RIGHT PLAY, RIGHT TIME.

When Robert McEwen got up to speak at his company's annual meeting earlier this month, his first words were: "Gold is money." It's become a mantra for the soft-spoken chairman and chief executive of Goldcorp Inc. In a market that's lost 50 per cent in value since its September 2000, peak McEwen's company's stock price has doubled, twice, in the past two years. McEwen's firm is a mid-size Canadian mining company with operations in North Dakota and Saskatchewan. It has stakes in a handful of junior exploration companies. But its crown jewel is in northwestern Ontario: the Red Lake mine, first developed in the 1940s. Today, Red Lake is the world's richest gold mine. But before riches and royalty entered his life, McEwen had to overcome major hurdles. In his bid to extract the gold he believed all along was at the Red Lake site, he faced lawsuits, a family feud, a debilitating strike and a death threat, not to mention an investment community that didn't believe in him.