CIM

Selwyn Blaylock Canadian Mining Excellence Award

Join

Selwyn Blaylock Canadian Mining Excellence Award

For distinguished service to Canada through exceptional achievement in the field of mining, metallurgy or geology

Origins & Conditions

X

History

Selwyn Blaylock acted as president of CIM from 1934 to 1935 and received the Gold Medal of the Institute of Mining and Metallurgy of Great Britain in 1944. The Selwyn Blaylock Canadian Mining Excellence Award was established a few years after his death on Nov. 19, 1945, to recognize exceptional achievements in the field of mining, metallurgy or geology.

Purpose

The Selwyn Blaylock Canadian Mining Excellence Award is awarded for distinguished service by an individual to or in Canada, such as for a Canadian entity, through exceptional achievement in the field of mining, metallurgy, or geology. 

Judging based on

The contribution or exceptional technical achievement in the field of mining, metallurgy or geology typically involving personal effort, courage, and/or skill and demonstrating strong involvement in the mining and minerals community.  

Other Criteria

Those who have already received a CIM Career Excellence award for this nominated exceptional achievement are not eligible.

Recipients

There is only one recipient of this award every year. This award is solely for individual nominations (no teams).

Winners

2024

Len Murray

Len Murray joined Klohn Crippen Berger (KCB then Klohn Leonoff) in 198, rising to be vice president of the Mining Environment Group in 2006 and president for an 8-year term starting in 2014. He remains as chairman of the board. 

Over a five-decade career, he has observed and been part of the implementation of a major shift in the care of tailings disposal. Working on multiple tailings storage projects on all mining continents, he has helped implement modern tailings practices around the globe, with a strong emphasis on Canadian technology. He has been a keen advocate within KCB for active participation in industry and professional organizations and in sponsoring tailings-related research in multiple universities around the Globe. This advocacy has positioned KCB as a leader in sustainable tailings disposal, consistently advocating for pragmatic improvements in the field. 

2023

Phillips Baker

For almost twenty years Philips Baker has been the CEO of Hecla Mining Company, a 132-year-old company and the largest silver producer in the United States, mining over 40% of that country’s silver.  He started with Hecla when the price of silver was at its lowest price in the past 30 years. As a company with a long history, Hecla had significant legacy environmental liabilities, which Baker made sure Hecla resolved with hundreds of millions of dollars of expenditures, long before the focus on ESG. He sold Hecla’s mines in Venezuela where the company was the country’s largest gold producer, using the proceeds to increase to 100% Hecla’s ownership of one the world’s best silver mines, Greens Creek. He has encouraged the development of a new mining method at the long-lived Lucky Friday mine which will make the next twenty years of the mine safer and more productive. He is a leading voice for the importance of silver as a metal necessary for renewable energy.