Recently, I reflected on which period in the past left me with the fondest memories. Without much effort, I settled on roughly 1985 to 1995, a decade between two economic downturns, the first being the worst.The 1970s were transformative for me as I grew from a teenager of 16 to a young man of 26. During that time, I identified what I wanted to do for a living, geology, and became both a husband and a father. Yet this was also when the national economy took a turn for the worse, culminating in runaway inflation compounded by ridiculous lending rates, rates that even then I considered legalized loan sharking.My wife and I bought our first home, one of only four so far, in 1981. At the time, I had a full-time job when jobs were few. We had rented a house for a year, only to have the owner decide he wanted to live in it. We searched and, in part because we had little money saved, found an old house with an apartment upstairs. The rent helped pay the mortgage. We assumed the mortgage held by the woman who sold us the house, and she held a second mortgage to make up the difference. Within a year or two, the primary mortgage came up for renewal. We were “lucky” to renew at about 16%. My brother renewed his a year or two later at over 20%, something that helped contribute to the failure of his marriage.Even so, by 1985, the economy was starting to improve. Other changes were also making an impact, such as personal computers and even something called MTV. That year also saw the birth of our third and final child, another son. In 1987, we moved to a single-family bungalow. The next four years were amazing!As a geologist, I could have followed a number of paths, but the one I ended up on for most of my career was exploration, looking for new mines. All the paths share some core aspects. Geology itself is an applied science: physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics. At its core is data collection, whether mapping rocks, taking samples, or recording observations. Then comes data parsing, where the information is cleaned and validated to get rid of the bad and keep only the good and trustworthy. Next comes analysis, followed by drawing conclusions and making recommendations.Yet exploration, more than any other area, requires an open mind. No assumptions should be made because that is how you miss what is hidden. Discovery does not come easily, especially with blinders on. To be a successful exploration geologist, you need to be critical and skeptical while maintaining an optimistic frame of mind..I tell you this because it lies at the heart of why that decade left me with such fond memories. It was a time when there were rules, but they made sense. I had to work with career bureaucrats, yet most of them legitimately tried their best to help. Everywhere I turned, success was encouraged by my co-workers and those in government. Why not? We all shared in the benefits of success. A new mine did not benefit only the corporate owners. The rewards spread outward through jobs, suppliers, communities, and taxes. The government assigned a mineral title to whoever asked. Even the lowly prospector, after paying a measly $25 a year for a licence, could stake a claim and had the right to transfer that title to whoever paid the most.An example was the Hemlo gold rush in the five years leading up to my golden decade. Prospectors staked claims on ground they thought held riches of gold. Diamond drilling intersected the “mother lode” only after more than 70 holes had found little encouragement. Five years later, in 1985, the first mine, Golden Giant, went into production. Five years from discovery to production. Just over 40 years later, that cannot happen.The reasons are many but simple. Government rules were straightforward. Environmentalists were not yet the parasites they have become. Take, for example, the concept of a “work permit.” Back in the 1980s, Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources required work permits for anyone working in the wilderness, including explorers like me. Why? So they knew where people were working if a forest fire started and people needed to be evacuated. Or so they could notify you when conditions meant the risk of fire was high. Nothing more and nothing less.Now the bureaucrats who issue work permits are in a different department, and the rules and regulations are far more obscure and obtuse. They have reached the point where bureaucrats tell explorers like me how we must do our jobs. No longer do they just set a few guidelines. In the late 1980s, on a couple of projects I worked on, we brought in dozers and backhoes to peel off the thin veneer of glacial overburden and expose the bedrock. We then washed the rock as clean as we could so we could map and sample it. Next, we drilled and blasted trenches to see the third dimension and get a better handle on the structures controlling the mineralization we were evaluating. Now that cannot be done. Explorers’ hands are tied behind their backs by the same people who used to help.If you think what we did was environmentally destructive, then you have no idea of nature and the natural forces around us. That is one aspect of being an exploration geologist: you get to see nature in all its forms, and if you are not humbled by our insignificance, something is wrong with you. Remember, where I live was, not that long ago, covered by ice kilometres thick. No trees. Rock scoured clean. When the ice melted, it left sand, gravel, and clay everywhere. Yet nature was never daunted. Over time, trees became re-established, and forests evolved. Due to the regional climate, however, few trees survive much beyond 100 years. Sooner or later, nature rejuvenates the forest through the cleansing of fire. But some of us humans think we are omnipotent and can control nature.My own experience illustrates the point. Once I checked out some old trenches blasted by prospectors about 20 years earlier. When they left, they forgot a shovel lying at the bottom of one rock trench. By the time I got there, that same shovel was suspended about a metre and a half in the air because a fir tree had grown up through the D-handle. Not long ago, I revisited one of the exploration areas I had worked in during the 1980s. I was able to find the trench we had blasted, but only with difficulty because new growth had taken over. It was as if we had never been there. That is nature’s way. It does not care what we humans do. We say we build “forever,” yet the cement is hardly set, and the asphalt is freshly paved before nature starts tearing it all down. Cracks form through the freeze-thaw cycle. Seeds and dust carried by wind and rain fill them. The seeds sprout and, as they grow, slowly but surely expand the cracks and create more..But I digress. The point is why that decade was so special. Even though economic conditions were still erratic, collectively we worked together. Those in government encouraged and assisted in creating the best possible conditions for industry to grow and prosper. No “rents” were demanded because prosperity was shared through taxes. I worked hard so my employer could succeed, and my employer rewarded me by keeping me employed. It was a true symbiotic relationship that kept the country going. The result was a shared optimism in the air.But, like a cancer, the government sector has metastasized. Too many within it now work against the host rather than helping it grow. Once roughly 10% of the working population, helping the other 90% succeed, it has grown to about 25%, with too many people trying to justify their existence by controlling things they do not understand.It did not happen all at once. Even during that memorable decade, there was the odd bureaucrat who could not help sticking their nose where it did not belong. The sad part is that we allowed it to happen. It came slowly and incrementally, but we allowed it nonetheless. Too many of us were seduced by “free” stuff, never accepting that nothing is free. In return, we gave away more of our rights and freedoms without ever asking why.Perhaps that is what I miss most. Not the music, the computers, or even being younger, but the sense that those who worked, built, and took risks were pulling in the same direction as those who governed. We cannot return to 1985, and I am not suggesting we should. But we can recover what made those years feel so different. We can stop accepting every new rule as progress and every promise of something “free” as generosity. Like an exploration geologist faced with evidence that does not fit, we need to remove the blinders, question the assumptions, and ask why. Only then can the future begin to look better than the past.
