Vancouver-headquartered exploration company Candente Copper has reported the passing of its VP for exploration and director, Michael Thicke.
“We were so blessed to have such a great friend and experienced and successful porphyry copper expert join us to lead our exploration team,” comments past-president Sean Waller in a media statement.
“Mike, Sean and I got to know each other managing the Dawson (Geology) Club together at UBC (University of British Columbia) so many years ago, so it was a great pleasure to later work as a team, sharing our various talents and experiences exploring and developing both copper and gold projects in Peru and Mexico. Mike, so intelligent, genuine and humorous, loved his career, but his family more, and was an extremely proud and dedicated husband and father,” adds CEO Joanne Freeze.
Since joining Candente in 2010, Thicke performed the various roles of technical adviser, VP of exploration and director for Candente Copper, as well as president of Cobriza Metals.
Thicke, an international porphyry expert, brought to Candente 30 years of global exploration experience with Rio Algom and BHP Billiton. He had led teams exploring and evaluating porphyry copper deposits in North America, Chile, Peru, Argentina and Kazakhstan. He also spent two years managing exploration for Sedex Zinc deposits in Namibia, and for sediment-hosted copper deposits in Zambia.
As district geologist for Rio Algom (now BHP Billiton) in Chile, Thicke was a key member of the team that discovered the large-scale Spence porphyry copper deposit in 1996.
Since leaving BHP Billiton,Thicke had shared his talents with Serengeti Resources, Cupric Canyon, Puddle Pond Resources and Library Gold.