November Speaker: Into the Andes -- Quiruvilca, Peru with Ray McDougall

by Cindy Schmidtlein, MSDC Vice President

**Orpiment specimen, 5.5 cm, from Quirvilca, Peru. Photo from Ray McDougall.**

Our speaker for November, Raymond McDougall, will provide an overview of the fine minerals of Quiruvilca, inspired by an adventure into the Andes and into this world-famous mine. High in the Andes Mountains in northern Peru, Quiruvilca has produced excellent mineral specimens for many decades. Discovered in the late 18th century and mined on a large commercial scale since 1907, Quiruvilca is one of Peru’s oldest and best-known polymetallic mines.

**On the road to Quiruvilca, Peru. Photo from Ray McDougall.**

Among mineralogists and mineral collectors, Quiruvilca is most renowned for world-class specimens of enargite, arsenic, and orpiment, as well as the world’s finest hutchinsonite crystals and exceptional pyrite and bournonite crystals. Quiruvilca has also produced very fine specimens of realgar, chalcopyrite, scheelite, barite, and many other minerals, including rarities such as seligmannite and baumhaurite–2a.

**Enargite specimen, 8 cm, from Quiruvilca, Peru. Photo from Ray McDougall.**

Although the heyday of mineral specimen production at Quiruvilca is often considered to be long past, the mine has continued to produce small numbers of beautiful, excellent specimens, with sporadic larger finds.

Ray was born in Montreal, grew up in Toronto, and studied mineralogy and geology while completing a B.A. at McGill University in 1992. He worked as a corporate securities lawyer in Toronto for 18 years where he was an internationally known partner of the firm Stikeman, Elliott LLP, working with clients in the Canadian mining industry. He retired from law in 2013 to become a mineral dealer (McDougall Minerals) and is a past Chair of the Rochester Mineralogical Symposium.

Ray has been an avid mineral collector since childhood and has been a member of the Walker Mineralogical Club in Toronto since the early 90s. He enjoys field collecting across Canada and around the world. As he lives in the woods near Bancroft Ontario, he regularly burrows in holes in the woods. Ray travels internationally in pursuit of fine mineral specimens and spends a lot of time in a dark room taking mineral photographs. Ray spoke previously to MSDC in November 2023 when he discussed minerals of the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia, Canada.