Focus on Canada 2018

FOCUS ON

Canada 2018 INVESTORS’ GUIDE

PROJECT SNAPSHOTS • INDUSTRY DATA • GEOLOGY OVERVIEW

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PUBLISHER: Anthony Vaccaro ADVERTISING SALES: Joe Crofts, Michael Winter EDITOR: David Perri

contents

6 Canada

ART DIRECTOR: Barbara Burrows CONTRIBUTING WRITER: Lesley Stokes PRODUCTION MANAGER: Jessica Jubb PUBLISHED BY

28 Northwest

19 British

Territories & Nunavut

Columbia & Yukon Printed in Canada.

All rights reserved.

The contents of this publication may only be reproduced with the written consent of The Northern Miner.

Issue price: $6.00

The Northern Miner Group 38 Lesmill Road, Unit 2.

Toronto, ON M3B 2T5, Canada PHONE: 1 (416) 510-6789 E-MAIL: tnm@northernminer.com

36

Prairie Provinces

12 Ontario & Quebec

COVER: Drilling in the Hollinger pit, part of Goldcorp’s Porcupine gold mining complex in Timmins, Ontario.

Global Leaders in Mining

41 East

Coast Provinces

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in Listed Mining Companies Globally

$8B+ in Equity Capital Raised in 2017

To learn more about listing on our markets, visit tmx.com/mining or contact mining@tmx.com or +1 416 947-4477.

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FOCUS ON CANADA

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ackground

WOULD LIKE TO THANK THE VALUED SPONSORS OF THE 2018 CANADIAN MINING SYMPOSIUM

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OREFINDERS

Presented by In cooperation with The High Commission of Canada in the United Kingdom April 24 & 25, 2018 CANADA HOUSE, Trafalgar Square, London, UK

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EXPLORE CANADA

T

his magazine marks the 2nd annual Canadian Mining Symposium, presented by The Northern Miner in London, U.K., to showcase Canada’s mining and exploration industry to global investors.

The information in these pages supplements the Symposium, to further acquaint a global audience with investment opportunities in Canada’s mineral sector.

Canada is home to a vast mineral endowment which is the foundation of today’s modern and sophisticated mineral development industry, where foreign investors can find opportunities in all stages of the business cycle: from prospecting, exploration, development and financing through to production.

With its large scale and breadth of mineral prospects, from precious and base metals to diamonds and emerging technology minerals, Canada attracted more mineral exploration expenditures in 2017 than any other country — the 16th consecutive year it has earned that distinction.

As for Canada’s mineral production, the latest numbers show

more than $30 billion worth annual mineral production from 124 active mines across the nation (excluding stone and aggregates).

Furthermore, Canadian capital markets serve as a global centre of financing for mineral exploration and development. Mining and exploration companies raised more than $8.5 billion in 2017 on the TSX and TSX Venture exchanges, where more than 1,200 such companies are listed.

Canadian provinces and territories are amongst the world’s most attractive jurisdictions for mineral development, with political stability, efficient regulation and a widespread, supportive mining culture.

This investors’ guide presents industry and government data, key project snapshots and an overview of Canadian geology which we hope will help you further explore Canada’s resource potential.

Anthony Vaccaro Publisher, The Northern Miner Group

Helping you unearth new opportunities.

With more than a century of commitment to metals & mining clients, and more than 100 professionals dedicated to the sector globally, the World’s Best Metals & Mining Investment Bank* digs deep to help you achieve your goals. bmocm.com BMO Capital Markets is a trade name used by BMO Financial Group for the wholesale banking businesses of Bank of Montreal, BMO Harris Bank N.A. (member FDIC), Bank of Montreal Ireland p.l.c, and Bank of Montreal (China) Co. Ltd and the institutional broker dealer businesses of BMO Capital Markets Corp. (Member SIPC) in the U.S., BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc. (Member Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada and Member Canadian Investor Protection Fund) in Canada and Asia and BMO Capital Markets Limited (authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority) in Europe and Australia. “Nesbitt Burns” is a registered trademark of BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc., used under license. “BMO Capital Markets” is a trademark of Bank of Montreal, used under license. “BMO (M-Bar roundel symbol)” is a registered trademark of Bank of Montreal, used under license. ® Registered trademark of Bank of Montreal in the United States, Canada and elsewhere. ™ Trademark of Bank of Montreal in the United States and Canada.*Global Finance magazine, 2018

INTRODUCTION

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CANADA |

data dashboard

FACTS

CANADA’S GLOBAL PRODUCTION RANKING BY VOLUME

CAPITAL: Ottawa

POTASH NICKEL NIOBIUM URANIUM ALUMINUM COBALT PGMs DIAMONDS

POPULATION: 35,151,728 AREA: 8,965,121 km2 POPULATION DENSITY:

3.9 persons per km2 Source: Statistics Canada, 2016

1ST 2ND 2ND 2ND 3RD 3RD 3RD 5TH

GOLD GRAPHITE COPPER IRON ORE ZINC

5TH 7TH 8TH 8TH 9TH

MOLYBDENUM 10TH Source: Mining Association of Canada. All figures from 2016, except uranium and diamonds (2015)

MINERAL PRODUCTION TOTAL VALUE

32B

$

GOLD

COPPER

POTASH

COAL

IRON ORE

NICKEL

DIAMONDS

URANIUM

PGMs

ZINC

SILVER

COBALT

MOLYBDENUM

LEAD

$8,590M

$4,377M

$3,889M

$3,555M

$3,165M

$2,926M

$1,944M

$1,249M

$948M

$833M

$283M

$149M

$53M

$30M

Source: Natural Resources Canada, 2016. Excludes confidential values for niobium and magnesite.

