would violate you turn to page 32 right and there's a violation and nothing happened. I found that very disturbing because it meant that just you know the ethics was fine the way I was but the fact that it was ignored and violated I thought that was bad. One other operation was that I took some leadership training and my group was trying to I tried to run it like a family and I got some of the other managers especially senior people they said you can't do that you can't be friendly you got to be friendly I said no I saw the way I don't tell people what to do because it's engineering I'm not competent in those disciplines so what I try to do is you make sure you find the best student you can for a job make sure that everybody understands what the goals are and how we're going to accomplish them together and then you make sure that they have everything they need to do their job but basically you know how then you get to hell out of the way and I had a lot of pushback and I said no no no you've got to be the boss so I I had to say it out loud so I was very frustrated So what are some of the other challenges that you faced over your career? Um you have to learn new things if you change jobs not so much discipline but change the part of the industry you're in I went from Ottawa working in the engineering industry where the tonnages at your mill are in the range of say 100 tons an hour I went from there to Montgomery and I was working in an oil science coaching where we were designing 15,000 tons an hour so here it but again as long as you've got the basics the chemistry, the physics and the math it's a different scale, it's a different commodity it's a different chemistry so that's one thing suppose all industries are like that but as long as you've got that sound grounding you can do pretty well that's one of the things I've talked to I speak a lot to university students recently here and especially in inventory and I tell them in your early years don't fence yourself off at one point I was looking for a job I was looking for a job a science project and I was told that a company in BC was looking for a hydro metallurgist so I phoned them up and said what do you think a hydro metallurgist does and what do you think a hydro metallurgist knows so they told me oh I'm a hydro metallurgist so I applied for the job so I had never called myself hydro metallurgist so that's one thing to tell people so I actually got that fundamental fundamentals behind it don't cut yourself off because you don't think you're a hydro metallurgist what's the most difficult project you've worked on in your life MacArthur River it was also the most fun MacArthur River is the first of those really high grade mine average grade in your early years 20% through 8 the global average is about 100 it's astonishingly high grade but because it was so high grade it had to be handled differently and mined differently then denotivated that so I was with chemical we basically had to invent everything the best kind of projects I think for engineers are the ones that nobody's ever done before they're all good so we had to invent a mining system it's raised bore mine they'll raise cores that existed before but if we used to mine ore before we had to invent the way to handle the ore after it was mined we had to because we couldn't figure out a way to shape the hoist the ore as rock we had to process it partly underground so we invented a way to handle that ore underground to grind it which I think is still the world's smallest sag mill to handle it underground we had to get it up to surface we invented ways to blend it underground to store it there were pumps available and so we we invented the Stagralla Coisting System that pumps the ore to surface as a slurry not to the pumps that never been used before but those pumps never been used for ad abacation before and we had to get the ore from the MacArthur River to Key Lake 80 kilometers away so we had to build a road between and we had to invent a way to get the ore there safely and we invented a system that holds it in tanks on the back of the truck that takes it down, fills it in the car or empties it in the Key Lake all of that all of that was random, nobody ever done it so it was difficult it was very difficult and there was a certain resistance to things because they were new but it worked like a charm so it was difficult but it was a lot of fun and really very satisfying What's the fondest memory that plays to your work? Seeing the operations that help design start up and run successfully that I got a huge charge I mean, I love this job I got a huge charge out of it and it starts with a scratch not a back problem, just a paper and you have a basic full diagram and when you see that go all the way in the process and be something like Key Lake on MacArthur River, I like that What sorts of social activities were you involved with with your co-workers after work? Oh, I played hockey hockey, softball, that kind of thing either company team or town league bowling was funny, when we were in Thompson bowling was really important bowling is one of the big things in Thompson because it's so damn cold out and we were in a mixed league, mostly married people and my wife's not very athletic and so you bowl your first game and you get your score counted and she got pregnant at the time and amazingly enough the more pregnant she got, the better she pulled so at the internet season she had to be we want to bowling throw people back tall so that was and people were just standing around saying so that was fun that's especially in remote towns like that we do a lot of things like that you're very tight town and too far to go Were there any social problems like drugs or alcohol that were particularly apparent in your amount of work? Well there, all the places I worked with dealt with a lot but it can be a problem and when I was at we had one of the chiefs nearby came in and talked to me and said you know the people who work here they earn more than most of the other people they're drinking alcohol so you've got to stop them drinking alcohol and I said I can't do that I know your problem but I can't we certainly handle it here on the site you'll have to handle it in your moment we have the same problem with people moving it's a schedule people get a job they start earning on money or more money and some of them would move away from them to live in Prince Albert or Saskatoon and I had the same with another fellow chiefs and said you know you've got to stop them moving away I said I understand your problem I can't tell people who work here I can't tell them where they live especially when you're in a remote place like that the problems in the surrounding areas they don't become your problem you may not be able to slow them but you have to help because you can't ignore what's going on I interviewed Ingen Osberg the other day I think you've worked with him in the past do you believe that Canada is losing ground in terms of research and development especially private research and development compared to where it's been in the past do you have any opinions on that? I agree I think the Canadian industry is investing too little in R&D and I think the problem comes from focus on short term in R&D as long but you have to have to finance R&D you have to be convinced and have faith in the fact that what you're investing now will have a return in the future you can know exactly what that return is going to be or what the problem is going to be but I agree