For some it's a challenging business enterprise, for others a complex scientific exercise, for many the call of the wilderness. But for all of them it's a search for riches that make those in Aladdin's cave seem but paltry baubles by comparison. For hidden below the surface across the broad face of Canada, as any prospector will recount, is a nation's varied, fabulous ransom, just waiting for the right combination of geophysical knowledge, economic climate, unerring instinct and favor from lady luck to reveal itself to the most worthy seekers._x000B__x000B_This is the fact behind the $50,000,000 program of mineral exploration that is off and away this year from sea to sea and up to the high arctic. With a mineral industry now worth $4,400,000,000 (60 per cent goes in exports) and a future market potential much greater than that figure in the modern mineral-hungry world, new fields of exploration resulting in discoveries are vital to this booming continuing business._x000B__x000B_Though the day has come when the bulk of the prospecting is done by teams of experts on behalf of big corporations and task forces of airborne geophysicists and technicians methodically track down the cause of invisible phenomena, there is still an important place for the lone prospector and his buddy._x000B__x000B_Part-time courses on modern prospecting are commonplace today and even amateurs can equip themselves with camp gear, instruments, maps, government advice (and at times assistance) and head for the wide blue yonder. And it still happens that every once in a while a man alone in the bush or mountains finds a rich yield, stakes his claims, heads for the recording office and sells his discovery._x000B__x000B_And every year, at the Prospectors and Developers Association convention in Toronto, the whole stratum of the mining exploration fraternity meet to hear lectures, dine, dance and make merry, watch the door-prize gold-brick giveaways, tell tall but believable yarns of the riches waiting to be found up north and raise their glasses to the big exciting wonderful world that is the booming Canadian mineral industry.