Jazzed about communication
’Lyn Anglin is a tireless and passionate advocate for the mineral exploration industry in B.C.
'Lyn Anglin (L) finds herself fired up by the possibilities that mineral exploration provides to our lives. — photo courtesy 'Lyn Anglin
When Geoscience BC president and CEO ’Lyn Anglin was a child in Kingston, Ontario, she planned on a career in physical education—mainly because she hadn’t considered that her love of rocks and being outdoors could somehow provide a real living. However, when she took a geology course in her sophomore year at university, she started to re-evaluate her options.
“I was finding that with phys-ed, I was missing the harder sciences—the maths, and chemistry and physics, which I actually enjoy,” said Anglin. “And I also met a bunch of people who actually got paid for working outside and collecting rocks.”
She continued her education in geology, landing jobs with the federal government, exploration companies and the Geological Survey of Canada. Her career arc finally brought her to Geoscience BC as the first president and CEO of the organization.
Admittedly, the original appeal of the industry—being outside banging rocks together—isn’t a reality in Anglin’s daily life. So what gets her jazzed about her job now?
“I think it’s the public good aspect of geoscience that really appeals to me,” she said, “and the importance of the resource industry to our standard of living . . . I’ve always felt that we have so much to be thankful for in terms of having the resource base that we do, because that really does sustain the health services, the social services and the education services that we can afford.”
Anglin recognizes that public perception is one of the greatest challenges facing the industry right now, as exploration and mining must battle an outdated reputation as earth-hating, exploitive polluters.
“It is worth the industry and those involved in public outreach engaging in some basic Mining 101 courses in a lot of communities, so people have a better understanding of the industry,” suggested Anglin. “I think the industry itself is becoming more attuned to the whole public and community relations of its work and that it's important to recognize that if someone doesn’t understand something, their first response is to be afraid of it. But if you can connect with the community leaders—if they know what you’re doing and why—it goes a long way to having communities be much more receptive.”