I agree that the corporate reef R&D in this country is not going to start it would be better if it was brought back up to staff can you identify some Canadian accomplishments within the field of uranium mining and allergy? I think the Canadian Uranium industry has a very very good safety record in Saskatchewan the Canadian uranium mining industry has been a leader in working with First Nations people employing and training in fact the operations in other Saskatchewan are essentially gold standard I know people from Africa, Australia and trying to find out how it works here and how to make it work back home there's a lot of fly in and fly out operations around the world now and the first one was here, the first one was rather late so not my design and that was a golf minerals at the time and golf minerals were intending to build another town I know that because I've seen the design for it rapidly and blessed our hearts the provincial government at the time saw that the beaver lodge mill that I talked about before was going to be closing down soon and they were going to have essentially a gold city in Goldstown and he said we don't want to do that anymore so they denied golf minerals right in Goldstown no so the golf minerals guys are saying what are you going to do now because it was golf minerals they were golf oil and they were at the golf oil office in New York City and they were in a meeting apparently morning about this and saying now what are we going to do where we're still one of the guys in the meetings said well not many people have you got on site we fly more in that people have to wear jewellery all the time so it is the fly in and fly out if you're already in the right kind of person the right kind of situation is superb because you don't have the town you don't have a Goldstown you don't have to build the schools and hostels and stuff like this you can build a really really nice residence very comfortable to live in with that and this food and you can live in Saskatoon so it's a it works so well that we're out of the lake there are dozens and dozens around the world now so that's one and that's one Canadian contribution to global mining that I think very very few people recognize making an uranium industry we handle very high grade ores very safely how to design and operate from the highest grade to the lowest grade because we've done it and I think the Canadian the least Canadian uranium mining industry has been very innovative not afraid to try and think so and we're fairly tenacious nobody give up keep going and going really just say something about the operation in Cigar Lake some of the technical achievements there well Cigar Lake is very difficult there are times when mother nature wins and Cigar Lake mine is one of the times when mother nature is a real struggle it's very difficult to mine because the ore is not really rock there isn't a clay land and if you bore into the clay then it closes out so that's why you have to freeze it has to be remote mining because the grade is so high the same as the remote mining method at Carthage the jet boring method that is developed I think is very very very clever and it works really well so there's another operation which they bore a lot of the things we developed in Carthage where they go to mining and so on but the mining system itself is a real unique a lot of people say it's so unique that's what unique means that's what unique means and Cigar Lake is so this was the first application of jet boring to uranium mining as far as I know it's the first application of jet boring to mining anything so let me just to finish up who would you say has been your greatest mentor or has had the greatest impact on your career I think the guy who ran the lab at Eldrata nuclear when I was studying at our national he was a wonderful guy he was a immigrant from Britain he was just up in Porto and he arrived in the current Porto case got a job and he went to his bachelor's master's while he was working he ended up as a vice president of Eldrata not long after when I worked at I really loved it and he was the guy who advocated to me to get that job and spent so much money at Keywood so when I left Eldrata I knew it was a good thing I had to do it and he knew I had to do it but it's the only time I ever went in by I was leaving and we both cried we went so I loved to cry and he was he said a standard for me and we were treating people we were very gentle for him I think there have been mothers learning overall he was the immigrant and I think that's true but do you believe to be your contribution to the world of metallurgy or mining well technically I think that I've been involved in designs for upgrading plants I've been lucky to be at the right place in the right time especially here in Saskatoon so about the uranium operations in North Saskatchewan I've been involved in design engineering for all of it so that's a kind of a legacy but I think also being part of CIM and one of the things I emphasized there was leadership and we developed the leadership training and leadership development operation in CIM which is so I think the part of the technical thing I think it's just a way of leading is I say you're not a boss you don't have to be big on your chest and scream people there's better ways to do it and do that myself and try to teach other people so we're some of the most important lessons that you feel you've learned in your career you never know as much as you think you do you never know everything you can always be surprised there's always things to learn and for me that's important if I'm at a job where I'm not learning anything I'm not happy I like the challenges learning new things stretching yourself you can do that forever some of those things when you're wrong you're just waiting when I first started working for Chemical the friend of mine was the super mill superthenic and he phoned and he said we're making hydrogen or autoclosers and he said oh we are we know it's hydrogen I said well then you reach the rubber lining and he said he's eating out your shells no it's not that so everybody I mean everybody I knew he talked and said no it can't be happening and it was so all the so-called experts on that point were wrong so we got it fixed and we we never did find out exactly what was happening but we got to manage but the university here is going to start teaching minimal processing and extract the metallurgy next month and I've submitted that hydrogen generation problem to them and said I'm going to master some PhD because I want to know what else is going on I kept saying wait for 20 years but yeah it is you always have to be ready to be told no you're wrong or you don't understand is there anything else you'd like to add before we finish up and into the record well I think the mining industry mining and milling and metal processing industry has tremendous number of facets how many metals are there and there's still a lot to learn in all areas one of the things I really like about the uranium industry is relatively you know we've been mining copper for what 5,000 years well we've been mining uranium on purpose so it's relatively young and because of that there's still an immense amount to learn and that's one of the things that attracted to me attracted to me in the first place it's like you haven't got thousands of years of experience of that like I think well thank you very much for agreeing to that to the interview thank you very flat or titular wanted to talk to me