ACTIVE MINES

EXPLORATION & DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS

COAL 20

POTASH 10 DIAMONDS 6 IRON ORE 6 GRAPHITE 1 LITHIUM 1 MAGNESITE 1 NIOBIUM 1 PGMs 1 SILVER 1 URANIUM 1

TOTAL

BASE METALS 33

124

OTHER/POLYMETALLIC 2,290 (Including aluminum, antimony, chromium, coal, cobalt, copper, diamonds, gold, graphite, iron ore, lead, lithium, molybdenum, nickel, niobium, potash, PGMs, phosphate, REEs, silver, tantalum, tin, tungsten, uranium, vanadium, zinc)

GOLD 1,207 TOTAL

3,497

GOLD 42 Source: Mining Intelligence, 2018

Source: Mining Intelligence, 2018

EXPLORATION & DEPOSIT APPRAISAL EXPENDITURES

CAPITAL MARKETS: TSX & TSXV

BASE METALS

$236.7M

FINANCING: Mining companies raised $8.5B in 2017 OPPORTUNITY: 1,211 mining companies listed PRECIOUS METALS

TOTAL

URANIUM

1.63B

$163.9M

$

$952.6M

OTHER $175.4M

VALUE: Combined mining companies valued at $313B LIQUIDITY: 55.8B mining shares traded in 2017 GROWTH: 69 new listings

DIAMONDS $77.7M IRON ORE $22.5M COAL $46M Source: Natural Resources Canada, 2016

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Source: TMX, 2017

Focus on Canada 2018

2018-04-09 5:57 PM

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CANADA |

geology & projects The headframe at Hudbay Minerals’ 777 copper-zinc mine in Flin Flon, Manitoba.

CREDIT: HUDBAY MINERALS

The birth of Canada

A 4-billion-year-old story etched in stone Canada’s diverse tectonic history generated many world-class ore deposits

C

anada’s geological heritage goes back over 4 billion years to when the earth was a young, hot planet covered by ocean. During this time, intense volcanism formed the earth’s crust, giving way to a barren and lifeless landscape blasted by radiation from the sun.

About 3 billion years ago, in the Archean 8

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eon, the emergence of plate tectonics moved thin and small rafts of rocks at a rate much faster than they do today. Over time, the volcanic islands butted together into large blocks of continental crust, with most of the action (in what is today’s Canada) starting around the Red Lake area, a prolific gold-mining camp in northwest Ontario.

As the terranes collided, balls of magma were injected into the volcanic pile and cooled into enormous granitic batholiths. Meanwhile, at the major spreading centres and back-arc rift zones, metal-rich fluids were exhaled from black smokers, peppering the seafloor with volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) deposits. Magmatic nickel-copper-platinum group metal (PGM) deposits were also prolific during the Archean, as temperatures on earth were still hot enough to drive deepseated, high-magnesium ultramafic melts – otherwise known as “komatiites” – into higher levels of the crust without cooling rapidly, as they might today.

As the accreted landmass towered to new heights, intense pressures and temperatures partly melted deep-buried crust, releasing gold-rich fluids. The fluids travelled upwards along terrane-bounding structures in two major pulses, one at 2.9 billion years ago and the other 2.7 billion years ago, giving way to a variety of orogenic-style gold deposits. The deposits are preferentially clustered within segments of volcanic terrane that saw low-grade greenschist metamorphism, or what geologists call “greenstone belts.”

By the start of the Proterozoic eon, 2.5 billion years ago, the volcanic islands (that would one day form the core of Canada) had accreted into four main cratons: the Superior, Slave, Rae and Hearne. Over time, their crustal peaks got flattened by erosion, and a number of world-class ore districts were exposed. The most prolific districts seen today consist of the 150 million oz. gold Abitibi greenstone belt that spans the Quebec and Ontario border, the VMS-rich Flin Flon belt across Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and northern Ontario’s Ring of Fire district that hosts a number of magmatic nickel-copper and chromium deposits.

Banded-iron formations

Sediments that were eroded off the cratons were swept into surrounding deep-ocean basins and along vast seaways. Here, metal-rich brines would circulate within the sediments for millions of years, occasionally spewing out onto the seafloor as sedimentary exhalative (SEDEX) lead-zinc deposits.

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17 Appalachian Orogen

1 Canadian Cordillera

18 St. Lawrence Platform

2 Western Canada Sedimentary Basin

19 Nain Province

3 Wopmay Orogen 4 Proterozoic Sedimentary Cover 5 Paleo-Mesozoic Sedimentary Cover

20 Athabasca Basin 21 Superior Boundary Zone

CANADA’S MAIN GEOLOGICAL DOMAINS

22 Southern Province

6 Slave Craton Geological Survey of Canada/Lesley Stokes

7 Taltson-Thelon/Inglefield Orogens 8 Thelon Basin 9 Rae Craton (Churchill Province) 10 Hearne Craton (Churchill Province) 11 Trans-Hudson Orogen 12 Innuitian Orogen 13 Superior Craton 14 Snowbird Tectonic Zone (fault, dashed line postulated) 15 Arctic Continental Margin 16 Grenville Province

Around 2.3 billion years ago, the oceans began to teem with oxygen-producing bacteria, and the iron-rich sediments deposited on the seafloor mixed with oxygenated waters to create vast iron deposits.

These banded-iron formations (BIF) are prolific across the Labrador Trough, a worldclass iron mining camp in Quebec and Labrador that today accounts for over 80 million tonnes of iron ore resources. (However, remnants of much older BIF deposits also occur within Canada’s greenstone belts, with the Mary River iron mine on northern Baffin Island a prime example. The deposit formed in oxygen-deficient or “anoxic” conditions, having precipitated out from hydrothermal vents within volcanic centres. The formation of BIF is a wildly-debated topic amongst geologists, as it has massive implications to the origin of Earth’s oxygen-rich atmosphere.)

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Supercontinent Columbia

Superior, Slave, Rae and Hearne were stitched together along vast mountain ranges during the assembly of supercontinent Columbia about 2 billion years ago. The deformation was so intense that it either obliterated pre-existing deposits entrained within the rocks, or thrusted them closer to surface.

As a result of this event, metal-rich fluids from deep-seated metamorphism were injected into major deformation zones, such as the 2,800 km long Snowbird tectonic zone dividing the Rae and Hearne cratons.

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Continued on page 10

CANADA

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CANADA |

geology & projects

Archean-age BIF acted as a sponge to the gold-rich fluids, leading to the formation of the 3.4 million oz. gold Meliadine and the 3.5 million oz. gold Meadowbank deposits in Nunavut’s portion of the Rae craton.

