Geologist did good work for Inuit

The passing of Murray Pyke on May 6 will be lamented by prospectors and geologists in many parts of the Canadian mineral industry.

A graduate of the University of Saskatchewan, he spent many summers of bush mapping in the pre-Cambrian shield areas of Saskatchewan, Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

His strong sense of economic geology led him into consulting and the founding of Wollex Exploration, which ultimately became Comaplex Minerals Corp. This company flourished on a mixture of investments in mineral claims and petroleum lands.

Murray was the instigator of their mining programs where he showed a deep faith in grass-roots exploration. Primary prospecting was his chief tool from which all else proceeded. He was inspiring in his direction of prospectors.

You could say he was a geologist’s geologist because he thought deeply about mineral deposition theory and the guidance of models in exploration. So, Murray had the faith to hang in and keep persisting even if initial results on the ground were disappointing.

His exploration philosophy was based on the primacy of prospecting to do the basic grass roots work on properties, plenty of them, and then he sought out partners to minimize the risk and generate cash flow.

Geophysics often played a contributing role in his strategy and helped formalize the ore deposit model for him.

For example, aeromagnetic surveying near Rankin Inlet illustrated the connection between tectonized iron formation and hydrothermal gold mineralization, leading to significant finds in the Meliadine belt and also the Meadowbank belt north of Baker Lake.

A lasting tribute to Murray was the naming of the Pyke Break, a gold-related fault in iron formation. The same sound geological thinking also took Comaplex into base metals and uranium in many parts of the country and the U.S.

We who knew him realized he was a treasure of a human being, a friendly gregarious person. He was faithful to his crews, and made a point of knowing their personal connections and stories.

People worked hard for Murray, knowing he would come right into the field and break rock. It was a passion with him.

In the 1980s, Comaplex was the largest holder of exploration permits in the Northwest Territories. This did not stop him from lending a hand as a mineral advisor to the Inuit during their land claim negotiations.

In fact Murray’s friendly sincerity convinced the Inuit they were getting good value in hiring the Comaplex colleagues as advisors.

The results of the Nunavut agreement speak for themselves: Inuit became the largest mineral rights owners in Canada.

Murray did not begrudge their bonanza but felt disappointed when they did not adopt the free entry system, which was traditional in most of the country and from which he owed his success as an explorationist.

Murray was respectful of Aboriginal people, and hired them on his crews from the early days at La Ronge. He contributed to their future by virtue of his belief in the geological potential of their land.

Robert McPherson, P.Geol.
Author of New Owners in Their Own Land

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