Yellowknife (Nov 29/06) - Dump aficionado and mining heritage enthusiast Walt Humphries didn't strike gold last week, but he did get a big fundraising boost towards the goal of establishing a mining museum in Yellowknife.

After garnering $2,600 at the annual celebrity auction for a Humphries-guided tour of the landfill, the well-known Yellowknifer columnist received an additional $20,000 raised at the 34th Geoscience Forum's gala event.

"It's good, but it takes a lot of money to take an old building and renovate it to today's standards," said Humphries, president of the NWT Mining Heritage Society, whose plan is to convert the Giant Mine Rec Hall into a mining and geological interpretive centre. "Altogether the final plans are going to be well over a million by the time everything's done."

To reach the million-dollar mark, Humphries said the society will be looking for support from the territorial government and from businesses and industry, which thus far have been very receptive to the idea.

"First of all there should be (a mining/geological museum) in the NWT as mining has been the economic engine of the territory since 1930," Humphries said. "We chose Yellowknife because it's the capital and with all the mines shut down we can access a lot of artifacts and old equipment."

First thing to be repaired at the old Giant Mine Rec Hall will be the roof and already there is an outdoor display. Humphries hopes to have the interpretive centre open in the next two years.

"A lot depends on how much money we can raise and how fast we can get the work done," said Humphries. "And we'll have to do some work for the building before we can have people go through it."

Eventually, Humphries would like to see the underground workings at Giant Mine repaired to give people an opportunity to experience what it was like to go underground. In the meantime, the focus is on the rec hall and raising money.

Other fundraising projects for the heritage society include the 2007 Yellowknife Women Geoscientists "superheroes" Calendar and a Con Mine pictorial history book the society is putting together.

"We want to have a nice good facility that covers the NWT, all the mines that have been and the ones in operation and the geology of the NWT," said Humphries. "People are always donating artifacts and memorabilia to us... it's quite a project to gather all this information but we're always on the lookout for new stuff."