Cogitore searches for VMS deposits in Chibougamau

Gerald Riverin can hardly contain himself as he stands next to the marker for drill hole no. 34 at Cogitore Resources‘ (WOO-V) Scott Lake project 20 km west of Chibougamau, Que., one warm and sunny July afternoon.

Riverin, who is president and CEO for Cogitore, is quick to rhyme off the impressive grades and widths of the drill samples we saw back at the core shack just a few hours earlier, including: 25 metres grading 2.04% copper, 0.99% zinc, 0.17 gram gold and 52.5 grams silver per tonne, and so on.

Thinking back to when the hole was drilled last year, Riverin admits he didn’t even want to drill in that location because the focus was to test for volcanogenic massive sulphides along the north horizon. But fortunately, “a stupid little lake” was in the way, forcing them to drill a longer hole than planned. Riverin was expecting to drill through a lot of granite before reaching the volcanics so he when a driller called him to say they had hit some ore, he didn’t believe him.

“I thought, we’ve got some hematite, it couldn’t have been massive sphalerite,” Riverin recalls.

But a geologist confirmed it, telling Riverin that there was about 20 metres of massive sulphide, followed up by copper stringers.

“I thought he was joking,” Riverin says.

But no, the assays proved it, and at the end of August, Cogitore began a follow-up 3,500-metre program to test the extension of this new massive sulphide pod, known as the West lens. With three lenses found since 2006 (800 lens and 1750 lens), bringing the total to five, the company is now working on a resource estimate to be used in a National Instrument 43-101 technical report by the end of this year.

VMS mineralization was first discovered at Scott Lake in 1975 by a company called Selco, but up until 2006, it was thought to host distal zinc-rich mineralization occurring in small, widely scattered massive sulphide lenses over narrow widths. All this began to change when Cogitore began to find more and more massive and stringer sulphides, rich with zinc and copper mineralization.

Riverin has known about Scott Lake for a long time. He found himself in almost in this exact spot in 1977, days after he defended is PhD thesis on VMS alterations. It was his first job and he was eager to put his years of studying into practise. He sent some of the students working for him to do some regional work around Scott Lake and surrounding properties to see if there was any evidence of a big hydrothermal system that could be related to a VMS deposit.

“And sure enough this particular property stood out as a big alteration system,” Riverin says, noting there was no guarantee of an actual deposit. But the key ingredients were there and it’s been in the back of Riverin’s mind ever since. “All these years I’ve been dreaming to get this project but for all kinds of legal reasons or ownership things, this couldn’t happen until I joined a junior company called Cogitore,” he says.

He kept his dream alive until 2004. Riverin had been working for Inmet Mining (IMN-T, IEMMF-O) (and their predecessors) in the Chibougamau area for decades when he learned that his job was in jeopardy. Inmet was going to drop their North American exploration projects. Then one day, Riverin’s Inmet colleague, Frank Balint, ended up on a Toronto golf course with Jonathan Goodman, who is the CEO of Dundee Precious Metals and son to Ned Goodman, the founder of Dundee Corp., a holding company that includes DundeeWealth, Dundee Realty and Dundee Resources.

The Goodman’s had noticed that Inmet wasn’t doing much with its North American projects, and, heavy resource investors that they are, they were interested.

“Quickly the Goodmans came here when I was with Inmet, reviewed some of the projects, talked to me, and asked, ‘If we were to get all of Inmet’s properties would you be interested in joining us to run the company?’ and that’s what happened in 2004,” Riverin explains. The Goodmans are still involved, Jonathan is a director and Mark Goodman is the executive chairman.

In May 2004, Woodruff Capital Management, which later became Cogitore, signed an option agreement for nine Inmet properties scattered across Ontario, Quebec and Newfoundland. The projects included the past-producing Lemoine property 25 km south of Chibougamau and the Estrades-Caribou property 95 km northeast of La Sarre near the Casa Berardi mine, both of which Cogitore is still focusing on today . “I knew these projects very well because I was involved in acquiring them. I picked the ones that should go into the new company – they were my babies,” Riverin says.

The Lemoine project, being one of the richest massive sulphide deposits in the world, isn’t something a VMS man like Riverin can give up easily. The mine produced 758,000 tonnes grading 4.2% copper, 9.6% zinc, 4.2 grams gold and 83.4 grams silver per tonne between 1975 and 1983. “Even thought it was small, the fact that it was such a high quality massive sulphide, to me it is saying something about the quality of the mineralizing fluids there,” Riverin says.

On top of that, the geology at Lemoine is very analogous to the Matagami camp north of Rouyn-Noranda where a cluster of major VMS deposits have been mined over the years.

Even with his hand-picked project roster, Riverin still had Scott Lake on the brain, the property where he had surreptitiously collected rock samples decades earlier. He says he even tried to get Inmet to buy it in 2002, but, already planning to drop their North American projects, they shot him down.

“As soon as I became president of Cogitore, I re-contacted the owners at the time, Thundermin Resources, and made the deal immediately,” he says. “I still had the boxes of data that we had borrowed … so it was just a matter of signing the deal and starting working.”

Riverin’s passion goes beyond Scott Lake. He has big dreams for reviving the Chibougamau camp entirely. “There is no reason that we would not find another Matagami camp except that you have to look for it specifically. I’ve always dreamed that somewhere ether would be a whole series of massive sulphides and maybe we will find them.”

Chibougamau, a traditional Cree area, first attracted prospectors and miners in the early 1900s but there were no lasting developments until copper was found in the late 1940s. By the mid 1950s, Chibougamau became an official town and many mines popped up in the years to follow. But all the big miners have long since left. Just in 2008, a bankrupt Campbell Resources shut down the Copper Rand copper-gold mine and mill, where production started in late 1950s.

Despite its age, Riverin says the Copper Rand mill could be an asset to Cogitore because it’s within trucking distance of Scott Lake. With no other companies very close to production, all Cogitore has to worry about is that the property is maintained.

But for now, Cogitore needs to spend its money on developing resources at Scott Lake and its other projects. The company has about $2 million in the bank, having recently received a tax credit from the Quebec government for $1.2 million and raised another $600,000 through a private placement in August. The financing was largely supported by management and directors. Mark Goodman now holds about 7.2% and Jonathan Goodman holds 3.7% of issued and outstanding shares. Riverin holds 2.1% of Cogitore.

Riverin says Chibougamau deserves a second chance and turns a deaf ear on anyone who criticizes him for searching around in an abandoned camp.

“All the first discoveries were vein types and that meant that everybody focused on this kind of deposits,” Riverin says. “Now if we start discovering good quality massive sulphides people might come back but in the meantime we will have taken the best ground available.”

Riverin says describes what he’s exploring as a ‘new frontier’ but without the added headache of having to build new infrastructure. He can reach all of Cogitore’s projects by road.

“The new frontier doesn’t have to be north, it’s just going a bit deeper … we are looking at the vertical frontier,” he says. “Not many companies are prepared to take the risk that we are in doing deep drill holes.”

Even drilling below 200 metres is new frontier in Chibougamau. Point in case is Scott Lake where the west lens starts at 400 metres depth. Riverin says all he knew was that he had the right ingredients for deposit.

“In this case we had success, in all our other projects, all the ingredients are there and we still have not made any discovery,” he says. “Sometimes you need the circumstances to work out for you and you need a bit of luck too. Science will take you so far, but at one stage, it is the famous truth machine, that is the drill, that is going to make the discovery.”