INNOVATION Mar-Apr 2020

F E A T U R E

A ccording to Andy Randell, P.Geo., some British Columbians have a habit of remembering only the worst about mines. “People, especially in the Vancouver area, bring up the same few disaster stories about mining all the time,” he says, “which gives us a chance to explain that mining is overall a really, really safe industry. And from there, we can work on other misperceptions, too.” Randell is CEO and principal geologist for his own consulting company, SGDS Hive, as well as Executive Director of the Below BC Geological Association, a non-profit he founded in 2015 with the idea of increasing public awareness of both the splendours of BC’s geology and the indispensability of mining. Over the past five years, Randell and his Below BC colleagues have averaged more than 10,000 face-to-face contacts a year with British Columbians of all ages, giving school presentations and community talks, operating a booth at local events and fairs, and even participating in an East Kootenay parade. “What we’ve learned is that the general perception people have of mining depends on where we are. In Vancouver, a lot of people think mining is dirty, bad, environmentally destructive, and not necessary. With them, we work on making sure they know about things like the rigourous permitting process for new mines, which includes a comprehensive environmental scan, and we connect the dots between the stuff they use every day—like toothpaste—with the minerals required to make them and where they come from here in BC. That usually gets them thinking.” In other parts of the province, where people are already proud of their mining history, it’s not so much a matter of changing perceptions as enriching local knowledge of that history and, says Randell, “communicating what’s so wonderful about BC’s geology and being a geologist.” In tandem with their face-to-face interactions, Below BC also embarked on a mission in 2015 to photograph the private mineral collections held at the UBC’s Pacific Museum of the Earth. What

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I N N O V A T I O N