LETTERS TO THE EDITOR — Getting the facts straight

The Odds ‘n’ Sods article “Assembling the right team” by Stan Hunter (T.N.M., March 13/95) is a near duplicate of his article in your March 14, 1994, issue. Unfortunately, the latest article provides the same misleading information contained in the earlier one, which I thought had been clarified in my letter in your April 4, 1994, issue.

I am sure you will agree that your readers anticipate that the contained information is factual, to the best of the author’s ability.

To summarize the specifics of my previous letter, I wish to re-emphasize the following facts concerning the discovery of the Granduc deposit: * The copper-bearing outcrops of the deposit situated on the north side of the Leduc Glacier were discovered and staked by Wendell Dawson and his partner, Bill Fromholz, in 1931 and recorded on Oct. 19, 1931. The claims subsequently lapsed during the Depression;

*Dawson apprised his friend, Des Kidd, of the general location of the deposit in late 1950, and Kidd passed the information on to Karl Springer. By a letter, dated Jan. 22, 1951, Dawson accepted the proposed terms provided by Springer, that Dawson would be carried for a 10% non-assessable interest in any claims staked over the original discovery;

Springer’s company, Helicopter Exploration, retained Kvale and McQuillan as prospectors and flew them into the Leduc area by helicopter during July, 1951. They did not go in by toboggan, nor were they flown in to explore for gold. They were not there during the summer of 1946. On Aug. 2, 1951, on a return visit again by helicopter, they staked claims covering the exposures previously discovered by Dawson and Fromholz;

Dawson did not learn of the staking until June, 1952. His claimed entitlement to a 10% interest led to a dispute and an action against the company filed on Nov. 23, 1953, in the Supreme Court of British Columbia. Dawson lost the case and subsequent appeal, but he was successful in a Supreme Court of Canada decision in 1955. His eventual settlement totaled $333,450, based on a judgment handed down on Oct. 18, 1956.

D.A. Barr

West Vancouver, B.C.