Meanwhile, deformation along the northwestern perimeter of the Superior craton gave way to the nickel-copper rich dikes and sills that define the world-class Thompson nickel belt in Manitoba. The rock belt extends northeast to the Ungava Trough (formerly the Cape Smith belt) in northernmost Quebec, which hosts the Raglan nickel-copper camp. Around the same time, a 10 km wide meteorite smashed into the Superior’s eastern margin, shattering and melting the rocks beneath. The impact injected prolific nickel-copper-PGM-rich dikes and sills into a cone-shaped bowl now called the “Sudbury Igneous Complex” in Ontario.

During a lull in deformation, 1.5 billion years ago, the Snowbird once again became a passageway for fluids, but this time they were uranium rich. The structures, and where they pierce overlying basins of sediments, served as favourable traps for basement- and unconfor-

RESOURCES

mity-hosted uranium deposits, such as those seen within Saskatchewan’s Athabasca basin, and Nunavut and Northwest Territories’ Thelon.

New eastern geological provinces

By 1.3 billion years ago, the earth’s continents were on a collision course to form the supercontinent Rodinia.

The shuffling of plates forced deep-seated nickel-copper-cobalt rich melts through a suture zone between the Rae craton and an Archean-age geological province called the Nain, creating what’s known today as the world class Voisey’s Bay deposit in Labrador.

The melts devoured sulphur-rich country rocks during its ascent and pooled in quiescent magma chambers, allowing time for the sulphur to scavenge the metals. As the melt cooled, the chamber floor was blanketed with sulphides.

Deformation began to peak 1.1 billion years ago as the continents collided and the eastern side of ancestral North America began to transform.

This deformation produced a Himalayan-

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scale mountain range – called the Grenville orogeny – that extends across a significant portion of the North American continent, from Labrador to Mexico, as well as to Scotland.

The Grenville range eroded down to its metamorphosed core, and was partly covered with sandstones and limestones by encroaching seas. Rodinia was eventually disassembled, only to reassemble again, 350 million years ago, to form the supercontinent Pangaea.

Pangaea transforms the east coast

During the assembly of Pangaea, the African continent collided with the eastern coast of ancestral North America and thrusted up a belt of rocks – rich with pre-existing VMS deposits – known as the Appalachians.

World-class copper-lead-zinc deposits that were exposed by this tectonic event are clustered in the Bathurst camp in New Brunswick and the Buchans camp in Newfoundland.

As the Appalachian orogen ensued, goldrich fluids funneled into the many structural corridors across the eastern provinces, while lower-temperature fluids laden with lead-zinc were squeezed out of shales and into brecciated carbonate rocks to form Mississippi Valley Type (MVT) lead-zinc deposits.

MVT deposits from this deformation event can be seen within the Gays River district in Nova Scotia, whereas a similar event much farther north, called the Innuitian orogen, drove fluids into the Polaris and Pine Point deposits of Nunavut and Northwest Territories.

Canada’s west coast

When the North Atlantic Ocean rifted open 180 million years ago, the African continent broke away – albeit leaving behind continental fragments on the east coast of Newfoundland – and North America was pushed westwards. The shift in movement ignited subduction beneath the western margin of the continent, and a number of offshore volcanic island chains and sedimentary rocks in the west were docked and thrusted onto the edge of the landmass.

The first volcanic terranes that arrived, 150 million years ago, were teeming with porphyry copper-gold and epithermal gold deposits, such as those seen today within the Valley of the Kings and Red Chris deposits in northwest B.C., and the Highland Valley Copper deposit in southcentral British Focus on Canada 2018

2018-04-09 5:58 PM

Columbia. These deposits formed between 220 and 175 million years ago in a setting similar to the present-day Philippine and Indonesian island arcs.

As the metal-rich island chain pushed into the continent, basins of intervening sediments – up to 1.6 billion years old – were thrusted onto the landmass. The event exhumed a number of world-class SEDEX deposits that had formed along the edges of the ancient cratons, with examples including the Howard’s Pass and Sullivan lead-zinc deposits, located in the Yukon and southern British Columbia.

This tectonic event also sliced up the crust and injected it with gold, most notably at the 20 million oz. Klondike placer goldfields in the Yukon, and central B.C.’s Barkerville camp, which saw 3.1 million oz. historical placer gold production.

The next volcanic terrane that arrived on Canada’s western margin, at 100 million years ago, created a massive wave of deformation that drove gold-rich fluids into parts of the Yukon, most notably at the 4.9 million oz. gold Coffee deposit.

Subduction beneath the towering landmass eventually picked up speed, and the accreted margin of Western Canada was injected with enormous volumes of granitic magma for 50 million years, generating a number of porphyry copper-gold deposits, such as Casino in the Yukon and Huckleberry in British Columbia.

Around 55 million years ago, diamond-bearing magmas punched up rapidly through the Archean-age crust in the Northwest Territories’ Lac de Gras region.

Geologists believe that Archean crust favours diamonds because the cratons have bulged to enormous depths over its geological history, which provided high enough pressure and temperature to compress carbon into a precious stone.

An older diamond-bearing kimberlite event occurred between 180 and 155 million years ago, as recorded in northern Ontario’s Victor mine, and another at 640 million years ago at Quebec’s Renard mine.

Less commercially significant kimberlites up to 1.1 billion years in age have also been uncovered in other parts of Canada.

The future of Canada

Over time, the seas that once covered much of Western Canada began to evaporate, having been partly cut off from the ocean by the Canadian Cordillera. The sediments eroded off the leeward side of the mountains were buried up to 5 kilometres deep, and any carbon matter was in time converted into oil by the elevated pressures and temperatures. Even to this day, oil is being generated at the toe of the mountains – across much of Alberta and the Northwest Territories – and migrates for hundreds of kilometres until caught by impermeable traps or quartz-rich sands.

