Northern News Services

NNSL (Jun 08/98) - Mel Brown's definition of terror is a little bit different from what you might expect.

He had relatives in Scarborough, Ont., and while working in the mines of Ontario, he would frequently meet them in Toronto. After being picked up for a visit to the big city, they would drive him, via the highway, to their home.

"All the way they'd talk about, 'Wasn't it dangerous working in the mines?' (Yet) my hair was standing right up on end from the amount of traffic in Toronto. It was twice as dangerous," he smiled.

Born in 1917, in Elrose, Sask., a three-and-a-half-hour drive northwest of Regina, Brown was the third of seven children born into a family of grain farmers. Having lived through the Great Depression as a child, he knew hardship. He says the experience "colors you" with indelible memories of the struggle to eke out of living in the area. But, he says, despite the hardship, he and his relatives never suffered much from the drought.

"We didn't have any trouble getting food," he says.

After completing high school in 1934, Brown worked on the farm until 1942, when he joined the army. He was soon sent overseas to Italy and Holland for one year as a member of the Edmonton Regiment of the 1st Infantry Division during the Second World War. Asked if he saw much combat duty, he replies, "One day is a lot."

"War is a dangerous game.... The important thing is this guy got through alive," he says, noting that there are few Second World War veterans still alive today.

Upon leaving the army in 1945, he spent the next four years working toward his engineering degree from the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. As a certified mining engineer, Brown had to go where the work was, and in this case, it was Ontario. There, he inspected gold mines in Timmins, Sudbury and Kirkland Lake to ensure they complied with safety standards. He also monitored prospecting and mine development.

Safety measures, in Ontario in the 1950s were "pretty good," he adds.

Years later, Brown would move far from the madding crowds. He was accepted for the position of chief mining engineer with the government of the Northwest Territories in 1964. The mining industry was blossoming in the North. Con, Giant, Echo Bay, Pine Point, Discovery and Cantung were up and running. In the mid 1960s, Yellowknife was about a quarter of the size it is now, he estimated. The population was close to 4,000.

"Fifty-fourth Street was just a road to Con," he says of the street on which the family home was eventually built and where he still resides with his cat, Max.

Finding a place to live wasn't easy at that time, he adds. It wasn't until July that his family -- wife Florence and children Bruce, Dorothy, Wayne, Allan and Dean -- were able to join him. They moved into a duplex across the street from Sir John Franklin high school. There all six of his children, including Joanne, who was born in Yellowknife -- would live through their graduation.

"This is a good place to raise children. The schools are good," Brown says.

He found his work to be quite similar to his former position in Ontario. He said there was a fairly well-defined mining act that listed the procedures to be followed.

"I knew what a mine should look like," he said.

However, there were a few striking differences between the jobs. For one, "the government doesn't have to show a profit."

The other was the number of safety violations, noting accidents were reported "steadily" in the North.

"There were always accidents or lives lost.... It was hard to get experienced miners up here -- you get inexperienced miners and they're dangerous," he said.

"If you had the 401 (highway) in Toronto with all inexperienced drivers, it would be dangerous, too."

The biggest loss of life that Brown had to investigate was a helicopter crash that killed six people, five of them miners, near Pine Point.

"The helicopter was flying for the mine. It had mine engineers and geologists (on board."

The job also required plenty of travel but Brown didn't mind climbing in and out of prop planes on a regular basis -- "Not if you had a pilot you trusted."

"In the summertime we travelled a lot because you could get in a 20-hour day quite easy," he adds.

After nearly 20 years on the job, he retired, but didn't get out of the game completely. He became the first executive director of the Northwest Territories Association of Professional Geologists and Geophysicists (NAPEGG) in 1982.

"They were just starting the association and I thought that was a job that I could do," he says. "We wanted to get the engineers organized. This, I guess, was the last place in the civilized world where you could practise engineering without a licence."

Bob Spence, the current executive director of the association, met Brown in 1964. They both had just arrived in the NWT.

"You know, the head of mine safety is a very responsible job and he did it correctly," Spence says.

After 10 years at the association, Brown packed it in for good. He still finds himself tracking the price of metals and following the developments in mining.

"Gold mining is in bad shape. The price of gold just went down significantly," he notes.

However, he admittedly doesn't know much about the diamond-mining industry, which may hope breathes some new life into the Northern economy. He would offer only this sentiment: "They haven't yet established that there are enough (diamonds) to pay for mining it."

As he was a life member of the Legion and the Yellowknife Association of Concerned Citizens for Seniors and an avid gardener, he decided to retire in the North.

"This is home. I've lived here longer than I've lived any place else in my life.

I own my own home and I'm comfortable here," he says.

Jack Adderly, a fellow member of the Legion

who has known Brown for 20 years, pointed out that Brown is the only member of the Yellowknife Legion to have been awarded a military service medal.

Brown had hip-replacement surgery several years ago, but, with the use of his cane, he still walks several blocks to the Legion.

"Mel is still very active in the branch. He shows no signs of slowing down at all," Adderly says.