Canada Nickel Co. Inc. chief executive Mark Selby on Thursday afternoon was supposed to be in South Korea or Japan to meet executives. Instead, he was about an eight-hour drive north of his home in Toronto’s West End, getting ready to board a helicopter near Timmins, Ont., with Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson so they could tour the site of his proposed nickel mine. The visit marked the culmination of nearly 20 years of Selby’s efforts to build a new nickel mine in Canada, a goal he still hasn’t achieved, but is growing ever closer to now that the federal government’s new Major Projects Office added his company’s proposed Crawford Nickel mine to its list of fast-tracked projects. Despite the gravity of the moment, Selby remained as affable and open as ever. “I usually have about two bars of service while I’m up there,” he said just before boarding the helicopter. “Text me if you need anything.” The former management consultant and former executive at Purolator Inc. has been focused on nickel — which he has described as the highest-value base metal — since 2001, when he joined the former Canadian mining giant Inco Ltd. “I had a subscription to the Northern Miner when I was nine years old,” he said about why he turned his career to the resources sector. As a kid, he said he dreamed about leading a mining company and making a giant discovery. By the time he was an adult and had surveyed the economy, he realized there weren’t too many new nickel projects even being proposed outside of Indonesia. “I thought that was the biggest opportunity rather than doing the 95th copper project or the 180th gold project,” he said. Inco in 2001 had nickel mines in the Sudbury, Ont., basin that were purchased by Brazilian mining giant Vale Canadian Ltd. in 2006. Afterwards, Selby hopped around to different nickel exploration companies. In 2018, while chief executive of what was then called Royal Nickel Corp., his dream of striking the motherlode came true, but not like what he expected. The company was in the middle of selling a nickel mine in Australia when workers there hit a motherlode of gold , uncovering some of the largest gold boulders ever found. “I must have done some good things in a past life to have this much good luck in this life,” he said at the time. But within a year, as that company shifted its focus to gold, Selby was gone and was helping put Canada Nickel on the map by proving out its deposit near Timmins as one of the world’s largest nickel projects. The nickel demand picture has totally changed since his career began. Today, it’s a primary metal needed for batteries and the electric vehicle transition rather than just a base metal used to enhance stainless steel. Selby estimated he’s made more than 50 trips to Asia in the past 15 years to help line up investors for his company or simply working on the metallurgy of turning nickel ore into the metal needed by end-users. Oil pipeline not on Ottawa's nation-building project listWhat to know about the nation-building projects Carney is fast-tracking Now, the Crawford mine is getting attention from the Canadian government and he is hopeful he can create the world’s next big nickel district. “There’s only a handful of projects on that list,” he said. “This is big.” Prime Minister Mark Carney, at a press conference in Terrace, B.C., said the Crawford mine would “anchor Canada’s leadership in clean industrial materials” by producing nickel for batteries and green steel. He said the mine is projected to release carbon emissions that are 90 per cent below the global average compared to other nickel mines. “Crawford will set the global standard for the future of responsible mining,” he said. • Email: gfriedman@postmedia.com