In the last 50 million years, the structural regime off the western coast of modern-day B.C. and the Yukon has transitioned more towards sideway faults than subduction, with tremors and earthquakes taking prec­ edent over volcanism and mountain build­ing. On the east coast, the Atlantic Ocean continues to rift open, pushing North America westwards. Geologists predict that in the next 250 million years, plate tectonics will drive Earth’s conti­nents together again, into a supercontinent called Pangaea Ultima. b

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Our Members

CANADA

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ONTARIO & QUEBEC |

data dashboard

QUEBEC

ONTARIO FACTS CAPITAL: Toronto

ACTIVE MINES

FACTS

ACTIVE MINES

PRIMARY PRODUCT

CAPITAL: Quebec City

PRIMARY PRODUCT

35

POPULATION: 13,448,494 AREA: 908,608 km2

AREA: 1,356,547 km2

GOLD: 20 BASE METALS: 13 DIAMONDS: 1 PGMs: 1

POPULATION DENSITY:

14.80 persons per km2 Source: Statistics Canada, 2016

22

POPULATION: 8,164,361

GOLD: 10 IRON ORE: 4 ZINC: 2 NICKEL: 2 DIAMONDS: 1 GRAPHITE: 1 LITHIUM: 1 NIOBIUM: 1

POPULATION DENSITY:

6.02 persons per km2

Source: Mining Intelligence, 2018

Source: Statistics Canada, 2016

Source: Mining Intelligence, 2018

MINERAL PRODUCTION TOTAL VALUE TOTAL VALUE

5.6B

$

8.1B

$

GOLD

COPPER

NICKEL

PGMs

DIAMONDS

ZINC

SILVER

COLBALT

$4,120M

$1,260M

$1,220M

$751M

$354M

$241M

$97M

$52M

Source: Natural Resources Canada, 2016

GOLD

IRON ORE

NICKEL

COPPER

ZINC

OTHER

SILVER

DIAMONDS

$2,731M

$1,379M

$687M

$271M

$231M

$204M

$59M

$49M

Source: Natural Resources Canada and Institut de la statistique du Québec, 2016.

Excludes confidential niobium and graphite data. “Other” includes cobalt and PGMs.

EXPLORATION & DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS OTHER/POLYMETALLIC 284

GOLD 448

BASE METALS 60 TOTAL

853

DIAMONDS 24 GRAPHITE 17 LITHIUM 12 URANIUM 12 IRON ORE 10

POLYMETALLIC/OTHER 270 (Including chromium, cobalt, copper, diamonds, gold, graphite, lead, lithium, molybdenum, nickel, niobium, PGMs, REEs, silver, tantalum, uranium, vanadium, zinc)

(Including aluminum, chromium, cobalt, copper, diamonds, gold, graphite, lead, lithium, molybdenum, nickel, niobium, PGMs, potash, REEs, silver, tantalum, titanium, tungsten, uranium, vanadium, zinc)

GOLD 284 TOTAL

774

DIAMONDS 13 URANIUM 26 IRON ORE 29

BASE METALS 57

GRAPHITE 37 LITHIUM 44 Source: Mining Intelligence, 2018

Source: Mining Intelligence, 2018

EXPLORATION & DEPOSIT APPRAISAL EXPENDITURES OTHER $35.1M

DIAMONDS $3.3M IRON ORE $5.2M

PRECIOUS METALS

$300.1M

TOTAL

BASE METALS

394.3M

$

$47.7M

TOTAL

297.4M

$

BASE METALS $77.1M

PRECIOUS METALS

$206M

OTHER $12.2M DIAMONDS $4.7M URANIUM $0.1M Source: Natural Resources Canada, 2016

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Source: Natural Resources Canada, 2016

Focus on Canada 2018

2018-04-09 6:02 PM

SPONSORED CONTENT Stornoway Diamonds’ Renard diamond mine in Québec.

CREDIT: STORNOWAY DIAMONDS

QUÉBEC’S PLAN NORD

Already a success and so much more to come

BY PIERRE MOREAU, QUÉBEC’S MINISTER OF ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES, MINISTER RESPONSIBLE FOR THE PLAN NORD AND MINISTER FOR THE GASPÉSIE-ÎLES-DE-LA MADELEINE REGION

Q

uébec has a vast territory with a wealth of natural and energy resources. That’s why, the Québec government has put in place the conditions needed to attract investors for development projects in Northern Québec, and has implemented an ambitious strategy that meets the economic, social and environmental criteria for sustainable development while becoming a reference in the field. This strategy is known as the Plan Nord.

The Plan Nord aims to ensure the planned and integrated development of economic, mineral, energy, social, cultural and tourism potentials lying north of Québec’s 49th parallel, which represents almost three-quarters of Québec’s total land mass.

In this area of 1.2 million km2 (almost five times the size of the United Kingdom) Québec has implemented an exemplary project that will benefit the northern population and the population of Québec as a whole.

Northern Québec is where a large part of Québec’s mineral extraction takes place, and where iron, nickel, diamonds, gold, and zinc have been produced in recent years by mining companies from Québec and around the world. New deposits of lithium, graphite, vanadium and rare earth metals are currently being developed in this vast area, which also contains over half of all Québec’s productive forests. The implementation of major projects is facilitated by the presence of hydroelectric facilities that generate over 75% of the 40,400 megawatts of hydroelectricity available in Québec.

& QUEBEC ONTARIO

12-18_2018 Focus on Canada_Ontario/Quebec.indd 13

We have a strong plan in place to stand out as a mining investment destination, including a range of fiscal incentives and risk-sharing with institutional funding. The latest survey

by Canada’s Fraser Institute confirms that we have made the right choices: Québec now ranks 6th out of 104 jurisdictions worldwide!

The Québec government has taken several steps to encourage business growth in the North. Investments totalling over $2 billion are planned between now and 2035 to develop transportation, telecommunications, and energy transmission infrastructures and improve access to the land.

We have created mechanisms to connect suppliers, ordering parties, investors, communities, and governments and ensure the success of projects in the North. Working alongside local and Aboriginal communities has proved profitable, creating a win-win situation for all.

It is also important to remember that northern Québec represents more than just a business or mining development opportunity. Its unique landscapes, wildlife and cultural diversity make it a key tourist destination.

With our ambitious vision for Northern Québec, we have created a solid foundation on which we will continue to build in the future. The prospects are good, and the success reported by many investors is clearly connected with Québec’s current enviable economic situation. Don’t miss this opportunity to become part of a great northern adventure!

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2018-04-09 6:02 PM

ONTARIO & QUEBEC |

geology & projects

Magma, mountains and meteorites

A drill rig at First Cobalt’s Keeley-Frontier Cobalt project in Ontario.

