sustainability made personal
My name is Damian D'Aguiar. I founded Sustainability 360 to support mining leaders who must deliver strong results and drive growth while satisfying the interests of internal and external stakeholders.
Strategy Execution Proves Key to Success
Efffective strategy execution has never been more important to a mining company's success. However, research reveals that companies continue to struggle with the implementation of key strategic initiatives, especially when it comes to the people side of the equation. Successful mining companies recognize that a deeper focus on the people side of the execution equation is essential to success and that believing that technical implementation alone is sufficient enough for building alignment, changing safety culture, and influencing the community. I've studied and become an expert in both the technical safety, health and environment aspects, and the human psychology that determine how people make decisions and behave. In short, my story is really about my belief that:
"Mining is a tide that floats all boats."
In other words, mining benefits everyone. Born in Kingston, Jamaica and living all over northern Canada and China, My childhood was in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. When I was 11 years old I was fortunate to visit the Don Valley Brickworks Mine operating in the center of Toronto. It was my science fair project to design a stronger brick. Although I no longer have the actual science fair project, here is why I believe so strongly in mining.
The Don Valley Brick Works is located on the west side of the Don Valley Highway, at the edge of the Moore Park Ravine in Toronto. In 1891, William Taylor and his brothers John and George Taylor established the Don Valley Brick Works to make use of the uniquely pure clay deposit there that had formed from centuries of moving ice and sediment from the ice age.
During the depression years of 1930 and 1931 of massive unemployment, the Don Valley itself became the site of what was then called "hobo jungle"--a huge encampment of homeless men living in make-shift dwellings. In the fall of 1930, a small group of men were granted refuge in the brick works buildings in the valley. As a Toronto Daily Star reporter described, "last night during bitter winds and near-zero weather, forty-two homeless, jobless, and penniless wandering men slept on 'hot-flops' in the Don Valley yards of the Toronto Brick [Company]." Bricks baked in a series of huge chambers, or kilns, often took up to a week to cool. While they cooled, the men apparently climbed inside the kilns and slept on the hot bricks. By June 1931 the number of men keeping warm at night from the hot bricks expanded to over one hundred. Later in the fall of 1931 the Province initiated a Trans-Canada highway project in Northern Ontario and jobs were created and the temporary brick shelter could end.
If you own a house in Toronto built before the 1950s then your walls came from this mine. Hurricane Hazel in 1954, specifically its aftermath, was a defining moment in the history of the Don Valley Brick Works. To improve safety in the wake of the deadly flooding, the Metropolitan and Toronto Region Conservation Authority acquired the clay land all around the mine site. The land was needed to protect the city from flooding. Despite a post-war housing construction boom, the brick mine could go no deeper and had to be closed in 1984. Interestingly, as part of a university health and safety course, I went to go see it in operation in its final year.
The mine produced three types of brick: "soft mud," a mix of clay and river water, "dry press," moulded shale, and "stiff mud," a mix of clay and shale with water. The company was the only one to produce all three types of brick at the same time Canada. The quality was considered so high that the bricks won prizes at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and 1984 Toronto Industrial Fair. My science fair project was to compare those bricks using my parent's oven, which is a story onto itself...
Over the next few years, the open pit was gradually filled in using material excavated from the foundations of several downtown office towers and landscaped ponds have been created in their place. In 2010, a Canadian non-profit organization that aims to connect nature and people, took stewardship of the site and renovated many of its historic features. As a reminder of the past, old style bricks still litter the surrounding hillside.
Every mine has a story, which is why we make sustainability personal.
Just as all Torontonians in the first half of the last century depended on Don Valley bricks to keep their homes safe and secure, all of us depend on mining today to survive. Mining is one of Canada’s most important economic sectors and a major job creator. We rely on mines all over the world to keep our world running. If mining is in your community.... mining is the tide that floats all boats.
Strategy Development
I can support you with:
- Improving safety culture.
- Community and government relations.
- Development of mine closure plans for advanced exploration projects, existing mines or proposed mine Development.
- Management of sub-consultants for completion of technical studies and certifications.
- Closure cost estimating for pre-feasibility and feasibility planning.
- Land use plans, location and approvals.
- Mine project approvals for Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada.
Damian D'Aguiar