Riley Borutski – Mineral Exploration Geotechnician

For my co-op term, I worked at Generation Mining as a Geotechnician in a remote township in North Western Ontario called Marathon. Working in Marathon was a great opportunity because it is in one of the most mining rich areas of Ontario.. My experience with this company shaped the way I look at mineral exploration and gave me experiences of a life time. I found it very easy to work with this company as they are small and treat everyone well and help you overcome any problem you may encounter on the job. My days working for Generation Mining would consist of gathering, processing, and shipping of core. Another part of my job was when I got to visit remote drill sites and preform a down-the-hole gyro survey on our drill holes.

Getting to perform surveys on our drill sites using a Reflex Gyro was one of my favorite parts of my job. Our surveys were a quality control of the drill hole. The purpose of the survey was to ensure that the drill maintained planned dip and azimuth to hit our drill targets. Every time I went out in the field there was a new problem to solve and would always be a unique challenge to each drill site. Sometimes the first challenge of surveying the holes was just how you were going to get to the site. We used ATV’s, UTV’s, and even helicopters to get to the sites.

I conducted two different types of surveys on the drill holes – manual and electronic. Most of the time we used electronic surveys, but the most memorable experience was one of my manual surveys. This survey was conducted on the deepest hole that was drilled on site at 1044m. Since it was a manual survey I would have to stop every ten meters to allow the gyro to take a shot of the hole. During this survey I taught French drillers how to count to a thousand and multiple English sayings such as “How deep is the hole?”. I also learnt basic French drilling terms to help communicate my point to them more easily and got to sing with the drillers as we conducted our survey. Also, during this survey, I was offered a whole block of cheese and learnt how to cook lasagna over an open fire.

My first year of ERT greatly prepared me for my position. My co-op has furthered my geoscience education by helping me use and upgrade my minerology skills. This position also helped me realize the importance of knowing where you are in three dimensional space when undertaking a drilling program.

Overall Generation Mining is a great company to work for and I would love to work for them again after graduation. My position at this company was exactly what I was hoping and made me want to work in the mineral exploration field.