The Keevil Dynasty

The Keevil family turned Teck from a single high-grade copper find into Canada’s top diversified mining company. In doing so, they combined scientific know-how, a willingness to take risks, and a strong commitment to keeping the company Canadian.

Dr. Norman Keevil Sr. was born on a Saskatchewan farm in 1910. He studied at the University of Saskatchewan during the Great Depression, then joined the Geological Survey of Canada, where he mapped remote areas of the Prairies and Northwest Territories in tough conditions. After earning a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1937 and doing postdoctoral work in geophysics at MIT, he became an expert in radioactive minerals. He was offered a position working on the Manhattan Project, but the path to security clearance for the Canadian made it unworkable. Instead, he returned to Canada and began teaching geophysics at the University of Toronto in 1943, helping to build the field across the country.

In the late 1940s, Keevil Sr. left academia and started the Mining Geophysics Corporation. He adapted airborne magnetic technology, which was first used for wartime submarine detection, to mineral exploration after getting the Canadian rights to the equipment. He flew thousands of miles using this tool and found a rich copper deposit near Lake Temagami, in Ontario’s Near North. The ore, with about 28% copper, became the Temagami Mine, which was the foundation of Teck and one of the richest finds in Canadian mining history.

Keevil Sr. was a skilled promoter. He once had a 150-foot copper vein at Temagami polished so that, when he flew investors overhead, the sun would reflect off the ore and show the mine’s potential. Using profits from the Temagami mine, he took control of Teck-Hughes Gold Mines in 1959. During the 1960s and 1970s, he led Teck in quickly acquiring and developing mines across Canada, moved the head office to Vancouver, and started several new operations. This growth made Teck a major force in Canadian mining. By the time he died in 1989, he had published many papers and made airborne magnetic surveying a standard method in industry, laying the foundation for what would become Teck Resources, Canada’s largest diversified mining company.

His eldest son, Dr. Norman B. Keevil Jr., was born in 1938 while his father was studying in the United States. He inherited both his father’s aptitude for scientific study and a drive for business. After earning an engineering degree from the University of Toronto and a Ph.D. in geophysics from UC Berkeley, he was set to take an academic position in Utah. But after repeatedly turning down his father’s entreaties to join the family business, Keevil Jr. joined Teck in 1962 as Vice-President of Exploration, at age 24. He balanced fieldwork with boardroom duties and gradually took on more leadership alongside his father. In 1981, he became CEO, and expanded Teck beyond copper and gold into coal, zinc, and other base metals. He later led the major 2001 merger with Cominco, which combined two of Canada's oldest mining companies and made Teck a global leader in zinc and one of the world’s most diversified mining companies. 

The company championed long‑term investment, early sustainability reporting, and stronger Indigenous and environmental practices, positioning Teck at the forefront of responsible resource development. In 2023, when Glencore launched a high‑profile takeover bid, he used the family’s voting control to reject the offer as “the wrong one, at the wrong time,” reinforcing that Teck was not for sale and stressing his commitment to Canadian ownership and economic sovereignty.  In 2025, Tech entered into a “partnership of equals” with the London-based Anglo American to form Anglo Teck group, a global critical minerals champion that would be headquartered in Canada. 

Keevil, Jr. He later reflected on this multigenerational journey in his memoir, Never Rest on Your Ores: Building a Mining Company, One Stone at a Time, framing Teck as the house that the Keevils built and as a lasting symbol of Canadian ambition, resilience and ingenuity.

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