BREAKING NEW GROUND

But the 18 new mines on our list of those which plan to start generating revenues this year is only a conservative count. The number of new mines actually built this year will probably increase as more projects (in the feasibility stage now) announce production decisions in the weeks and months ahead.

In British Columbia’s Toodoggone area, for example, the Lawyers mine is only the advance scout for at least two other mines, including Energex’s A1 deposit.

And in northwestern British Columbia, the Silbak Premier/Big Missouri operation, near Stewart, will likely be followed in short order by mines at Newhawk’s Brucejack Lake property, Cominco’s Snip property, and Catear Resources’ Goldwedge property (see Ore Horizons story, p. .).

Not all of the new mines are huge, but a fair number of them (one-third) are base metals mines. From the relatively tiny (the 610,000-ton Samatosum deposit at Barriere, B.C., the 1.5-million-ton Tache lead/zinc/ gold/silver deposit in the Chibougamau area of northern Quebec and the 1.5-million-ton Ansil copper deposit in Rouyn-Noranda) to the much bigger (the 4.2-million-ton Caribou lead/zinc/ gold/silver deposit in the Bathurst camp of New Brunswick), base metals mines are making a comeback. Of the 32 new mines we covered in the January, 1988 issue, only five were base metals mines.

Open-pit mining is a growing trend as well. Again, about one-third of the 18 new mines this year will use this low-cost method of extracting ore from the ground. The Silbak Premier mine and the nearby Big Missouri mine in British Columbia’s Golden Horseshoe, for example, are open pit operations. They will have an annual output of 77,000 oz of gold and 890,000 oz of silver. The biggest new gold mine in the country, the Colomac mine in the Northwest Territories, will be an open pit operation too. Annual output there is scheduled to be 200,000 oz. In terms of technical challenge, this is one of the mines the industry is watching.

The big $36-million Golden Bear project, at Dease Lake, B.C., will be a combined operation, using both open- pit and underground mining methods.

There will be many “firsts” in Canadian mining this year as well. Aur Resources has poured its first gold bar, consisting of gold from the First Canadian mine in Quebec; the town of Snow Lake, Man., will have its first open-pit mine at the Chisel Lake project; and Tache Lake in Chibougamou, Que., will be the first base metals mine in the country to use an ore-sorting machine to improve millhead grades. One is already operating at a gold mine in Beardmore, Ont.

Contrary to what you might expect, not all the new mines are being built on new discoveries. Gold has been known to exist on the Beauchastel property for half a century and gold is nothing new at Tangier, in Nova Scotia’s Halifax Cty. either. The first recorded gold discovery there was made in 1860. Despite the poor climate for exploration financing, the search for even more mines continues at a brisk pace.

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