Teck Celebrity Pie Throw a Success!

By Jonathan Buchanan

Teck hosted its annual Celebrity Pie Throw in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery during Mining Week on May 13, and as usual, it was an unqualified success. The BC mining community raised $1,370,950 at this event for the Mining for Miracles campaign to benefit BC Children’s Hospital.

100% of the funds raised in 2010 will be directed to the purchase and operation of a state-of-the-art 3 Tesla (3T) MRI scanner which will be located in the Pediatric Imaging Analysis & Neuroinformatics Centre at BC Children’s Hospital.  Together with the expertise of BC Children’s Hospital world-renowned researchers, this new facility promises to help deepen the understanding of pediatric brain development and how children are affected by brain disorders, as well as provide ways to evaluate new therapies for protecting the brain.

Wayne Cox emceed and Nova Scotia’s Men of the Deeps performed a concert for the masses, with a special guest appearance from Vancouverite Brian Riback (Brian, at age 12, was excused from the two-years-of-underground-duty requirement of singing with Cape Breton’s famous coal miners’ choir).

Top honours go to the team of Don Lindsay, President & CEO, Teck Resources Limited, and Frank Giustra.   Frank Giustra “delivered” a pie to Don Lindsay worth $725,150. Congratulations also go to the following teams:

• Buddy The Miner and pie-ee Dr. Ken Poskitt
• Sunny Bear and Dr. Steven Miller
• Bruce McLeod, Creston Moly and Troon Ventures, and Darren Pylot, Capstone Mining
• Clem Pelletier, Rescan, and Brent Thompson, Wardrop
• Pierre Gratton, Mining Association of BC, and Jean Vavrek, CIM (Jean was pied with some help from AME BC’s own Gavin C. Dirom, and new Mining Suppliers Association of B.C. chair Patty Moore)
• François Tougas, Lang Michener, and Boyd Payne, Teck Coal
• Randy Smallwood, Silver Wheaton, and Geoff Burns, Pan American Silver
• Michael Murphy, Woodman Capital and Torex Resources, and Colin Joudrie, Teck (After 13 successful years in being involved with the pie throw, past Mining for Miracles chair Colin was called up for pie-ee duty).

There were also two special pies. Jerry Bried, Mining for Miracles Chair, was lovingly pied by mother Gwen Bried, and Men of the Deeps got to share a pie as well.

Thank you to everyone who has supported this worthwhile cause. The Mining for Miracles grand total will be unveiled during Miracle Weekend on Global TV on June 5 and 6.  If you have not yet contributed, visit www.miningformiracles.ca to give to BC Children’s Hospital today.