“At a time when inflation was out of control, government legislation had set up an Anti-Inflation Board to control the extent that companies could raise wages. The union and management had negotiated an agreement that was above the anti-inflation rate, which was not allowed, so the miners in Faro were striking against this Board, the AIB, not against the Company.

“I actually met my wife, Charlene, in Faro. She comes from a mining family; her great-grandfather, grandfather, and her dad had all been in gold mining in Northern Ontario. After we were married, we visited the museum in Dawson City and found information on her grandmother’s brother, who had disappeared during the gold rush in 1898. There was a plaque on the wall, listing the names of the miners and other people who had perished in the Dawson gold rush, and we found his name on it. His name was Joseph Charbonneau; he had left home at age fifteen and had perished, somehow, when he was just sixteen years old.

“When I went to Faro I did not have a mining background, so for about two months, I worked with the miners to better appreciate what they did for a living. I went on shift and I worked in the different parts of the mine. I worked and spent time with the miners, the shovel operators, the truck drivers; I learned to operate a bit of equipment, and I spent time with the mechanics, and in the mill, and learned how floatation circuits worked. I think that was one of the best experiences I have had, trying to get to know how the people on the front lines were doing things and how they perceived the world - the good things and the bad things. That two month time period was worth its weight in gold; it gave me a better perspective of what people think about and what is going on when they come to me with concerns.

“One of the first projects that I was involved with in Faro was developing a housing allocation system. One of the big issues in Faro, and I think it was true in a lot of mining communities, was that there was a status system. The housing at that time was stratified, where the managers lived in the big houses and the miners in the smaller houses. The Company allocated the housing and had set up that system so, being a small company town of 1500 people, there was a lot of bitter resentment. My project was to make a more equal system.

“My project was to design a system that would bring fairness to how housing was distributed to employees. It was a good way to get me into things, and I met and interviewed a lot of people. In the end, I developed a point system based on how long you had been in Faro and how big your family was and things like that; I disregarded whether a person was management or union, to a large extent. I met with resistance but, ultimately, we put it into practice and it worked. Today, mining companies do not want to build company towns; when the mining ends, what do they do with them? It is a lot easier to fly people in to these deposits than to build towns in isolated locations.

“After six months in Faro, I was asked to get involved permanently as a labour relations practitioner, and after a few years became the labour relations/human resource manager. That started my career in labour relations. Our goal at Cyprus Anvil was to create a good labour relations climate and settle contracts without strikes, and we succeeded.

“At this stage, it had all been open pit mining that I had been involved in. I ended up coming back to the coast through a Yukon connection. The fellow for whom I had worked in Faro, Denis Gregoire, had become the manager of the Myra Falls mine, an underground zinc and copper mine northwest of Campbell River. Westmin Resources owned the mine at that time, 1997, and they were looking for a human resource manager. The idea that Denis suggested was that he and I would be a team again, and help to build a new kind of approach to things. We set about working with the union and employees, bringing in programs and trying to change the climate. Sometimes, out of crisis is born good change, and I think the crisis was the eighteen-month long strike and lockout they had recently gone through. Both the union and management had a strong desire to make a good change. It was about a year after I got there that Westmin Resources was acquired by Boliden, a Swedish mining company.

“Boliden brought in their own manager, Kjell Larsson, to get things started. Timing was really important because mining conditions were becoming really difficult and we were moving into ground conditions that were unknown to us. Boliden brought in a lot of technical expertise on how to work this kind of ground. Larsson was an excellent manager and brought the people on all levels to work together. Boliden is a big, strong company fundamentally, and we had just hit a hard time in the mining cycle; prices were low and they were able to help us revamp the operation and survive the difficult times. I became mine manager following Kjell’s transfer to Toronto.

“When Breakwater brought in their team to run things, I left and joined Hillsborough, where my job is business development. It is a small but exciting company; we are exploring other mining opportunities in the United States and Canada. In fact, we have opened the second mining operation in our company in Crossville, Tennessee. In Campbell River, the Company operates the Quinsam underground coal mine, which produces a high quality thermal coal product. The people in the mine are very proud of their excellent safety performance that corresponds to the production of coal. The future looks good.

“Mining runs the gamut of highs and lows of the resource cycle. We had a sustained period of low prices for metals and coal; now it has turned right around. The mining sector is booming and there are shortages of people in all occupations. A major challenge is to train and develop people to fill the excellent jobs now available, here in Canada and elsewhere.

“Again, people are people, no matter where or what you are mining. At each place I have worked, I find, it is the people who make the difference. It is those who have the people skills and the technical know-how who make the best leaders. Through all parts of an organization, you need to have excellent leaders working in their areas of influence.

David Bazowski, 2006