CREDIT: FIRST COBALT

A tale of tremendous mineral endowment stretching back 3.3 billion years

T

he rocks underlying Ontario and Quebec have a long and lively geological past dating back 4 billion years in the Archean eon, when the Earth was a young, hot planet covered by oceans.

During that time, intense volcanism formed the Earth’s first crust, giving way to a barren and lifeless landscape blasted by radiation from the sun.

Three billion years ago, plate tectonics began to move thin rafts of rocks at a rate much faster than they do today. Over time, the volcanic islands butted together into one large block of land – known today as the Superior craton – with most of the action starting around the Red Lake area, a prolific gold-mining camp in northwest Ontario.

As the volcanic terranes collided, volca-

snapshot FIRST COBALT • KEELEY-FRONTIER

Cobalt

With new battery technology pushing demand for the cobalt, which has continued rising in price after doubling in 2017, FIRST COBALT (TSXV: FCC) has positioned itself as a leading pure-play cobalt junior.

Last year the firm completed a three-way merger giving it 10,000-hectare land position containing 50 historic mines in Ontario’s legendary Cobalt mining camp.

The company also owns a permitted mill and cobalt refinery in the region, 25 km from its Keeley-Frontier exploration project.

First Cobalt is completing engineering studies on re-commissioning its refinery, which be released by mid-2018. Meanwhile it’s continuing to explore targets in Ontario, and expects to release a resource estimate in 2019.

In March the company announced another merger with US Cobalt giving it control of its Iron Creek cobalt deposit in Idaho. First cobalt envisions shipping ore from Idaho by rail to its plant in Ontario for processing and expects to release a compliant resource estimate for Iron Creek this year.

14

12-18_2018 Focus on Canada_Ontario/Quebec.indd 14

nogenic massive sulphide deposits – which formed around submarine hydrothermal vents, or “black smokers,” – were exhumed and thrusted upwards into mountainous chains. Meanwhile, balls of granitic magma were injected into the volcanic pile, sporadically crystallizing into lithium-bearing spodumene crystals such as those seen at Nemaska Lithium’s (TSXV: NMX) Whabouchi deposit in the James Bay region of Quebec, as magmatic nickel-copper-PGM (platinum group metals) and chromium deposits precipitated out of ultramafic dikes and sills funneling through the crust, most notably seen in northern Ontario’s Ring of Fire district.

The rock packages were baked during the deformation, and partially-melted, deep-seated crust released gold-rich fluids that flushed upwards along structural corridors in two major pulses around 2.9 billion and 2.7 billion years ago. The gold was eventually deposited in the weakly-metamorphosed portions of the accreted volcanic crust (typically found between 5 and 10 km depth), which is referred to by geologists as “greenstone belts.” Over time, the rocks Focus on Canada 2018

2018-04-09 6:02 PM

zones, which represent the sutures between the accreted volcanic terranes.

Some of the camps also contain worldclass VMS deposits, such as Ontario’s 2.7 billion year old Kidd Creek deposit in the Timmins camp, which yielded 153 million tonnes of copper-zinc ore from 1966.

In Quebec, the Horne VMS deposit in the Rouyn-Noranda camp accounted for 11 million oz. gold and 2.5 billion lb. copper in past production. Horne is unusual because of its high gold content, and geologists believe that the deposit may have been sweetened with gold by crustal-tapping structures.

Metals surround the Superior craton

The second stage in Ontario and Quebec’s geological story is captured in its Southern craton. The craton had its start 2.5 billion

years ago, when intense rains and sheets of ice scraped the tops off of Superior’s greenstone mountain ranges and deposited large packages of sedimentary rocks. Some of the rocks contained uranium, which was mined for over 35 years at Elliot Lake.

By 2.3 billion years ago, the oceans surrounding the ancient cratons began to teem with oxygen-producing bacteria, and ironrich sediments on the seafloor mixed with oxygenated waters to create vast banded iron formations (BIF) deposits.

During the assembly of ancestral North America, about 2.1 billion years ago, these iron formations were thrusted onto the eastern edge of the Superior craton. Today, they define the world-class Labrador Trough that spans the Quebec and Labrador border, where iron resources total 80 billion tonnes.

Continued on page 16

Gold pouring at Goldcorp’s Eleonore gold mine in Quebec.

CREDIT: GOLDCORP

were levelled by erosion, and erosional windows of the greenstone belts were preserved across the Superior craton, juxtaposed against the highly-metamorphosed roots of the ancient mountain chain.

When a world-class team secures the right assets…

Big things happen.

What big things? Vangold has acquired several properties throughout the Guanajuato mining district and is working on advancing it’s current pool of assets into production.

The Abitibi: The world’s most prolific greenstone belt

A number of greenstone belts are seen today across Ontario and Quebec, such as Ontario’s Wawa, Sault Ste. Marie, Thunder Bay, Dryden-Kenora, Geraldton, Marathon and the 31 million oz. gold Red Lake camp, or Quebec’s Casa Berardi, Chibougamau, Matagami and James Bay districts. However, the world-class Abitibi greenstone belt – which spans the Ontario and Quebec border – is by far the most productive in terms of gold and base metals.

Over its history, the Abitibi camp has produced 150 million oz. gold, exceeding that of the Kalgoorlie camps in Western Australia, and the Homestake deposits in South Dakota.

In Ontario’s portion of the Abitibi, worldclass camps include Timmins, Kirkland Lake, and Larder Lake, whereas in Quebec, camps include the Val-d’Or, Malartic and Rouyn-Noranda. Mineralization is focused along splays off regional-trending fault & QUEBEC ONTARIO

12-18_2018 Focus on Canada_Ontario/Quebec.indd 15

Strict Focus on Mexico’s Prolific Silver Belt Seasoned Expert Management Team Exploration and Near Term Production

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15

2018-04-09 6:02 PM

ONTARIO & QUEBEC |

geology & projects

SELECT DEPOSITS, DISTRICTS AND GEOLOGY IN ONTARIO

1 Red Lake 2 Dryden 3 Kenora 4 Sturgeon Lake 5 Thunder Bay 6 Ring of Fire 7 Victor 8 Geraldton 9 Marathon 10 Wawa 11 Sault Ste. Marie 12 Timmins 13 Kirkland Lake 14 Larder Lake 15 Cobalt 16 Sudbury

Kilometres

50

7

6

1 8 4

2

12 3

5

9

13 14

10

15

16 11

copper-nickel-PGM deposits at Glencore’s Raglan mining camp in Quebec’s northernmost tip. The belt of rocks, formerly named Cape Smith belt, is considered to be the northeastern extension of the world-class

Geological Survey of Canada/Lesley Stokes

As the Superior craton collided with nearby cratons, metal-rich ultramafic melts were driven into the sedimentary rocks along its northwestern and northern margins. The melts solidified into a number of magmatic

Thompson nickel belt in Manitoba.

