The Edmonton CIM conference came to a crescendo ending today with a session on backfill and a session on the impediments to progress in mining.  The night before I was invited by a work colleague to the McDonald Hotel and its Harvest restaurant.  This is one of those grand hotels built across Canada to provide rail-travellers luxury accommodation as they traversed the country.   And we ate, drank, and laughed well. 

At the dinner was a young man whose parents indulge in a taste like mine for 1970s style orange and green bathrooms.  Seriously though, this young man is, in my opinion, one of those who will dominate the mining industry in the years to come: as much because of shining intelligence as urbane manners and a perfect-pitch sense of humor–afterall if it is not fun, why do it?

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