EDITORIAL PAGE — The Great Canadian Area Play

It is happening all over again — the Great Canadian Area Play, that is.

Junior companies are swarming to Labrador to tie up any ground still available in the vicinity of the Voisey Bay nickel-copper-cobalt discovery.

No matter that Diamond Fields Resources, the company that lucked into the biggest base metal discovery of recent times, has tied up a sizable land package in the surrounding region. No matter that a handful of on-the-ball companies, including such majors as Noranda and Cominco, were busy staking or making property deals immediately after the discovery was announced some months ago. And no matter that the only ground still available today may be hundreds of miles from the deposit, and even in a different geological setting than the original discovery.

The staking rush taking place in Labrador and neighboring Quebec is no small measure of the significance of the Voisey Bay deposit. After all, almost every major Canadian discovery has been met with an equally enthusiastic rush whereby companies hope to acquire potential extensions of a mineral deposit or tie up extensions of favorable rocks which host such deposits.

The success of this type of effort is always difficult to measure. On principle, some companies have avoided participating in post-discovery staking rushes, preferring to be leaders in their own field rather than followers in someone else’s.

And there is merit to this view. Many of this country’s valuable deposits were found by individuals who developed their own exploration strategy and managed to stay the course even though this approach runs counter to the pack mentality that all too often prevails in the exploration sector.

Take the Lac de Gras diamond discoveries, for example. Chuck Fipke’s decade-long search for the diamondiferous kimberlites that are now being prepared for production by the Dia Met Minerals-BHP Minerals joint venture is a case study of success through perseverance. It is also a case study of how the single-minded pursuit of a mineral commodity can lead to success in exploration through the development and application of advanced exploration methodologies. The original Lac de Gras discovery may owe much to old-fashioned prospecting, but it also owes much to the use of sophisticated technology that enables explorationists to differentiate between barren and diamondiferous kimberlites.

The Louvicourt mine in Quebec, a copper-gold discovery made in 1989 by Aur Resources, was another anomaly for its time. Almost every junior in Canada was pursuing gold targets at that time, and Aur was no exception. But the company was also mindful of the potential for base metal deposits in the Val d’Or camp, and towards this end it applied an exploration methodology that allowed for the discovery of deeper deposits than those found in the past.

Murray Pezim showed that it is possible to make discoveries in areas that the experts overlooked, and that a shotgun approach to exploration can work, provided the gun is well aimed.

Voisey Bay also provides some interesting lessons. It was discovered at a time when almost every company — small and large — was under the assumption that foreign countries offered far more geological opportunity than Canada. And it also showed that it is possible to find nickel by looking for diamonds. Try explaining all that in the textbooks.