Around the same time as metals were being introduced into the Thompson and Raglan belts, a 10 km wide meteorite smashed into the eastern margin of the Superior and Southern cratons, shattering and melting the rocks beneath. The nickel-copper-PGM rich melts squeezed into the fractures rimming the impact crater, which today encompasses the world-class Sudbury nickel-copper PGM district in eastern Ontario. The Sudbury deposits have produced more than 40 billion lb. copper, 44 billion lb. nickel and 62 million oz. gold, silver along with significant amounts of PGMs. The assembly of eastern Canada

+1 604 684 8725 info@skeenaresources.com

www.skeenaresources.com TSX.V: SKE

| OTCQX: SKREF | FRA: RXFB

16

12-18_2018 Focus on Canada_Ontario/Quebec.indd 16

Pinned against the Southern and Superior cratons in the east are rocks belonging to the Grenville orogen, a mountainous belt of mainly gneiss (a metamorphosed granite) that formed between 1.1 billion and 570 million years ago during the assembly of the supercontinent Rodinia.

The Grenville orogen hosts a variety of industrial minerals, along with iron and Focus on Canada 2018

2018-04-09 6:02 PM

SELECT DEPOSITS, DISTRICTS AND GEOLOGY IN QUEBEC

1

1 Raglan 2 Éléonore 3 Whabouchi 4 Renard 5 Chibougamau 6 Matagami 7 Casa Berardi 8 Malartic 9 Val-d’Or 10 Lac des Iles 11 Oka 12 Labrador Trough 13 Saint-Honore 14 Gaspe

BALMORAL RESOURCES (TSX: BAR) owns several exploration projects in Quebec’s prospective Abitibi region, including more than 1000 sq. km of mineral rights along strike from the Detour Lake gold mine.

The firm’s flagship asset is the Martiniere gold project, where Balmoral has just released a maiden resource estimate on the shallow portion of the four Bug Lake gold deposits.

The company outlined 591,000 oz. gold in ore averaging 2 grams gold per tonne. Balmoral is currently drilling beneath the defined resource area to expand and understand the mineral potential at further depth.

4 2

14

Geological Survey of Canada/Lesley Stokes

Kilometres

5

BALMORAL RESOURCES • MARTINIERE Gold

12

3

snapshot

50

The company also has drill rigs turning at several nearby targets as part its 5,000-metre early 2018 drill program. Early results have been encouraging with the first drill hole returning visible gold from the Horsefly zone which was discovered in 2017, 450 metres east of the Bug gold trend at Martiniere.

13

6

Continued on page 18

7

8

9

10 11

ilmenite, but is mostly recognized for Imerys Graphite & Carbon’s Lac des Îles graphite mine in southern Quebec, which is the only graphite producer in North America.

Over time, the Grenville mountain range eroded down to its metamorphosed core, and in part was blanketed with sediments from encroaching seas.

In Ontario and Quebec, the sedimentary units are mined for limestone, but two carbonatite intrusions – Saint-Honoré and Oka in Quebec – found within the sediments are exploited for niobium.

Rodinia was eventually disassembled, only to reassemble again, 350 million years ago, to form the supercontinent Pangaea.

At this time, the North African continent collided with the eastern coast of ancestral North America and thrusted up a belt of rocks known as the Appalachian orogen.

Today, the Appalachians have been eroded down to its core, exhuming the historical & QUEBEC ONTARIO

12-18_2018 Focus on Canada_Ontario/Quebec.indd 17

SADDLE THE BEST BC GOLD DISCOVERY OF 2017

17

2018-04-09 6:02 PM

ONTARIO & QUEBEC |

geology & projects snapshot OREFINDERS • MIRADO

Gold

OREFINDERS (TSXV: ORX) has just released a positive preliminary economic assessment for its Mirado gold project in Ontario’s famed Abitibi region.

The company plans a quick, low-cost startup focused on highgrade ore in the South Zone pit to generate cash flow to fund further development on the property, which contains three past-producing mines.

A portal at Stornoway Diamonds’ Renard diamond mine in Quebec.

CREDIT: STORNOWAY DIAMONDS

Gaspe copper mine in the Murdochville camp in Quebec’s portion of the belt. The porphyry and skarn deposit was operated by Noranda from 1959 to 1999, and produced 141 million tonnes of 0.9% copper, with some molybdenum credits.

Between 155 million and 180 million years ago, a sudden pulse of volatilerich

The proposed operation accounts for about 5% of the Mirado project and will use a toll-milling arrangement. As such, there is no need for on-site processing or tailings facilities and Orefinders expects to spend just $2.4 million to get up and running. The junior would hire contractors to mine 1,000 tonnes per day for three years, for a total of 996,000 tonnes of ore averaging 2.33 grams gold per tonne to yield almost 75,000 oz. gold with all in sustaining costs of $969 per oz.

Assuming a gold price of US$1,300 per oz. the PEA indicates an after-tax internal rate of return of 158%, a $20.5-million after-tax NPV at a 5% discount rate, and a seven-month payback on capital.

magmas punched up through the Paleozoic sedimentary cover in the northern reaches of Ontario, picking up diamond-bearing material during its ascent. The kimberlite pipes are currently being exploited for dia-

monds at DeBeers’ Victor mine.

