Mining pioneer turns to green energy
Published Saturday November 28th, 2009
Entrepreneurship: Walter Kippen helped kick-start mining in northern New Brunswick
In 1949, when Walter Bruce Kippen got interested in exploring for metals in northern New Brunswick, the province was relatively untouched by the mining industry.
Kippen, who was about to graduate with a commerce degree from Montreal's McGill University, was looking to make a break in business.
He partnered with two of his classmates and a fellow he got to know at the time - a mining engineer who was interested in base metal opportunities in New Brunswick - and travelled to the province to see the provincial minister of mines about reaching a concession to explore.
They left the meeting committed to spend $50,000 in 12 months on prospecting a swath of land near Bathurst in which a world-famous mining camp would one day be developed - among the six largest zinc-lead mines, globally.
"It was a big concession," Kippen, now in his late 70s, said in a phone interview from his Montreal home.
"The year went by and of course we hadn't spent the $50,000 because we didn't have the money at all," he said.
After calling up bankers and investment types in Montreal to find a financial backer, the men were put in touch with Matthew James (Jim) Boylen, a Toronto mining promoter.
In a Canadian Mining Hall of Fame write-up, Boylen is now referred to as "king of the minemakers-" best known for his development of the massive sulfide deposits near Bathurst, one of which is still is still reaping financial rewards for Xstrata Zinc more than half a century later.
"He was a real old-fashioned promoter with big talk. He was a gambler, basically," Kippen said of Boylen, who agreed to come to New Brunswick by train to renegotiate the mining concession.
"We met the minister, and he (Boylen) said he would get the $50,000 and he would drill the profit," Kippen said.
The investors apparently came up with the name Brunswick Mining and Smelting Corp. for their endeavour, on the spot.
"Boylen said, 'Well all right, we'll issue 800,000 shares. You'll have half and I'll have half and I'll get the $50,000 from the (United) States.'"
The team was exploring near the Austin Brook deposit, an ore body that had been mined for iron which University of New Brunswick graduate student Ben Baldwin was studying at the time.
"I found there were base metals in it," Baldwin said in a phone interview from his Miramichi farm.
"One thing led to another and the Brunswick deposit just north of the original occurrence there was found," said Baldwin, who went on to do work for Boylen for 15 years.
Now a legend in New Brunswick, a short time after meeting Kippen, Boylen would appear to the young Montrealer to be somewhat of a swindler.
Kippen is now releasing his first novel Lords of the Frontier, a fictional tale based on the history of Canada's economic growth between 1887 and 1941.
The story, which charts the journey west of three young ambitious Maritimers interested in cashing in on the Klondike Gold Rush, offers loose parallels to Kippen's own path to Calgary in search of wealth.
After walking away from his foray into mining in New Brunswick, convinced by Boylen drill results were unsubstantial, Kippen said, he moved to the burgeoning Alberta city to begin investing in oil and gas.
Kippen is convinced Boylen, who died in 1970, hid what amounted from one drill hole, which in fact revealed a massive find.
"He showed us the results of the drilling and he said, 'It's not that encouraging. We got a little bit of evidence of zinc but it's very minor. We spent a bit of money and here are the results,'" Kippen said.
"Within two weeks he came back and he said, 'I've got these fellas in the United States and they'll do some drilling if we allow them to, but they want to own the whole thing. They'll take over the whole thing.'"
So Kippen said he and his associates sold their shares for $1 apiece and he made his way to Calgary with $100,000 in hand.
"We gave them the stock and we got the cash and basically forgot about the whole thing, thinking that these guys are just going to drill holes and God knows what they'll get," Kippen said.
According to common understanding of the history around the formation of the Bathurst Mining Camp, Boylen's drill results in the fall of 1952 revealed significant base metal finds at Brunswick 6 - the drill hole near which an open-pit mine would later start up in 1966.
"They secretly assayed the ores at St. Francis Xavier University, and everything was kept a lid on while they staked a bunch of ground," said David Lentz, chairman of economic geology at the University of New Brunswick.
In the spring of 1953, Boylen's team discovered Brunswick 12 - the lucrative ore body that in 1964 was made into an underground mine still operating today.
Shortly after Boylen's strike of luck, Kippen said he was in an airport and picked up a copy of the Northern Miner magazine.
"There was a photograph on the front page of a great big fella named Jim Boylen. And the headline was 'Jim Boylen discovers the biggest base mining camp in Atlantic Canada.'"
Since Kippen had signed away whatever stake he'd had in the properties Boylen was developing, he moved on and didn't really look back.
"When the oil thing happened I thought it was much more interesting, much more exciting.
Kippen would later found several oil and gas firms in Western Canada which became Pathfinder Petroleums Ltd. and later, through subsequent mergers, Norcen Energy Resources Ltd.
He started Unican Security Systems Ltd., a $500,000 financing company that was acquired 25 years later by Italy's Kaba Holdings, A.G. for $650 million.
And lately, Kippen is putting his money into green energy.
"I'm betting on hybrid transportation," Kippen said.
But according to geologists in New Brunswick, there is still great hope the province's minerals will bring more wealth.
Lentz is bullish on zinc, even though Xstrata is poised to shut down its mine in February, 2011.
"Obviously that gravy train for the province is going to end," Lentz said, pointing out that just two years ago, the Swiss mining giant pulled in about $1 billion in profits from the property alone.
"Our whole economy in New Brunswick is only $7.5 billion," he said, referring to annual gross domestic product.
But Lentz predicts the nearby Caribou mine, which was recently acquired by a new venture, Maple Minerals Corp., will be lucrative.
"I predict that zinc is going to go through the roof," Lentz said of prices for the metal, pointing to a global shortage and the pending closure of several large mines.
Steve McCutcheon, a retired geologist with the Department of Natural Resources, said Kippen's experience prospecting - but not cashing in - is not uncommon.
"Most of the time that's true because if you look at the number of prospects that are done and the number of drill holes that are made and how many become mines, it was a good bet he got out. Because the odds of it making a mine were not great based on one drill hole," he said.
But McCutcheon cited an old saying that is almost instructive for the industry's future beyond Brunswick Mine:
"There is an old adage in the mining business is the best place to find a new mine is close to an old one."
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