Metal Empire

Although few Canadians have ever even heard his name, Thayer Lindsley has probably done more to develop the mineral riches of Canada than any other man of his time. Last week the tall, spare 72-year-old president of Ventures Ltd. called a special meeting of shareholders in Toronto to announce his biggest venture: a hydroelectric power development in the vast Yukon Territory, which may cost up to $2 billion and develop as much as 5,000,000 h.p., to run a great new metallurgical development in the Canadian Northwest.

Lindsley's vast project will take 20 years or more to complete. A lacework of Yukon rivers and lakes, whose waters now flow north to the Arctic Ocean, will have to be dammed off in the north to form a new lake thousands of square miles in area and nearly 200 ft. deep. The backed-up waters, under one plan, would force the moving of the Yukon's largest town, Whitehorse (pop. 2,594), and the rerouting of the Alaska Highway and the Yukon Railway. The southern side of the manmade lake will be tapped, and its waters through tunnels to the Pacific. Energy produced by the waters' swift drop to the sea will almost triple the output of the famed U.S. Hoover Dam.

Deep-Sea Port. At the power site, Ventures plans to build mills and smelters to process ore from the company's worldwide network of mines. Electric furnaces will manufacture pig iron and steel, fed with iron ore from Ventures' mines on Vancouver Island, chrome from a Ventures property in the Transvaal, cobalt from New Caledonia and manganese from Southwest Africa. Another plant will manufacture aluminum. Lead and nickel from Ventures' Canadian mines will be processed on the site. A new, deep-sea port near by will enable ships to deliver ore and carry away finished metals all year round.

The development must be carried out in stages, and the first stage--a $250,000 survey of Yukon's lakes and rivers--is already under way, will be finished late this summer. The first $5,000,000 capital has been raised by sale of debentures, and Ventures expects to raise more as needed Next spring, the first 25,000-h.P. pilot power plant will be started.

Classmate of F.D.R. No man is better equipped by experience than Thayer Lindsley to launch the Yukon project. The publicity-shy Ventures president has been one of the most successful operators in Canadian mining ever since he went to Canada from the U.S. in the early '20s with a nest egg of $30,000 in cash. Lindsley, a Harvard classmate of Franklin Roosevelt, got his initial capital and mining know-how operating an iron mine in Oregon, but it was in Canada that he came into his own.

For two decades after Ventures was formed in 1928, Lindsley often traveled the hinterlands of Canada by pack and canoe, scouting mining properties. Ventures acquired the rich Falconbridge Nickel mines at Sudbury, Ont., Giant Yellowknife (gold) mine, United Keno Hill (lead) mines and a dozen other rich Canadian producers. The 20-odd Lindsley-controlled properties listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange are now valued at more than $236 million. Through a maze of 49 holding companies and operating subsidiaries, Ventures' mining interests have spread far beyond Canada and now are on four continents.

Mysterious Figure. Despite his widespread interests, Lindsley has remained an unknown, almost mysterious figure in the business world. He divides his time between his apartment on Manhattan's Park Avenue and a fashionable house in Toronto's suburban Forest Hills. He works up to 15 hours a day, much of the time poring over geological maps spread out on the living-room floor. "His work is studying his own mines," a colleague once said. "His relaxation is studying someone else's."

At last week's shareholders' meeting, Lindsley let his aides expound most of the details of the great Yukon project. He said little except to summarize the plan with a shattering understatement: "The implications this may have on [the company's future] are far-reaching."

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