Farewell to a friend: mining ambassador, volunteer dies at 86.

• Position: MINING

The Northern Ontario mining community lost an esteemed colleague and long-time contributor on April 3. Merv Lavigne, a resident of Haileybury who dedicated his life to the pursuit of mining and the preservation of mining heritage, died following a brief illness at the age of 86.

Born in Ottawa, Lavigne discovered his passion in 1948 while working at Timmins' Paymaster gold mine, mucking, hand-tramming, chute-pulling and blast-hole drilling. He would later graduate from what is now the Haileybury School of Mines. His field work was conducted at Cobalt's silver mines.

Lavigne had a prominent career, building mine plants as a survey and layout engineer with Temiskaming Construction Ltd., doing exploration and development work at the Elliot Lake uranium camp with Pioneer Consultants Ltd., and working as a field troubleshooter for diamond-set mining and oil field products with Wheel Truing Tool Company, where he rose to the level of vice-president of the mining division.

In December 1952, Lavigne married Kathleen Fleming, daughter of P.M. Fleming, whose company was a distributor for several mining equipment manufacturers and the Shell Oil Company. The couple had three children together.

Intent on achieving his professional degree status, Lavigne enrolled at the Michigan College of Mining and Technology. As the first transfer student from Haileybury, Lavigne set a precedent for future transfers between the schools, which allowed hundreds of successive students to earn their engineering degrees.

By 1973, Lavigne found his self-described "lifelong obsession" as an instructor at...