Brenda Bouw

It was at a friend’s wedding in Australia just over a decade ago that investment banker Paul Dunstan and some colleagues came up with the idea to start their own public infrastructure development and investment company, which would help to plan, finance and erect buildings and bridges across North America. Vancouver-based...

Neil Woodyer isn’t your typical accountant. Instead of sitting behind a desk crunching numbers, Woodyer decided to take his finance skills into the field, as far away as Africa, with Endeavour Mining Corp., a Vancouver-based gold producer. Woodyer was first bitten by the gold bug in the 1970s while working...

Renee Wasylyk is proof that you don’t need a business degree to achieve business success. The CEO of real estate developer Troika Management Corp. had a bachelor’s degree in religious studies, a master’s in theology and a six-week unpaid internship working for a project manager at a private real estate...

Christopher Krywulak became an entrepreneur because, as he puts it, he needed a place to work where he could “fit in.” After struggling through the structured classroom environment as a kid, the Saskatchewan-born businessman knew an office job wasn’t his style; nor was the Regina-based steel plant where he worked...

Red Chris (Copper/Gold) Owner: Imperial MetalsLocation: 80 km south of Dease Lake in northwest B.C.Status: Red Chris is expected to begin commercial production in early 2015, following s Tulsequah (Copper/Zinc/Lead/Silver/Gold) Owner:Chieftain Metals Inc.Location: Northwestern B.C. on the Tulsequah River near its junction with the Taku River, about 100 km south of...

Ravi Saligram has been in leadership roles at a handful of high-profile companies over the years including office supplies seller OfficeMax, hotel chain Intercontinental Hotels Group and consumer products conglomerate SC Johnson. So when the 58-year-old recently took over the job as chief executive officer at Burnaby-based Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers...

Aaron Rokstad picked a bad time to start his own powerline construction business. It was October 2008, just as the global financial crisis was unfolding, when Rokstad took a $100,000 home equity loan and decided to branch out on his own. He left his job at Quanta Services, the largest...

Mark O’Dea wasn’t going to let a little thing like a prolonged slump in the mining sector stop him from doing what he loves every day: making money from undervalued assets. The mining entrepreneur, who since 2001 has built six junior mining companies and created more than $3 billion in...

In a slow year for mergers and acquisitions, in 2013 Vancouver’s mining sector saw one blockbuster deal as First Quantum Minerals Ltd. prevailed in a $5.1-billion hostile takeover of Toronto’s Inmet Mining Corp., creating one of the world’s largest copper producers. When First Quantum first asked Inmet for its hand in...

Doug Harrison VersaCold International Corp. As the temperature was heating up outside last summer, Doug Harrison was starting his job as CEO of VersaCold, Canada’s largest warehousing and logistics services company focused on temperature-sensitive products. He started in June 2013, replacing former CEO Joel Smith, who retired a few months later. His...

With the mining industry in the doldrums these days, it’s hard to believe there’s a shortage of skilled labour. After all, slumping commodity prices and a tough financing environment have led to layoffs across the sector. Mining companies nevertheless face an acute crisis: how to replace a massive wave of...

It was just days after the tight and tension-filled 2011 federal election race ended in Peru that Bear Creek Mining Corp. was hit with one of the biggest risks faced by mining companies today. It was a Saturday, the week before newly elected president Ollanta Humala was to be sworn...