The Bjorkman family of Whiskey Jack Lake, 40 kilometres outside the northwestern Ontario community of Atikokan, will receive a Special Achievement Award at this year’s Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada convention and trade show, March 6 to 9.
Karl and Nikki Bjorkman, their five daughters – Jessica, Katrina, Ruth, Veronique and Karla – and son Bjorn are a prospecting family that has radically transformed the time-worn image of an occupation dominated by a dying breed of aging men with unkempt beards.
Karl Bjorkman was born and raised in a small farming community near Windsor, Ontario, worked as a stationary engineer at an Ontario Hydro power plant and transferred to Atikokan in his mid-20s. He spent several years as a small-time construction contractor and little by little, got introduced to the mining exploration industry.
“I did some stripping work for a local Aboriginal prospector and he said ‘You should come out staking with me,’ so I did. Then, one day, our own family property was staked,” recalled Bjorkman. “All of a sudden there were these people in my yard with axes. I never put two and two together that I could have done that.”
Bjorkman got a prospector’s licence, took some courses, and did some hobby prospecting with the kids.
In 1992, at a symposium in Thunder Bay, Garry Clark offered him a job.
“He came over and said, ‘I hear you’re interested in prospecting.’ It never dawned on me that you could actually make money doing that. I took the job and it was like a vacation to me.”
The business grew from there and became a family enterprise.
Bjorkman Prospecting offers a wide range of services, including claim staking, geological mapping, soil sampling and the preparation of assessment reports for mining companies.
In their time, they figure they have staked approximately 700,000 hectares, or 1.8 million acres of land, which translates into 16,000 to 19,000 kilometres of trekking through often rugged terrain and pounding 40,000 to 50,000 claim posts into the ground.
The Bjorkman girls, winners of Influential Women of Northern Ontario’s Tradeswoman of the Year Award for 2015, are literally changing the face of the prospecting profession and demonstrating that women with a love of the outdoors and an interest in rocks can make a go of it in the exploration industry.
Jessica and Veronique have stuck with prospecting, but both Katrina and Ruth have degrees in Geology (Katrina is finishing her PhD in Australia), Karla, the youngest, pitches in as a helper, and after many years in the family business, Bjorn is out west working for CN.
Claim-staking has traditionally accounted for half of their income, but with electronic staking on the horizon, the Bjorkmans are going to be forced to rely more on geological services, including report writing.
“We have also done trenching, channel sampling and core splitting, but I discourage the girls from doing line cutting,” said Bjorkman. “They have done it, but they have enough dings in their legs from axes. I don’t want them getting dings from chainsaws.”
The family has worked in most provinces across Canada and has done some work in Norway and Sweden.
“We don’t really do anything to promote ourselves,” said Bjorkman. “We try to keep a good reputation and work hard. Our specialty is smaller projects where they need somebody they can trust to do a good job.
“We’re a very faith based family, and through good times and bad, we really believe that God has carried us through. It’s not necessarily about making tons of money. It’s about having enough to get by. That’s what we believe.”
The special achievement award will be presented to the Bjorkman family at the PDAC Awards Dinner, Monday, March 7th at the Fairmount Royal York Hotel.
The 2015 winners of the Bill Dennis Prospector of the Year Award – Robert Cudney, Stephen Roman, and John Whitton – will also be honoured that evening for their discovery of the Bruce Channel gold deposit in the Red Lake gold camp.
