Author: Nicole Stoffman

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A new book about a Timmins mining stock scandal launched Tuesday, Feb. 18.

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“Windfall, Viola MacMillan and her notorious mining scandal,” by Tim Falconer (ECW Press, 2025), tells the story of the trailblazing woman prospector and mine developer who, in July 1964, stayed quiet for three weeks while shares in her company, Windfall Oil and Mines, took off amid rumours about what the company had found on its claims near Timmins.

The claims were tantalizingly close to what would become the Kidd Creek Mine, one of the world’s largest base metal mines.

When she admitted she had nothing, the stock crashed and many small investors lost money. “She out-and-out-lied to us,” investor Murray Pezim said.

The Ontario Government under John Robarts appointed a Royal Commission to analyze what had happened, and as a result, junior mining companies were excluded from the Toronto Stock Exchange.

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Falconer credits this scandal to the fact the TSX, as it is now called, became trustworthy and sophisticated, and made Toronto into “the world’s pre-eminent hub of mining finance,” which now includes a venture exchange for riskier projects.

If MacMillan’s legacy is in spite of, and not because of, her actions, why is she celebrated as a pioneer among women in the mining sector? The Daily Press caught up with the Toronto-based author.

Q: Viola MacMillan, has an autobiography (“From the ground up”), so why was it necessary for you to write this book?

A: She doesn’t talk about the scandal at all, she just says ‘it wasn’t my fault.’ I started off wanting to write about the scandal, and the more I read about her the more I wanted her to be the main character. I think she’s remarkable and someone Canadians should know about. 

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Q: You worked in mining and studied mining engineering, and your book goes into a lot of detail about prospecting and mining stock trading. Who is your intended audience?

A: I’ve heard from people who work in the mining and investment businesses, and they’re really keen on the book. But also Viola was a really strong, successful, fascinating woman, and I’m hoping that a lot of women will like it.

I like relevant digressions, like when I explain claim staking. She staked claims when she was a prospector. I thought it was important to write about what it was like to be a prospector because she did it, and so few women were. I thought it was important to write about claim staking to understand how there was an error made, and that’s how she got her claims.

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Q: In the epilogue you quote a royal commission lawyer Patrick Hartt as concluding that Viola MacMillan may have gotten unfairly blamed for what you call the “freewheeling havoc that ruled the stock market at the time.” Do you agree?

A: Yes. I think what she did was unethical. I don’t know if it was illegal. What she did was really common. They wanted to make an example of her. She went to jail for wash trading in another stock, not even Windfall. Everybody was wash trading (manipulating the market by buying and selling stocks). I don’t see Viola MacMillan as the villain of the book, I see her as the flawed hero, and that’s the best kind of hero.

She had all this success, money, influence and friends, and all of a sudden, aged 61, she decided to be part of a scandal. I don’t think it was pre-meditated, I think it was something she got wrapped up in. I quoted that lawyer who was the one who prosecuted her in the royal commission and he had second thoughts. I want the reader to decide. Most people who have read it say they end up liking her.

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Q: Viola MacMillan was the president of the Prospectors and Developers Association and is the first woman to be inducted in to the Mining Hall of Fame. Does she deserve those honours?

A: She was elected as president of the prospector’s association so she deserved it. The Mining Hall of Fame— to use a sports analogy, there are really bad people who were great players who are in hall of fames. But I don’t think she’s a bad person. She has one big blemish on her record but other than that, she was pretty impressive.

Q: Why was she elected as president of the Prospectors and Developers Association?

Her husband was elected as president for three years of the Prospectors and Developers Association and she was the secretary, but she did all the work. Then he didn’t want to be president anymore and he was getting thanked for things he didn’t do, and she took over, and she did such a good job, she was elected in 1944.

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By that time she’d made lots of money, but she didn’t have a producing mine yet, that was a few years away. She made lots of deals— as a promoter she’d been successful. And then she kept getting elected because she was very good at what she did. There was definitely some reluctance to have a woman president at the beginning, but then they thought she was great. She ran it like her own little fiefdom. The year she resigned, the January after the scandal, they didn’t even have a convention that year because it was always her show.

Q: Will you be coming to Timmins to promote this book?

A: If anyone invites me to do a reading, I will come up. I was up there doing research for a few days a couple of years ago.

Q: The book launches today. Where can it be purchased?

A: Any bookstore, online, and it’s available as an audio and e-book.

“Windfall, Viola MacMillan and her notorious mining scandal,” (ECW Press, 2025), is available at ecw.press.com

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Leaders of a new mining royalty company were in Timmins this week looking for Indigenous organizations to partner with and invest in their company.