Much older kimberlite pipes, dating back to 640 million years ago, are also found at Stornoway Diamonds’ (TSX: SWY) Renard mine in the James Bay region of Quebec. b

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McCarthy Tétrault LLP | mccarthy.ca 18

12-18_2018 Focus on Canada_Ontario/Quebec.indd 18

Focus on Canada 2018

2018-04-09 6:02 PM

BC & YUKON |

data dashboard

YUKON

BRITISH COLUMBIA FACTS CAPITAL: Victoria

ACTIVE MINES

FACTS

ACTIVE MINES

PRIMARY PRODUCT

CAPITAL: Whitehorse

PRIMARY PRODUCT

16

POPULATION: 4,648,055 AREA: 922,509 km2

5.004 persons per km2

COAL: 6 COPPER: 6 COPPER-GOLD: 1 GOLD: 1 MAGNESITE: 1 SILVER: 1

Source: Statistics Canada, 2016

Source: Mining Intelligence 2018

POPULATION DENSITY:

POPULATION: 35,874

1

AREA: 474,713KM2 km2

COPPER: 1

POPULATION DENSITY:

0.08 persons per km2

Source: Mining Intelligence 2018

Source: Statistics Canada, 2016

MINERAL PRODUCTION TOTAL VALUE

TOTAL VALUE

5.6B

385M

$

$

COAL

COPPER

GOLD

SILVER

MOLYBDENUM

COPPER

GOLD

SILVER

$2,630M

$2,144M

$680M

$62M

$53M

$194M

$183M

$8M

Source: Natural Resources Canada, Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, 2016

Source: Natural Resources Canada, 2016

EXPLORATION & DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS

GOLD 168

TOTAL

769

COAL 38 COPPER 35

OTHER/POLYMETALLIC 219 (Including coal, cobalt, copper, gold, iron ore, lead, nickel, molybdenum, nickel, niobium, PGMs, REEs, silver, tantalum, tin, tungsten, uranium, zinc)

TOTAL

219

MOLYBDENUM 23

GOLD 100

REEs 9 POLYMETALLIC/OTHER 270 (Including aluminum, chromium, cobalt, copper, diamonds, gold, graphite, iron ore, lead, lithium, magnesium, molybdenum, nickel, niobium, PGMs, REEs, silver, tantalum, tungsten, uranium, zinc)

Source: Mining Intelligence, 2018

Source: Mining Intelligence, 2018

EXPLORATION & DEPOSIT APPRAISAL EXPENDITURES

BASE METALS $41.8M

PRECIOUS METALS

$62.8M

BASE METALS

IRON ORE $0.5M PRECIOUS METALS

$142.9M

TOTAL

231.5M

$

OTHER $46.3M

$27.5M TOTAL

90.4M

$

OTHER $0.1M

Source: Natural Resources Canada, 2016

BC & YUKON

19-27_2018 Focus on Canada_BC&Yukon.indd 19

Source: Natural Resources Canada, 2016

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2018-04-09 6:04 PM

BC & YUKON |

geology & projects

When the east pushed back Western Canada’s tectonic history sees base and precious metals driven into crust

I

n 1971, two geologists from the Geological Survey of Canada, Jim Monger and Charlie Rouse, proposed an idea that helped radically shape how we view the geological history of Western Canada today.

Rather than using the more widely accepted theories of facies changes or extensive seaways to explain the presence of certain fossils in the rocks of central British Columbia, they proposed that the rocks, and the fossils in question, must have migrated across the Pacific Ocean to their present location. Their revolutionary idea would come to explain a geological story that was set in motion 180 million years ago, when the opening of the Atlantic Ocean drove the ancestral North American continent westwards.

The movement ignited subduction beneath the western margin of the continent, and a number of offshore volcanic island chains and intervening basins of sedimentary and oceanic rocks were thrusted onto the landmass.

20

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Exotic rocks

The first, truly exotic rocks to have docked onto western North America were contained within a package of terranes – the Quesnellia volcanic arc in the east, another volcanic arc called Stikinia in the west, and oceanic crust belonging to the Cache Creek terrane in between.

Today, the terranes fall within a mountainous belt known as the Intermontane, but how they arrived at their present position is still an enigma among geologists.

Some say that Cache Creek docked onto the Quesnellia and Stikinia arc – which at the time formed a linear belt – 230 million years ago, outboard of ancestral North America. As Cache Creek pushed into the volcanic chain, the northern tip of the Quesnellia-Stikinia arc bent backwards onto itself in a counter-clockwise motion, and the oceanic crust was trapped in the middle.

This “isoclinal bend” theory could explain why the two arcs – which are almost geologically identical – are separated by a piece of

A drill site at Seabridge Gold’s KSM gold-copper project in northwest British Columbia.

CREDIT: SEABRIDGE GOLD

oceanic crust that originated in eastern Asia, as suggested by the types of fossils caught within its vestiges. Geologists concluded that the crust must have migrated across the planet via plate tectonics.

Most of the porphyry copper-gold and related epithermal systems found in B.C. and the Yukon formed between 220 and 175 million years ago – before the landmass was accreted onto North America – in a setting similar to the present-day Indonesian and Philippine volcanic arcs.

The most notable examples are found in the northwest parts of the Stikinia terrane, a region known to many as B.C.’s “Golden Triangle.”

The Golden Triangle encompasses a number of world-class, gold-rich porphyry deposits, such as Teck Resources’ (TSX: TECK.B; NYSE: TECK) Shaft Creek, Imperial Metals’ (TSX: III) Red Chris copper-gold mine, and Seabridge Gold’s (TSX: SEA; NYSE: SA) KSM camp – the latter Continued on page 22 Focus on Canada 2018

2018-04-09 6:04 PM

SPONSORED CONTENT

THE BRITISH COLUMBIA ADVANTAGE An Alliance of Government, First Nations and Industry supporting Mineral Development

B

ritish Columbia is a world-class mining jurisdiction, rich in mining history and home to sixteen operating mines and a thriving mineral exploration sector. Recently, Mining Journal’s 2017 World Risk Report ranked BC as the least risky jurisdiction in the world for resource investment.

A new unique regional partnership called the BC Regional Mining Alliance has been formed between First Nations, industry and provincial government representatives, who have come together to share their success stories and provide first-hand knowledge and guidance with respect to every step of the process from exploration to opening a mine. The BC Regional Mining Alliance represents projects specifically in the northwest area of BC, known as the “Golden Triangle”.

