Guy Quenneville
Northern News Services
Published Wednesday, November 28, 2007

YELLOWKNIFE - Remember that feeling you had when you were a kid, when, one by one, all the friends who attended your birthday party were slowly picked up by their mothers and you were eventually left alone clutching your gifts, wondering where all the time went?

That's how Cheryl Wourms, an organizer of the 35th Annual Geoscience Forum, felt last week as the convention came to a close.

"Right now, everything went so smoothly that I can't believe it's really over," said Wourms last Thursday. "It doesn't even feel like we held it. Hopefully I can do the same thing next year."

If attendance is any indication - not to mention the enthusiasm about the general state of northern mining voiced by delegates - the forum shows no signs of going away any time soon.

Attendance hit record numbers this year for Yellowknife attendees, whether they were making technical presentations at the Capitol Theatre or pushing mining-related products at the trade show in the gym of the Weledeh Catholic School.

"We had 455 local attendees," said Wourms. "The rest were from outside Yellowknife."

A total of 871 delegates came to the forum.

Again this year, as in past years, organizers were forced to turn away many trade show exhibitors simply because there wasn't enough space to accommodate them.

"There are people who requested a booth some time ago (for next year) because they knew they wouldn't get one this year," said Wourms.

This year was the second time Terra Pro, a Yellowknife company that sells matting which protects mining equipment from the ground, took part in the forum.

Colin Schmidt, vice president of sales and marketing for Terra Pro, said the forum brings together "fantastic people and open minds thinking about different products and new technology to make work in the North easier."

Not to mention profitable - Schmidt said Terra Pro has formed several lucrative deals as a result of meetings at the forum.

"There's money in the bank," he said.

Robert Ginn, president and CEO of Viking Gold Exploration, said he looks forward to the forum for the interaction with peers and with service providers - the drilling companies, the assayers, the equipment providers.

"It's a chance for us to share our plans and find out what (the servicing companies') pressures are. Are they capable of looking after us, or do we have to look for other service providers?"

Jordan Magnan, a quality control technologist for A & A Technical Services, which supplies liner installations that hold and retain water and hydrocarbons, was at the forum for the first time.

He especially enjoyed the unconventional lecture given by Dr. Tim Patterson of Carleton University on the first night of the conference, in which Patterson suggested that global warming is caused by changes in the amount of solar energy reaching the earth.

"It's not the same as what everyone else is saying," said Magnan of the lecture. "I thought it was quite good to have that as part of the forum."