UNDERGROUND
DEVELOPMENT
continue into the future which I am sure it will.
I will be remaining on the Board of Directors for
the next couple of years and, hopefully, having the
odd beer at the Friday Night Club (I think I started
that Club!). Thank you for all your support over
my years of service."
As stated, after the work at Creighton, he was in
Zambia for about three years with Cementation
and some of his children were born there. On
return to Redpath, he was at Brunswick Mining
and Smelting starting in 1974 through to about
1977. A current Redpath Senior VP states: “There
was lots of interesting stuff done there such as the
use of a bore hole shaft to help get rid of waste,
including the waste from shaft sinking in the part
that was piloted and slashed.” There are technical
papers by Medd and others about this work “plus
the tricky stuff of developing through the graphite
zone. He then went to the Bruce Tunnel of
Ontario Hydro and was there a couple years
through into 1979. That job was also interesting in
its challenges and there was another paper
written that has Morris’s name on it. Then he
came to North Bay as the Manager of Contracting
and from there worked his way through the ranks.
His finger prints were all over the introduction of
full face shaft sinking by Redpath when we
pioneered that at the Falconbridge Thayer
Lindsley (TL) shaft in the late 1980s.”
Redpath's Manager of Western
Canada in the early 1980s
out of the Saskatoon office.”
A further ex-colleague in the
2004 paper who worked with
him on the Lupin project
said: “I recall when Morris
and I would come out from
Lupin. For some God awful
reason it used to take damn
near four days to get from
the Edmonton Municipal
Airport to the International
Airport and that was only 20
miles!" Another colleague
stated: “Some may call him
a great man, some a legend,
however, to us he's still
know as Morris – a man of wisdom and always
there when you need him." The company even
had him immortalised in a bronze statue in his
likeness commissioned from sculptor Gary Prazen
to commemorate his retirement.
A final word from the same newspaper by George
Flumerfelt, who joined Redpath in 2003 as Senior
Vice President of Operations and was promoted
to President and CEO stated: "Morris has spent
over 30 years working for Redpath and during his
career has made an enormous contribution to
Redpath's success, the advancement of the
Canadian mining contracting industry and to the
advancement of Canadian shaft sinking
techniques. Without any doubt, Morris has played
the leading role in helping Redpath become the
premier shaft sinking and mine development
contractor in Canada today. On a personal note,
I am truly grateful for the time Morris has spent
with me over the past year and a half helping
me to get to know Redpath and its business.
I will certainly miss some of his 'war stories'
which began back at the Creighton No. 9 shaft
in the 1960s!"
Another ex-colleague and Redpath retired VP
says: “Morris started for Redpath the first time at
the Creighton No. 9 shaft and was shaft captain at
the Brunswick No. 3 shaft where we took the onus
off the owner to dispose of waste rock through a
series of bore holes equipped for hoisting. He
worked on the Geco shaft in Manitouwadge,
Ontario, and the first Kidd Creek shaft in Timmins,
Ontario, with Cementation and McIsaac Mining
respectively. He was also involved in the design of
the ropeless shaft sinking technique. He worked
on the Bruce Cooling Water Tunnel project near
Kincardin, Ontario, directly after the Brunswick
No. 3 shaft as Development Captain, Shift Boss
and Assistant Project Manager. He was then
2 of 2