Felix J.B. Freeman
B - May 17, 1960 D - Jan 1, 2000
Felix was born in London and with this younger brother Peter spent his early years around at Bentham Hall, University College London where his parents taught. In 1968 he began boarding at Swanbourne House School in Buckinghamshire and followed on to Bradfield College in 1973. Upon graduation from Bradford in 1978 Felix took a year off to travel (and was refused entry into the US when he arrived with insufficient funds!). Back in the UK he obtained an inshore water captain’s licence while working on boats on the Scottish lakes before enrolling in geology at the University of Leeds in 1979. Apart from geology, his great passion was spelunking or caving (or potholing as it is sometimes known in the UK). He was active in the University of Leeds Speleological Association and participated in caving exploration in the Yorkshire Dales and elsewhere in the UK. After graduating from Leeds in 1982, Felix went on to obtain a M.Sc. in Geology at the Royal School of Mines at Camborne in Cornwall.
Following graduation he spent several years working as a geologist on the North Sea oil rigs. (He was a “mudlogger”) Searching for a new challenge* he applied for a job at Burns Fry in London, where he worked with the mining oriented salesmen on researching exploration companies. It was his interest in wine that took him, with his brother, on a wine buying trip to France, where he met wife-to-be, Paula. (Paula came to London to study the wine trade) In1989, Felix transferred to Burns Fry in Toronto to work with JC Potvin on the gold sector. Shortly thereafter began what would be a regular feature of his research "The Weekly Gold Mining Newsletter" a summary of exploration news, company developments, feature stories and the gold company valuation pages. These tables centered on NPV and where the shares were in relation to the valuation and became the core of this higher regarded valuation methodology. In 1994 JC Potvin left Burns Fry to run Tiomin and later Pangea Gold; Ted Reeve replaced JC and both Ted and Felix moved on to Scotia Capital when Burns Fry was sold to the Bank of Montreal and merged into the bank's brokerage business - Nesbitt Thompson.
At Scotia, Felix continued the weekly which had morphed into “Gold Views and Values”, traveled extensively visiting exploration and mine sites globally and maintained an increasingly complex valuation program. Felix was also focused on silver and as the CPM Group said in dedicating their 2000 Silver Survey to Felix; he was “a friend of silver” and assisted several silver companies find early equity to fund exploration. Gold prices declined in the late 1990's but Felix was well established. He survived calling a sell on the sector in the summer of 1997; neither the companies, the brokerage salespersons, the investment bankers nor, surprisingly, the portfolio managers liked a sell call on the sector. In the Toronto business world he was known for his clear intellect, for his understated British sense of humour, and sometimes eccentric personality.
To celebrate the new millennium, Felix, his new partner Xiaoli, and his spelunking mates from Leeds went to Majorca at year’s end 1999. While leading a hike on the north side of the island, Felix fell to his death on January 1, 2000. He was not yet 40 - an excellent career and a good life cut short. We still miss him.
Ted Reeve, JC Potvin, Bob Jackson, Susan Muir, Joanne van Ballegooie, Lori Bentley
* even at school Felix was obsessed with precious metals. He used to have a chart of the gold and silver prices on his study wall and would attempt to analyze the figures to see if there was a predictable cycle.
