Alan Archer (1933 – 2018)
Al Archer was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He graduated from UBC in Geological Engineering in 1957. His first position as a geologist was with United Keno Hill Mines in Calumet. After a short time at Texada Mines, he returned to United Keno Hill Mines as Chief Geologist.1) Bob Cathro was the acting mine superintendent.2)
In 1966, Al and Bob formed Archer Cathro & Associates, specializing in Yukon mineral exploration and engineering, and opened a consulting office in Whitehorse. Their company was one of the first to hire female geologists. In the late 1960s, Al discovered a large copper and gold deposit in the Casino area. This led to the company's first big contracts and established Archer Cathro as an industry leader. During a slump in the mining industry, Archer Cathro began compiling a mineral inventory database for the Yukon starting in 1972. It was later purchased by the Yukon Government to become the foundation for the current Yukon MINFILE database.3)
When oil companies got involved in mineral exploration in the late 1960s, they started generating the ideas for joint ventures between oil and mining companies. Archer moved south at this point as it was easier to sell their ideas to the big companies from there. It would take seven or eight months to put the ideas together and raise enough money to spend the summer months in the Yukon. Business was good through the ‘70s and ‘90s. In 1981 they brought in three new partners - Doug Eaton, Rob Carne and Charles Main, people who had worked for them for many years in the field. In 1982, they had seven major contracts with seven contract helicopters and seven camps out for the summer - but in 1983 they had nothing. The oil companies had all decided to get out of mineral exploration. For the next six years the partners survived by leasing previously mined areas at the United Keno Hills site to extract remnant of silver themselves. In the first year they made more money than they had before in consulting.4) They also discovered extremely rare silver crystals formed in ice. A sample was donated to the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa in 1990. In 1994 Archer Cathro voluntarily forfeited its Tombstone mineral claims to help with the creation of the Tombstone Territorial Park. In 1998 Archer was a recipient of the H.H. “Spud” Huestis Award for excellence in prospecting and exploration.5)
In 2002, Archer Cathro was inducted into the Yukon Prospectors' Hall of Fame by the Yukon Prospectors' Association. The firm was honoured for promoting the Yukon in Vancouver, Canada and Europe. They were responsible for generating $60 million in exploration work over the decades. They followed a policy of local hire and also hired Yukon geology students, some of whom continue to live in the Yukon with prominent positions. They also had strict guidelines for reclamation and a system for covering exploration footprints. Archer was still president of the company and Bob Cathro had retired.6)
By 2000 the company had successfully gone through a third generation of partners and was looking forward to training the fourth. Bill Wengzynowski, a sixth generation Yukoner, born and raised in Whitehorse, began as a summer prospector for the company when he was eighteen and he worked his way to a full partnership in 2000. He became president when Archer retired in 2003.7) Archer Cathro was saluted in 2002 for their role in Yukon prospecting history.8) In 2018, Archer Cathro was still going strong after 50-plus years, with offices in Whitehorse and Vancouver.9)