Norman B. Keevil - Never Rest on Your Ores: Building a Mining Company, One Stone at a Time

NEVER REST ON YOUR ORES

Footprints Series

Jane Errington, Editor

The life stories of individual women and men who were participants in interesting events help nuance larger historical narratives, at times reinforcing those narratives, at other times contradicting them. The Footprints series introduces extraordinary Canadians, past and present, who have led fascinating and important lives at home and throughout the world.

The series includes primarily original manuscripts but may consider the English-language translation of works that have already appeared in another language. The editor of the series welcomes inquiries from authors. If you are in the process of completing a manuscript that you think might fit into the series, please contact her, care of McGill-Queens University Press, 1010 Sherbrooke Street West, Suite 1720, Montreal, QC, H3A 2R7.

1 Blatant Injustice The Story of a Jewish Refugee from Nazi Germany Imprisoned in Britain and Canada during World War II

Walter W. Igersheimer

Edited and with a foreword by Ian Darragh

2 Against the Current Memoirs

Boris Ragula

3 Margaret Macdonald Imperial Daughter

Susan Mann

4 My Life at the Bar and Beyond

Alex K. Paterson

5 Red Travellers Jeanne Corbin and Her Comrades

Andre Lvesque

6 The Teeth of Time Remembering Pierre Elliott Trudeau

Ramsay Cook

7 The Greater Glory Thirty-seven Years with the Jesuits

Stephen Casey

8 Doctor to the North Thirty Years Treating Heart Disease among the Inuit

John H. Burgess

9 Dal and Rice

Wendy M. Davis

10 In the Eye of the Wind A Travel Memoir of Prewar Japan

Ron Baenninger and Martin Baenninger

11 Im from Bouctouche, Me Roots Matter

Donald J. Savoie

12 Alice Street A Memoir

Richard Valeriote

13 Crises and Compassion From Russia to the Golden Gate

John M. Letiche

14 In the Eye of the China Storm A Life Between East and West

Paul T.K. Lin with Eileen Chen Lin

15 Georges and Pauline Vanier Portrait of a Couple

Mary Frances Coady

16 Blitzkrieg and Jitterbugs College Life in Wartime, 19391942

Elizabeth Hillman Waterston

17 Harrison McCain Single-Minded Purpose

Donald J. Savoie

18 Discovering Confederation A Canadians Story

Janet Ajzenstat

19 Expect Miracles Recollections of a Lucky Life

David M. Culver with Alan Freeman

20 Building Bridges

Victor C. Goldbloom

21 Call Me Giambattista A Personal and Political Journey

John Ciaccia

22 Smitten by Giraffe My Life as a Citizen Scientist

Anne Innis Dagg

23 The Oil Has Not Run Dry The Story of My Theological Pathway

Gregory Baum

24 My Peerless Story It Starts with the Collar

Alvin Cramer Segal

25 Wrestling with Life From Hungary to Auschwitz to Montreal

George Reinitz with Richard King

26 Never Rest on Your Ores Building a Mining Company, One Stone at a Time

Norman B. Keevil

NEVER REST ON YOUR ORES

Building a Mining Company, One Stone at a Time

NORMAN B. KEEVIL

McGill-Queens University Press

Montreal & Kingston London Chicago

McGill-Queens University Press 2017

ISBN 978-0-7735-5155-8 (cloth)

ISBN 978-0-7735-5201-2 (ePDF)

ISBN 978-0-7735-5202-9 (ePUB)

Legal deposit third quarter 2017

Bibliothque nationale du Qubec

Printed in Canada on acid-free paper

McGill-Queens University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

Photos and sketches courtesy of Teck and Keevil family archives. Paintings by Frank Halliday part of Teck and Keevil family archives. Permission to use David Lee painting granted by his agent, Jim Killett, owner of Lahaina Galleries, Hawaii.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Keevil, Norman B., 1938, author

Never rest on your ores : building a mining company, one stone at a time / Norman B. Keevil.

(Footprints series ; 26)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-0-7735-5155-8 (cloth).

ISBN 978-0-7735-5201-2 (ePDF).

ISBN 978-0-7735-5202-9 (ePUB)

1. Keevil, Norman Bell. 2. Teck CorporationHistory. 3. Mining corporationsCanadaHistory. 4. Mines and mineral resourcesCanadaHistory. I. Title. II. Series: Footprints series ; 26.

For my wife Joan, who has done so much for me and has been my pillar of strength.

All royalties earned from the sale of this book will go to support two charitable organizations that provide programs to raise awareness among students and the general public about the importance of rocks, minerals, metals, and mining. MineralsEd was started in British Columbia in 1991 by Maureen Lipkewich, the wife of one of Teck Corporations senior mining engineers. The idea was taken up nationally with the leadership of two of Tecks Eastern Canadian geologists in 1994 under the name Mining Matters. Together these organizations now provide mineral resources education programs for teachers, students and the public across Canada.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

You should write a book.

The motivation to write this book arose from a Founders Awards Dinner hosted by the Fraser Institute, a Canadian think tank, at which I was asked to say a few words. They said: Just tell some stories, so I did.

These seemed to ring a bell, because that night, and for some time after, people came up to me to say: You should write a book. Never having done that before, and being unlikely to do so again, for the next year or so I jotted down notes as they came to mind, often at the most unlikely times. I checked old files, and tried to confirm that my recollections were correct with people who had shared some of our experiences. As time went on, I began to think it really was a good idea to record some of the part we played in Canadas mining history, and that it could be useful to those who come after. As Cory Sibbald (one of the key engineers who helped build some of those mines that made our Teck Resources what it is) put it: Somebody has to do it.

I thought of my father, who had been encouraged to write a memoir after he was getting on in years and had retired from active business. He had begun: For years, people have been saying: Why dont you have someone write a book? He told of his grandchildren who asked things such as: Tell us the story about the wolves closing in on your camp. He never got a chance to finish his story, so this is for both of us, as well as for the many others who joined in the journey, and without whose efforts there would be no Teck Resources as we know it today.

My father, also named Norman Keevil, was an avid canoeist, fond of encouraging people onwards by saying: Never rest on your oars. It must be said that canoeists use paddles, and oars are more likely to be found in rowboats or Viking longboats, but never rest on your paddles somehow seems to lack the same bite.

This is a book about some of the people who find and build mines. It may not be widely appreciated, but the lifeblood of all mines, their foundation, is the ore deposits from which they produce metals or minerals. Without ore, there would be no mines, and without mines, and the hard-rock miners that work them, no cars, bicycles, cell phones, radios, televisions, and countless other things that society takes for granted.