Firstly The Last Prospector contacted the editor to admit to an error that may have distorted his article on government geologists. He humbly apologises for stating that government geologists are expected to work for only 37 hours a week. The correct number is 36¼ hours per week according to the update that The Last Prospector received.

Secondly the editor was informed that the article on Mines Ontario had an error. In the article it was stated that Barry Simmons took over the Chair of a Mining Act Advisory Committee subcommittee part way through a session. It has been pointed out that there were two separate committees, - one the MMAAC chaired by Mike Leahy and the second the Mines Ontario Committee chaired by Barry Simmons. This error was missed by a member of the first committee who graciously proof read the article before publication.

Thirdly the Assistant Deputy Minister of Natural Resources Canada, Linda Keen, took exception to Bozo of the Month in the January issue. Given the space available the editor has not reprinted the letter. Aside from the guts of the cartoon / editorial where we disagree, Linda Keen goes on to mention the services that NRCan provides, states the expertise of her staff and mentions that she has mud on her boots. The editor does concede that NRCan is one of the few places to get hard numbers on the exploration industry. Furthermore, the editor has received data by special request from NRCan that is not on their web site and these statistics have been used in various articles published in The Explorationist. However, with only a few exceptions most of the statistics are at least three years old. Therefore, in summary Ms Keen, I do thank you for the help I have received from NRCan, but I also do urge your department to address the three year lag in most statistics.

Fourthly, going even further back to the November issue the editor was informed that the facts in the article on Operation Treasure Hunt were correct “but.” When asked on what the “but” meant the editor was told by the MNDM staff that they were not at liberty to explain the “but.” Well this was a hard one to deal with so the editor decided to accept that part of the statement “the facts were correct”.

Then we come to Joe and computer standards within the OGS discussed in the November issue. A number of canaries within the MNDM staff thought they had identified who Joe was which was interesting since none was correct. Be careful Joe you have competition! Anyway on a more serious note, Franco Merlino contacted me after that article. Initially I thought that it was a “quick” response and so a request was made for a formal response to be printed which was declined. It was not realised that what I thought was the “quick” response was indeed the formal response. Therefore, this formal response about the OGS only distributing spacial digital data in the ArcView format is given below.

Your article “It Ain’t so Joe” in the November issue of the Explorationist captured my attention and I wish to provide the following for your consideration.

First we are gratified at the Mines and Minerals Division that your survey and personal position support the data formats that we have been including in our digital data releases. For example, the dataset you mention MRD46 contains data in dbf for tabular, DXF and ArcView Shape for vector and TIF for raster data.

In your discussion with “Joe” you were left with the impression that ArcView is the standard for mapping/GIS work in the exploration industry in Canada. While I cannot comment on how strongly Joe holds that view, I can say that ArcView is certainly a very popular and most useful product. Yes, most of the geological surveys in Canada + 9 of 12 including B.C., Yukon and NWT according to the latest poll by the Canadian Geoscience Knowledge Network - and some firms in the industry use this product for desktop analysis. In addition to its ease of use, part of this choice may be due to the fact that when extensive data management activities are required, the powerful resources of ArcInfo, the fully functional GIS product, can easily back ArcView.

While Joe has a right to his views, he is not empowered to make them OGS policy. In fact we employ the tools that best suit the situation and attempt to provide data in many formats so to afford ease of use with the many software products in the industry.

Lastly, your article was most informative and provided a useful perspective of what software is in use, and the data formats required, in the exploration industry in Canada. We commend you for your initiative. Yours truly,