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I recently read a theory that going for 50 coffees with people you've never met is the entrepreneurs equivalent to the theory that doing anything for 10,000 hours will make you an expert on it. While I get the idea, 50 coffees is far easier than practicing something for ten years, and while I'm far from lazy I've decided to set out on a fairly simple mission: over the next 50 weeks I'm going to invite 50 interesting Vancouverites, most of whom I have never met before, to go for coffee. I'm going to use this as an exercise in networking for myself and for V.I.A. while also using it as a platform to introduce you to some people who are doing really cool stuff in the city you live in. |
Meet Pamela De Mark. Geologist, Director of Resources at the second-largest primary silver mining company in the world (Vancouver's own Pan American Silver) and someone who has spent 7 years of her life working underground. Literally.
When you see the title "Director of Resources" I imagine you might assume that she works in HR or something similar. Fact is she's the director of the metallic resources that the company mines for, which is primarily high grade silver but also includes gold and other valuable metals that are somewhat of a byproduct of their silver mines. Pamela's job and mining in general were both complete and utter mysteries to me before I went in to meet with her at the Pan American Silver office on Howe Street, so she took me through a presentation that shows exactly what she does in her role, and what the company as a whole is doing. It would take me an hour to explain it all to you so I'll just sum up by saying that I went in viewing mining as a big, dirty, unnecessary scourge on our planet (and the Utah Phillips quote of "Have you seen what they do to valuable natural resources?" in my head) and I left looking at the eyelets on my shoes, the zipper on my pants, my iPhone, my keys, and a few other things that I hold on my very person every single day thanks to mining operations. While it might not be the prettiest process the extraction of metals from the earth is absolutely vital to our culture, and the practices of mining companies don't have to have major negative impacts on our planet. In fact in the case of Pan American it appears that not only do they tread relatively lightly (I guess as lightly as you can in terms of an open pit mine), but they often work to build schools and other infrastructure near their international operations, positively impacting the local culture, giving back to the communities and providing jobs when the operations are thriving. When they pack up their operations and move on they often leave a sustainable economy in their wake.
But let's get back to Pamela. The presentation that she showed me went from how they find pockets of metals to drilling samples for them all the way to the process of extracting them, and it was filled with personal photos she had taken over the years to illustrate it. While she now works in an office she spent a great deal of time out in the field, working underground for 7 years in different mines around the world, collecting samples and living a fairly solitary life as most of these operations are in the middle of nowhere. She's worked her way up and now her days are often spent on the computer drawing up complicated drilling maps in a CAD-like software program called DataMine. HERE is a photo I shot of one map she had open. Pretty cool stuff, it can be flipped around in all directions as a true 3D image.
To sum up, I had a moment of enlightenment at Pan American Silver thanks to Pamela. Have one yourself by taking a look around you this very minute and considering all of the things you rely on and where their materials came from. Whoa.