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Nations Royalty is the largest majority-Indigenous owned public company in Canada and the only mining royalty company in the world that is majority owned by Indigenous peoples, founded by the self-governing Nisga’a Nation.

They have gained media attention as a milestone on the road to Indigenous economic reconciliation.

The company, backed by Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra, started trading in June but has yet to pay dividends. They boast a portfolio of four mining assets owned by the Nisga’a Nation with royalties valued at US$214 million,

There are reportedly 400 individual benefit agreements between mining companies and First Nations across Canada, which drew them to Ontario’s largest gold camp in search of Indigenous partners.

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The Daily Press spoke with Kody Penner on Thursday, vice president of corporate development.

Penner worked underground at the Brucejack Gold Mine in British Columbia before studying commerce and finance at UBC.

After working in investment banking and financial strategy at mining company Teck Resources, he was invited to work at Nations Royalty. Along the way, Penner gained an understanding of First Nations business and governance as the vice chair at Tahltan Nation Development Corporation. 

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Q: What is unique about Nations Royalty?

A: Nations Royalty is Canada’s first and largest majority Indigenous publicly-traded company, trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange Venture. We are a mining royalty company. The mining royalty model means you get a portion of revenue from that mine. Mining royalty companies collect many different royalties from different mines and receive revenue from those royalty agreements.

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By obtaining more royalties from different mines, we aim to create a diversified portfolio of mining assets in different jurisdictions, which also lowers your risk. This should push your stock price up, as time goes on.

Investors who invest in Nations Royalty get access to precious metal benefit agreement payments with our Indigenous partners.

We’re the first majority Indigenous-owned mining royalty company and we’re the first mover in the Indigenous royalty space. The Indigenous people of Canada have a tremendous amount of value baked into their impact benefit agreements and the financial payments in those agreements.

In 2023 alone, there was $353 million paid out in cash payments from industry in the metals and mining sector to Indigenous groups through IBA payments, if you include oil and gas that’s over $700 million.

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There’s never been a majority Indigenous managed company that looks to pool all of those different payments together in to a single publicly-traded company so we could receive the high valuations that these other royalty companies such as Wheaton Precious Metals or Franco-Nevada have been receiving for years.

We’re the first mover in this last untapped royalty space. It’s a very, very exciting time.

Q: What opportunities does Nations Royalty present for Indigenous communities in the Timmins and Cochrane District?

A: Our company’s first goal is shareholder return. The Niska’a Nation owns 77 per cent of our company. If we increase the share price in our company by bringing more Indigenous partners and their benefit agreements into the company, then they get a return. Our second goal is to build Indigenous capacity within the public markets.

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We’re looking for Indigenous partners to join Nations Royalty by exchanging their Impact Benefit Agreement financial payments for equity in the company. Indigenous partner organizations would learn how we raise capital and if there was a substantial partnership (such as 40 per cent of our company), there’d be a potential for board seats.

Q: What are some of your guiding principles?

A: We’re very flexible with what kind of partnerships Indigenous groups can have. We offer cash in exchange for the impact benefit agreement, but we prefer to offer is equity in our company. That amount, whether it’s cash or equity, all of the benefit agreement payment or half or a quarter—those are the conversations that we’re having with different groups to see what makes sense for them and their Nation.

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If it’s a Nation that only has one mine in the area and they’re using that money to fund all of their government functions, then our model might not work for them, and we don’t want to push them or trick them or do anything to harm their government functions because that’s education and wildlife protection and the things that truly matter.

If there’s a group that has an IBA and a couple other income streams and a settlement payment and they don’t actually need the cash flow coming in from the IBA payments and are able to invest that in Nations Royalty to partner with us, then we can go from there.

I’m Tahltan First Nations, we’re majority Indigenous managed, we’re all Indigenous here. We’re here to help increase Indigenous wealth, and do it in a sustainable manner. We’re here to accelerate economic diversification, reconciliation and to move groups forward.

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Q: Do you only invest in mining?

A: The royalty companies that get the highest valuation in the market are gold royalty companies. They trade at very high valuations relative to their assets. We would love to be primarily a gold-focused Indigenous royalty company, so that’s our primary goal. We’re also looking at some base metals and energy assets.

Q: Who have you been meeting with in Timmins?

A: Timmins is a prolific gold mining area and as mentioned our main goal is to add Indigenous benefit agreements within the gold space, so Timmins has been mining gold for over 100 years. All the Indigenous groups related to those gold mines have been interacting with these companies for years and making decisions on impact benefit agreements, assessing risks, opportunities, so it’s a great area to be in.

