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Strange spring rituals on Scugog Island
Aug 18, 2007 By: Dennis Melersh, guest columnist(Originally published April 12, 2006)
If you're enjoying a boat ride or doing some fishing on Lake Scugog on a Saturday or Sunday this month or next, be prepared for an unusual sight if you come across a particular backyard on the west shore of the island.
There you're liable to find a number of the island's residents, intently imitating the actions of a sturdy man with tousled black hair and a prominent white beard as he crawls around a muddy vegetable garden hauling a large bag of shiny golden granules, plus vegetable seeds and seedlings, pencils, clipboards and gardening tools. This same scene will be repeated in the gardens of a number of local residents throughout the Lake Scugog and Port Perry area during the months of April and May.
The people involved in these activities are not part of a secret society undergoing initiation into the rites of spring. But they are part of a little known local story. They are actually doing research work on a soil conditioning material known as Namekara Premium Golden Vermiculite, a product of IBI Corporation - an international mining and resources development company which has had its world headquarters on Scugog Island for the past six years. In fact, the company's president and chief executive officer, Gary Fitchett, the white-bearded leader of the gardening clan described above, has called "The Island" his home for more than 30 years. Similarly, a number of significant investors in the company are also longtime residents of the island and the Port Perry area. The story of how a Scugog Island resident became the president of a mining company operating in Uganda began back in August of 1999 when IBI's board of directors, wanting to get the company moving in more productive directions, asked Mr. Fitchett to assume the leadership and presidency. At that point the company's vermiculite deposit was simply a large piece of ground within the virgin bush near Namekara in southeast Uganda. Gary spent three months reorganizing the company internally, and then focused on what to do with the company's Uganda vermiculite resource. Modern communications technology, such as e-mail, PDF-faxing, the Internet and Voice-Over-Internet, has enabled Gary and the management team he developed to manage the company corporately from Scugog Island and the Toronto area and to liaise effectively with operations in Uganda.
"With more than 3,000 investors and a market capitalization exceeding $12 million, IBI Corporation's current major project is it's world-class vermiculite mine in Uganda. Through the development and successful commercial operation of the mine, IBI is helping Africans realize their dreams of economic self-improvement. As the company created a strategy for commercially developing its mineral resources, we also asked: 'How can we help improve the lives of Africans?' The company came to a number of conclusions, which it incorporated into its operational and strategic initiatives," Gary says.
He notes that "From the outset, it was apparent to IBI that Ugandans were eager to work hard to improve their lives. We had anticipated that the people did not want "handouts," but rather, wanted to be in a position to help themselves. Ugandans believe that aid in the form of monetary assistance can be the beginning of a solution, but it is not a long-term solution."
However, IBI recognized that numerous local Ugandan residents had some pressing basic needs and took steps to provide some immediate assistance in providing services.
Overall, IBI realized that if it was really going to help Africans, the company's approach in the social sphere had to be more than simply providing material benefits through paychecks. So a seven-point social responsibility program was developed and implemented. The program features the following principles:
1. Make a genuine effort to understand the local culture; 2. Have strong involvement of local senior people and make sure their contributions are publicly recognized; 3. Keep operations as labour-intensive as possible; 4. Use local people to deal with documentation officials; 5. Encourage a proprietary relationship with local people and workers so they will consider it "their mine", not just the corporation's; 6. Create a Community Development Fund which allocates 10 per cent of profits to local development improvement initiatives; 7. Be sensitive to the environment and to human dignity.
Through this IBI program, some notable results were achieved in the social and environmental area, including: Providing access for a clean and plentiful supply of water; Constructing quality roads; Aggressively reclaiming, restoring and productively improving disturbed lands and planting useful staple and high-value fruits and vegetables and generating beneficial crop harvests as a result; Equal employment opportunities to area women; Bringing hydroelectric power to this rural area and training local employees in specific skills, trades, and work standards.
A recent IBI initiative has been the company's development of V.Gro, a natural fertilizer comprised of phosphates and other trace minerals from the mine pit, combined with vermiculite.
"Research is proving this product to be a potent plant growth enhancement material, well suited to the nutrient-depleted soils of Uganda and the similar soils of the neighbouring East Africa countries of Kenya and Tanzania. IBI is also working on establishing a program, using local aid agencies, by which V.Gro will be made available to regional farmers through a subsidized distribution program," Gary says.
In Uganda, IBI currently employs hundreds of local residents. And looking into the future, the mine, with a five million tonne proven reserve of quality vermiculite, has the capability of providing ongoing local employment for 100 years at a production rate of 50,000 tonnes per year. And this does not include the company's additional probable reserves.
As for the members of our Lake Scugog gardening research group and their white-bearded leader, they'll be back at it in the summer and fall, harvesting their crops and making research notes on the growing results obtained with IBI's vermiculite.
His dealings in Africa have been quite an experience, Mr. Fitchett says.
"Although I have visited Uganda several times, my fondest memories are of my first visit to the mine and my meeting with the local people, who had assembled to meet the 'head of the investor company from Canada.' Following the meeting, during which I gave my approval to what had been developed to date, Hans Hansen, managing director, gave a 'wink and a nod' to the locals. Hans later explained to me that the local people had told him they planned to sacrifice two goats to the gods, to keep evil spirits away from the mine. At that point I hoped the sacrifice would not be of the two lovely goats I had just photographed."
Dennis Melersh of IBI Corporation sent this story to the Port Perry Star.
