Patrick Cruickshank

Patrick Cruickshank is chief executive officer and a director of Nine Mile Metals Ltd. (CSE: NINE), a junior exploration company with four projects in New Brunswick's Bathurst Mining Camp (BMC), one of the world's classic volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS — seafloor-formed deposits rich in copper, lead, zinc, silver and gold) districts. The company drew attention when certified assays from its Nine Mile Brook project returned 10.12% copper, 1.00% zinc, 1.41% lead, 91.47 g/t silver and 0.84 g/t gold over 15.10 metres from its 2022 Phase 1 drill program — results the company describes as the highest-grade in the camp's recorded history. In 2026, Nine Mile is running a 10,000-metre drill program at its Wedge deposit.

Cruickshank's route into mining ran through capital markets. He earned an MBA from York University's Schulich School of Business in 1989 and spent more than 20 years in wealth management with Merrill Lynch, Legg Mason and Citigroup Capital Markets, focused on funding growth companies. He advised the National Football League Players Association from 2000 to 2012, then moved into private equity, and since 2012 has acquired, funded and grown energy and resource companies. He has also served as CEO of Fiddlehead Mining Corp. since 2019. At Nine Mile, the 2026 Wedge program has reported intercepts such as 5.09% copper-equivalent (Cu-Eq — one grade expressing the combined value of all metals in an interval) over 14.15 metres.

His contribution is strategy and funding rather than geology. Nine Mile uses time-domain electromagnetic (TDEM) surveys — geophysics that maps conductive sulphide bodies at depth — plus borehole electromagnetic surveys to target VMS lenses in a district that also hosted the former Brunswick No. 12 mine, one of the largest zinc orebodies ever mined. Cruickshank has stressed drilling perpendicular to the steeply dipping lenses so reported widths reflect true thickness, and letting down-hole geophysics guide each follow-up round. The technical work is led by VP of Exploration Gary Lohman, P.Geo., while Cruickshank concentrates on financing the program and widening investor access, including new US quote venues in 2026.

For investors, Cruickshank is worth following as a working example of how a finance-trained CEO builds a junior explorer in a historic mining district: sequencing drill programs, adding a second rig as targets are prioritized, and opening new channels to US investors. The current focus is the two-rig 2026 program at the Wedge Mine and the Tribag–West Wedge targets along the Wedge VMS Trend.