The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Jonathon Naylor Editor The geologist who discovered the Trout Lake and Tartan Lake mines has received the ultimate mining honour. Mike Muzylowski, whose mining career has spanned five decades, was inducted into the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame in Toronto last Thursday, Jan. 13. The Hall's official citation pays tribute to Muzylowski's instrumental role in the discovery of 16 producing mines that "earned him the title of 'Mr. Mine Finder.'" Muzylowski, who now lives in Vancouver, joined Hudson Bay Exploration and Development in 1955. He went on to hold various positions with the HBMS exploration arm, including chief geophysicist, senior project geologist and assistant superintendent of exploration and development. Senior executive From 1970 to 1984, Muzylowski was a senior executive for Granges Exploration, overseeing the eventual sale of the company. In 1984, he became president and CEO of Granges, taking revenues from $4 million to $65 million per year. He was later named chairman and CEO of Hycroft Resources, a large open pit, heap leach gold deposit, and was responsible for increasing production to over 100,000 ounces of gold a year. Today Muzylowski is president and CEO of Callinan Mines Ltd., a Vancouver-based junior miner active in exploration in the Flin Flon-Snow Lake region. In the Flin Flon area, Muzylowski is credited with discovering HBMS's Trout Lake Mine, which still runs after nearly 30 years, and the Tartan Lake Mine, which operated in the late 1980s and is now the subject of a potential restart. Muzylowski was also responsible for finding the Hycroft mine in Nevada, and helped discover the New Afton mine near Kamloops, B.C., among numerous others. Yet he is careful to give credit to the geological and geophysical professionals who have worked alongside him, most notably Pat J. DeVeaux and Mo Prew. This will not be the first major mining honour for Muzylowski. In 1988, he received the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada Developer of the Year Award. That award came in recognition of the some 15 ore body discoveries in which he was involved. The majority, 13, of those mining operations were in Manitoba. Muzylowski's career in mining burgeoned through the application of techniques pioneered by the late Albert A. Koffman, who advocated aggressive drill testing of targets established through airborne geophysics, and defined by surface geophysics. Muzylowski holds a B.Sc. in Geology from the University of Manitoba. Ð With notes from a Callinan Mines Ltd. news release.
