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Wallace, Idaho – It will go down in the annals
of history as a special sort of hubris and stupidity if U.S. Silver turns
down the offer from Hecla Mining Co. to join forces, and instead opts to jump
into the feathers with a Canadian junior whose sole asset is a shite-hole in
Montana where, some say, someday, there might be some gold. Someday.
What are US Silver's honchos thinking? Obviously,
not much. Their recently re-configured board of directors kicked Tom Parker
to the curb. Col. Parker was the best thing to happen to the Galena since
Hecla crawled out of the Precambrian mud and hired Phil Baker after 25 years
of ossified neglect by the likes of Bill Griffith, RIP, and Art Brown.
Are there risks? Sure. Hecla's batting average,
since the 1970s, hasn't been good. Can anyone say Grouse Creek? Or Casa
Grande? Or Ranchers Exploration?
And there was that petulant move of Hecla's headquarters from Wallace
to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho (an icky little suburb of Huetter,
Idaho) back in the 1980s during the Silver Drought.
But times change. Things change. People change. This
is 2012, and the Hecla of this millennium has doubled down on the element
that made the company great in its birthing years: Silver. They mopped up the
Greens Creek, Alaska, silver mine and are prepping the Lucky Friday mine near
Mullan, Idaho, for another generation's-worth of
production. This means jobs for we working stiffs,
and revenues and dividends for HL's shareholders. It means taxes for the
local schools, college educations for the kids, and souped-up ATVs for the
(not so) grown-ups.
What does a mail-drop office on King Street in
Toronto have to offer the men and women of the Silver Valley? They haven't
said.
* * *
Two weeks ago, in the Clearwater Range in Alaska,
Denali to our west, up Valdez Creek, six hours out of Anchorage and four
hours out of Fairbanks, we dropped in on two of our mentor's sons, Bob and
Tom Hopper. The arctic sun was doing its dance, favouring
us with 24-hour daylight, the weather a balmy 68 degrees, the grayling
leaping to our flies.
Sons Hopper are building a
gold mine up there. It is a grand, a magnificent thing to see, wrenching gold
from the sub-arctic mud in search of the deep and ancient glacial stream beds
where the mother lodes lurk. The folks at the man-camp cooked our fish while
we watched barge-loads of heavy equipment move in. The Hoppers are permitted
to build 11 benches this year. Even the surface mud has gold in it. Young
Bobby Hopper gets a shower a week, weather and road-conditions permitting, at
a “resort” 50 klicks away which also
has a satellite phone. He's working against time. It will be winter on Oct.
1, and spring doesn't come early, either. Good luck to them.
This is mining and prospecting out of the old
school. Only a nut-case or a miner would blunder on to a place this remote,
and find something to pack home. It is also an affront to the current
president of the United Snakes, who says, in effect: “You didn't do this
without the government's help.” That's a bit of B.S. Not even the
government can find chauffeurs that far north.
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