Special to The Northern Miner
Years of mapping, sampling and drilling may finally be paying off for juniors determined to make an economic discovery in the underexplored frontier of northern Quebec.
Two gold projects and an impressive diamond discovery have attracted industry attention to the multi-mineral potential of the region, though the market remains unresponsive to companies holding ground there.
The gold plays, including
Even more intriguing is
These types of projects are an endorsement of Quebec’s support for companies willing to launch exploration programs outside known mining camps. In addition to the most generous flow-through-share program in the country, the government offers grants of up to $100,000 per property for exploration in remote areas.
“This year, we are entitled to receive about $300,000 in grants,” says Andre Gaumond, president of Virginia. “You can do much more work for the same dollar.”
At Clearwater, Eastmain and Quebec-government-owned Soquem recently uncovered several high-grade veins by stripping surface outcrops. Results from channel samples include a 17.6-metre intersection grading an uncut 16.2 grams per tonne across the Tourmaline zone, as well as high-grade, visible gold in the O, P and Q veins. These discoveries could add significantly to the known resource of just over 500,000 tonnes grading 11.3 grams gold per tonne contained in multiple, parallel quartz-tourmaline veins within the Eau Claire deposit.
“Westmin started in this belt in 1983, and work has been almost continuous ever since,” says Donald Robinson, president of Eastmain. “These results show that you can make a discovery on a project at any time, be it year one or year twenty.”
The project is a 50-50 joint venture between Soquem and Eastmain, which will perform follow-up drilling at 25-metre centres to evaluate the tonnage and average grade of the deposit.
At Virginia’s La Grande Sud, till sampling returned a record number of gold grains, and drilling intersected a mineralized zone averaging 0.5% zinc over 23 metres. The intersection lies south and east of zone 32, which contains a resource of 6.5 million tonnes grading 1.5 grams gold per tonne and 0.2% copper.
Cambior (cbj-t) is earning a half-interest in the project from Virginia by spending $7 million over six years. In January, the gold producer will launch a 300,000-metre drill program to determine if the felsic volcanic- intrusive contact that runs through the property is as promising as similar geology in the Bousquet-Doyon mining camp to the south, where Cambior operates the Doyon gold mine.
Compared with old-timers Virginia and Eastmain, Twin Gold is a novice in Quebec’s remote north. The junior, better known for its advanced gold project in Idaho, began exploring for diamonds in the Torngat Mountains of northeastern Quebec after it identified a cluster of kimberlite dykes with the aid of computer-enhanced aerial photographs.
An exploration team led by James Bourne, a geology professor at the Universit du Quebec in Montreal, made the diamond discovery after staking ground in the area for Twin Gold in late June. Grab samples from one of the dykes yielded a total of 42 diamonds, including nine macrodiamonds (a macro is defined here as measuring greater than 0.55 mm in at least one direction). One of the macros is an impressive 1.85 mm in diameter. The 1.5-km-long dyke contains G10 garnets and is part of a cluster of 12 dykes.
The company will finance ongoing exploration through a $3-5-million private placement of special warrants priced at 45 cents each. The warrants will be issued in two classes. The first class allows the holder to acquire one flow-through share and half a warrant of Twin Gold; the other entitles the holder to acquire one common share plus half a warrant.
Although La Grande Sud is Virginia’s most advanced project in the region, several other gold and base metal prospects are targeted for follow-up work. Among these is the Gayot property, south of Ungava Bay, where the company recently increased its land position to 325 sq. km following the discovery of four nickel-platinum-palladium showings. The property is in a newly discovered ultramafic belt that is geologically similar to the Raglan and Kambalda nickel belts in Canada and Australia, respectively. Zones of disseminated sulphides have returned 1.0-2.7% nickel and up to 0.4% copper, 0.1% cobalt and 1.18 grams per ton platinum group metals.
Virginia has a 100% interest in Gayot and will begin drilling there this winter after completing a ground geophysical survey to outline targets.
Winter drilling is also planned for Virginia’s Duquet project, in which Cambiex Exploration (cbx-t) and Soquem are earning a 33.3% interest. Duquet is a gold-copper-silver prospect containing massive sulphide lenses that have never been drill-tested.
Virginia will move the drills to the Chute-des-Passes and Payne Bay nickel prospects after the winter campaign is complete.
Another player in the region is
Sirios and Soquem also plan to follow-up encouraging gold results from till sampling at their Tilly Centre joint venture in the La Grande region.
And near Radisson, prospecting by
Be the first to comment on "EXPLORATION ’99 – Quebec’s northern frontier awakens — New discoveries boost potential of Eastmain, La Grande belts"