Brian Meikle

"It was small but it was very interesting. I remember Brian Meikle saying, “Here are these seven thousand acres. If you stood on this piece of ground, on one side is Newmont’s big Genesis mine producing about 4 million ounces, and 180 degrees up the valley there is the Bootstrap and Dee mines, producing probably another 2 million ounces of gold.” Goldstrike was a little “Ma and Pa” organization running on a shoestring with a lot of haywire, but they were making reasonable money at it. I talked to Joe Rotman and said, “Joe, if we could buy Western States would you be willing to sell your halfe” and he said, “Sure.” And that’s when I went to Peter and said, “Let’s take a crack at this.”"

"The Mercur mine in Utah was Munk’s next acquisition target, and Bob Smith was front and centre in the decision to go for it. Mercur was owned by Texaco, but had originally been developed by the mining arm of Getty Oil Company. With permission from Texaco White Plains’ senior executive, Peter Byur (later Texaco’s chairman and CEO), Munk sent his newly acquired Camflo team of mining engineers to do a two-day appraisal of Mercur. Bob Smith, the chief, took two of his Camflo geologists with him, Brian Meikle, a McGill graduate, and Alan Hill, a former Noranda mine manager. Smith and his team liked what they saw. Mercur was producing 70,000 ounces a year, but Smith reported that production could be increased dramatically, that the base cost per ounce could be lowered just as dramatically, and that he could run the mine much more efficiently."