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We’re chatting with many groups across Canada, though I can’t divulge confidential business information.  We’re spending time in community and seeing where their pain points are, and how we could help.

Timmins is a prolific gold mining area with advanced Indigenous groups with mature governments and it’s a fantastic place to be.

Q: Your have a current portfolio of four mining assets owned by the Nisga’a Nation with royalties valued at US$214 million, including the largest, fully permitted gold and copper project in the world. Is that in B.C.?

A: The Nisga’a Nation from northwest British Columbia is in the Golden Triangle. If you go to the tip of northwest B.C. that’s Tahltan territory. Just south of that is Nisga’a territory. It encompasses about 30 per cent of the Golden Triangle. They have an impact benefit agreement with the KSM Project owned by Seabridge Gold. It’s the world’s largest permitted but undeveloped copper-gold asset. It has a 72-year mine life, and it has 47.5 million ounces of gold in reserves and 7.5 billion pounds of copper. This is a generational mining asset that can provide financial benefits for seven generations to come.

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That’s what we like to chat with different groups about—when you’re making decisions as chief, council or community, you’re thinking seven generations ahead. And we have an asset within our portfolio that could provide long-term, stable financial returns that can take care of people’s kids, their kids and their kids.

Q: Do you see Indigenous groups owning and operating a mine in the future?

A: I’m a miner, my dad’s a miner, my brother is a mining engineer, and I would love to help Indigenous group at some point, build and operate their own mine. You’re starting to see it across Canada– the Selkirk First Nation in the Yukon actually bought the Minto Mine out of receivership so they own that mine. They own the mineral rights, they own the infrastructure, it’s a past-producing mine. They’re looking to progress that one forward.

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So you’re already seeing Indigenous groups buying and developing their own assets and if I can play a small part in that in unison with Nations Royalty, then that’s a future I would love to see.

Q: What is your message to people within and without the Indigenous community who have concerns about the environmental impact of mining on freshwater, country food, wildlife and migratory bird habitat?

A: I have many thoughts about that. I come from a mining territory up in Tahltan Territory. In the Nations Royalty model, we’re essentially working with groups that have already signed their impact benefit agreements,  and we’re working on the financial aspects of those. So they’ve already gone through the technical analysis with their consultants. They’ve already weighed the risks, outcomes and opportunities and they’ve signed an impact benefit agreement. Nations Royalty comes in after that is all done. We look to bolster the value in their financial payments in the IBAs.

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I’m a big believer in Canadian mining and our regulatory process. We have good consultation with Indigenous groups. I see a bright future for it. We don’t do anything that doesn’t align with the Indigenous groups.

Q: How is mining in line with an Indigenous worldview?

A: As an Indigenous person, it really depends how you’re looking at it. It was a past president up in our Nation said “the quickest way to lose your culture is poverty.” So we’ve been brought up in this system that has repressed Indigenous people’s ability to access business, the capital markets. When Indigenous people have mines on their territory, it’s a huge potential for economic development.

That money can go into education, extra wildlife protection in other areas of their territories, supporting elders and community centres. Mining is part of the value chain. I’m a miner and I believe in it. Mining can add a ton of value if it’s done responsibly and sustainably.

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This is more just coming from me and my experience. At Nations Royalty we work with the IBAs after this has all been discussed. We help diversify their financial risk, and bring value forward for Indigenous groups so they can use future payments today, and receive the premium valuations that royalty companies get in the market.

Its about aligning those world views, proper consultations, and progressing sustainable, responsible assets.

Q: What did you do as a miner?

A: I worked underground at the Brucejack Gold Mine in northwest British Columbia. We actually have a royalty on it within our company now. I ran a jack leg— so I would drill holes in the wall, take off danger rocks and put up screen. I ran heavy equipment like haul trucks and scissor decks.

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Q: Anything else you’d like to add?

A: We also help groups negotiate better royalty agreements, or benefit agreement financial payments. We help them structure those so they actually get a better piece of the pie and can actually reap the rewards of increased production of the mine, so if the gold price rises they can actually see those increases rather than some old agreements.

We do it for a few reasons. We’re Indigenous and we want to see all Indigenous people grow and prosper. Second, if you see better impact agreements being structured throughout Canada that means other groups will see those and the whole mining royalty sector will start to rise. That’s good for our business and for Indigenous livelihoods.

It also helps us to build trust with Indigenous groups so they might consider a partnership with Nations Royalty.

A rising tide lifts all boats.

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