Bre-X

Once the darling of the mining sector, Bre-X Minerals of Calgary was later the subject of one of the largest stock swindles in Canadian history. Born of obscurity, the company quickly rose to great heights before crashing back down – spectacularly. Millions, no billions of dollars were lost on one of the most brazen frauds ever perpetrated on the general public. The deception from the start was nothing short of obvious, except to those caught up in the excitement, investors, many of which were blinded by greed, who never saw it coming.

We won’t go into great details on how it all came down. Just know that in the 1990s the company blatantly falsified reports and sloppily tampered with drill samples, turning what was actually (mostly) barren ground, in Indonesia, into the greatest gold find of the century. And we fell for it.

The building seen here was the company’s headquarters. Big gold coloured Bre-X signs once adorned every visible wall on the top floor. This author was driving truck back then and by coincidence was stuck in traffic, in front of this very building, the day it all unraveled. The area was a sea of reporters, angry shareholders who just lost it all, looking for answers, and police trying to keep order. It was absolute mayhem and for a minute or two, I had a front row seat.

This post should be of interest…
Alberta 2005 Centennial Railway Museum – what’s going on?

Short Subjects: reports that for any number of reasons are brief in nature. They might be updates to older articles, previews of posts planned or not yet published, brief snippets of things that don’t fit in anywhere else or subjects that are so obscure that information on them can’t be found.

If you need any more information on what we talked about here, by all means contact us!

Date of adventure: April, 2015.
Location: Calgary, AB.
The location seen in this report is publicly accessible.

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Bre-X Minerals

Bre-X Minerals once operated out of this building.

4 responses

  1. Billy Dunsmore says:

    Coworkers I knew got caught up in the excitement. Not sure if they lost or won though. Suspect the former.

  2. Dave Burke says:

    I think I heard something on the radio recently that they’re going to make a movie about Bre-x?

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