Stewart, Hughes/Lang win major PDA awards (March 09, 1987)

The Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) has named Merton Stewart as Prospector of the Year. Richard Hughes and Frank Lang have been named Developers of the Year.

When Prasanta Sarkar of Krigold Resources nominated Merton Stewart as the PDAC’s 1986 prospector of the year, he compared him to mining legend Ed Horne.

“Here’s a cool-headed, bushwise, swift-footed, hawk-eyed, highly skilled, self-taught prospector who has a dedicated love of rocks and nature with a zeal to discover and share the fruits with equal minded people,” Sarkar said.

Well, how could the selection committee refuse?

The flood of letters from people who have worked with Mert that followed the nomination equally heaped praise on this 59-year-young herring choker who likes to fish for Atlantic salmon and collect old bottles and artifacts from the old mining districts which he regularly visits in the Maritimes. Known for his skills as a patient, superb teacher, Mert has taught his prospecting and exploration techniques to younger geologists who have had the pleasure of working with him.

During the early part of his career he was responsible for virtually every important economic mineral deposit discovered in New Brunswick and its Maritime cousin Nova Scotia since the 1970s.

“Over the past 15 years Mert Stewart has done more single- handedly for the exploration-mining sector here in the east than any other person or company,” Mert’s academically trained sidekick, Avard Hudgins, chief geologist for Acadia Mineral Ventures, says.

Together they have done a lot of “boot and hammer” prospecting in this very diverse geological terrain known to geologists as the Appalachian gold belt. Most of the area consists of a number of relatively “young” sedimentary rock units that were laid down in the Iapetus Ocean — the predecessor of the Atlantic Ocean — and have, over geological time, been folded into synclinoriums, faulted on a regional scale, thrust into ophiolites and intruded by molten magma. The only Precambrian rock units are those elements left behind from the Afro-European continent when the tectonic forces that opened and closed them opened what we now call the Atlantic Ocean again. This part of the country would be a challenge to any prospector.

But to Mert it’s just home. Born in Chatham, N.B., he started his career in the bush doing line cutting, claim staking and prospecting during the Bathurst base metal rush in the 1950s. During this time Mert worked with numerous mining companies: Anglo Barrington, Dominion Gulf, American Metals, Rio Algom, and McIntyre Porcupine Mines in Labrador, northwestern Ontario, Chibougamau and Nova Scotia.

In 1964, Mr Stewart became associated with the R.P. group of companies and commenced prospecting and exploring in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick for Cuvier Mines Inc., Quebec Uranium, Chib-Kayrand and Merrill Island. Later, he became the chief prospector for several private concerns and syndicates controlled by Dr J. H. Morgan, Avard Hudgins and the late Randy Mills.

One old adage which has developed over the many years Mert has broken rock samples open on his prospecting treks in the Maritimes claims he is one of the main agents of erosion in the region, after water, wind frost and ice. From early ’70s until the early part of the 1980s Stewart was associate d with the discovery of the Gays River lead-zinc deposit (currently held by Seabright Resources) and the East Kemptville tin mine (operated by Rio Algom) as well as a number of celestite deposits in Cape Breton and a number of small uranium showings on the South Mountain of the Annapolis Valley. The April, 1976, while prospecting in Yarmouth Cty., N.S., Mert found massive sulphide boulders in the rock fill of a new road. Recognizing their potential, he traced them back to a gravel quarry 15 miles away and had samples assayed for tin. The only operating tin mine in North America was the result.

Since 1981, Mr Stewart has been prospecting mainly for M.E.X. Explorations and Acadia Mineral Ventures. In 1984, he was the motivating force in a prospecting program that led to the discovery of gold at Elm Tree, N.B., and silver at California Lake, N.B. These properties are now the subject of major exploration programs by Lacana Mining Corp. and Acadia Mineral Ventures and could very well turn into mines.

Mert is honored to be named the PDAC’s prospector of the year and the pdac is equally honored. Merton Stewart, PDAC prospector of the year.

Three years ago in Toronto, Richard Hughes put the Hughes-Lang group into perspective at the pda convention. “For Frank Lang and myself, Belmoral was like the old Hollywood joke: after years and years in the business, we were suddenly an overnight success.”

In recognition of their contribution to mineral exploration and mine development over the years, the pda has awarded them its “Developers Award” which last year went to Paul Penna of Agnico- Eagle.

While Belmoral was certainly their first real success, Dick Hughes and Frank Lang went on to even bigger things: the discovery of the rich Golden Giant orebody at Hemlo which was later developed by Noranda.

Since starting in the business 23 years ago with Cream Silver Mines, the pair has operated under two general principles: look for gold where the action is and be prepared to listen to unconventional ideas.

Prospector Peter Ferderber had some theories about the Bourlamaque batholith in northwestern Quebec which fitted into the latter category. But he didn’t have any money to follow them through. The periphery of the batholith had been mined for years but, he reasoned, why not the core of the large intrusive?

Hughes-Lang backed its then unconventional hypothesis through a subsidiary of Cream Silver which, incidentally, later became Belmoral Mines. In 1974, they raised $150,000 for geophysical exploration and diamond drilling. And a year later Mr Ferderber rewrote the book on the ore genesis in the batholith with the discovery of the Belmoral- Ferderber mine. At least eight companies in the Hughes-Lang group have since explored in and around the structure with varying degrees of success.

Finding gold where it wasn’t supposed to be was also the key to the Hemlo discovery. Don McKinnon and his partner, John Larche, optioned claims in the area to Goliath Gold and Golden Sceptre, two companies in the Hughes-Lang group. Shares were sold at 75 cents each on a private placement basis for seed money and they started to put together a public offering.

They almost lost the property because of inadequate financing but opted for a private placement at $4.75 for Golden Sceptre and $5 for Goliath which put them over the top; In truly Canadian fashion, they had to go overseas for the funds and one of the investors was the Rothschilds.

Grasping a new concept and putting it to work has long been a strength of the Hughes-Lang group. For, as Mr Hughes says, “by making that effort, you may be actually cutting your risk. And you may be increasing the size of your ultimate reward — to a point where you end up with a piece of the Golden Giant.