For over 150 years, countless prospectors have been attracted to the Golden Triangle by the lure of rich geological terrain encompassing potentially billions of dollars in gold, silver and copper deposits. This once remote region, which covers an area roughly twice the size of Wales, is now accessible thanks to a series of recent infrastructure investments in the region.

The Northwest Transmission Line, completed in July 2014, supplies clean, affordable, reliable hydroelectric power to mining operations throughout the region. Along with other recent developments, such as highway upgrades, ocean port infrastructure at the ice-free port of Stewart and the commissioning of two hydroelectric facilities, this modern infrastructure network lowers the bottom line for explorers and operators and underscores the advantages of developing projects in British Columbia.

These recent improvements in regional infrastructure, coupled with a rise in commodity prices and BC’s persistent advantages in world-class geology, a highly skilled local workforce, and a strong and consistent regulatory system, have combined to make the Golden Triangle one of the hottest mineral exploration districts in the world.

In BC, First Nations’ governments continue to play a key role advancing and supporting resource development. This is particularly apparent in the Golden Triangle, where the Tahltan Central Government (TCG) and the Nisga’a Lisims Government (NLG) are experienced in working with industry and the provincial government on mining and other economic development projects in their traditional territories. Mining is the largest private-sector employer of indigenous people in

BC & YUKON

19-27_2018 Focus on Canada_BC&Yukon.indd 21

Canada and BC has instituted mineral tax revenue sharing with First Nations through economic and community development agreements.

Indeed, recent success stories demonstrate the potential of collaboration on world-class mineral development in the Golden Triangle. Advancement of the recently opened Red Chris and Brucejack mines and the fully permitted KSM project, the largest undeveloped gold deposit by reserves in the world, all involved creating strong relationships between proponents and First Nation and provincial governments. The success of these projects proves partnership and collaboration are the foundations for resource development in BC. Exploration and mining has been central to the provincial economy for generations, occurring as it does throughout BC and representing an industry with more than $7 billion directly employing over 30,000 workers and thousands more indirectly.

BC as a whole is a world hub of minerals industry financing and technical expertise, with over 1,000 mining, mineral exploration and industry service and supply companies operating in the province. The Province has also developed world-class geological databases and online systems, cataloguing a growing inventory of more than 15,000 mineral occurrences.

This favourable profile can be attributed to the province’s world-leading mining code, transparent and predicable regulatory system and elected officials at all levels committed to supporting the mining industry and the well-paying jobs it provides working families throughout BC. British Columbia is a leading mining jurisdiction with a bright mining future. The Government of BC is working in partnership with First Nations governments, industry and other stakeholders to create a shared vision to ensure the health and continued growth of this vital industry. Together, all decision makers in BC are committed to supporting a competitive, safe, socially and environmentally responsible mining industry that grows a strong, sustainable, innovative economy in all areas of the province. Responsible resource development rooted in local partnerships is the new way of doing business – and BC is leading the way.

Authored by the BC Regional Mining Alliance members; Dolly Varden Silver Corp., Skeena Resources Ltd., GT Gold Corp, Nisga’a Lisims Government, Tahltan Central Government, the Association for Mineral Exploration, and the Province of British Columbia.

21

2018-04-09 6:04 PM

BC & YUKON |

geology & projects SELECT DEPOSITS, DISTRICTS AND GEOLOGY IN BRITISH COLUMBIA

1 Schaft Creek 2 Red Chris 3 Snip 4 Eskay Creek 5 KSM 6 Valley of the Kings 7 Huckleberry

8 Barkerville 9 Mount Polley 10 Prosperity 11 Myra Falls 12 Highland Valley 13 Ajax 14 Sullivan

1 3

2

4 5 6

50

7

Geological Survey of Canada/Lesley Stokes

containing a whopping 38.8 million oz. gold and 10.2 million lb. copper, at grades of 0.51 gram gold per tonne and 0.2% copper, in proven and probable reserves.

Hydrothermal fluids off-gassing from underlying porphyries spurred the growth of Pretium Resources’ (TSX: PVG; NYSE: PVG) Valley of the Kings epithermal gold deposit – where proven and probable reserves stand at 8.7 million oz. gold in 16.6 million tonnes grading 14.1 grams gold – and Skeena Resources’ (TSXV: SKE) Snip project which produced 1 million oz. in the 1990s.

Stikinia’s volcanic pile is also prospective for volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS)

8 9 10

11

TSX:ANX

12

13

14

ATLANTIC CANADIAN

GOLD MINER

snapshot GT GOLD • SADDLE

Gold

GT GOLD (TSXV: GTT) is focused on exploring for gold in British Columbia’s renowned Golden Triangle district.

TO SET UP A MEETING PLEASE CONTACT: DUSTIN ANGELO, PRESIDENT & CEO 0011416631551868 DANGELOOANACONDAMINING.COM 22

19-27_2018 Focus on Canada_BC&Yukon.indd 22

Following years of exploration, the company announced a new gold discovery in 2017 at its Saddle project. The Saddle South discovery unearthed high-grade epithermal gold-silver vein systems. Additionally, beneath nearby glacial sediments at Saddle North, the company believes it may have found the possible “engine” of the mineralization: a copper-gold-silver mineralized porphyry intrusion, which geophysics indicates is large in scale, and which early drill results suggest may be rich. Since its discovery, drilling at Saddle South has returned a steady stream of high-grade intercepts.

With the support of major London institutions and key Canadian investors, GT Gold has just raised $6.5 million, bringing total cash to $9.5 million, which will fund its summer 2018 exploration program designed to expand its new discovery.

Focus on Canada 2018

2018-04-09 6:04 PM

deposits, as seen at Barrick Gold’s (TSX: ABX; NYSE: ABX) Eskay Creek mine, which produced 3.3 million oz. gold and 180 million oz. silver at grades of 49 grams gold and 2,406 grams silver over its mine life.

BC & YUKON

19-27_2018 Focus on Canada_BC&Yukon.indd 23

Teck’s open-pit Highland Valley copper mine near Kamloops, B.C., is a star example of porphyry deposits in the Quesnellia terrane, having yielded more than 1.1 billion tonnes of ore in its lifetime.

Pretium Resources’ Brucejack gold mine in British Columbia’s Golden Triangle region.

CREDIT: PRETIUM RESOURCES

Continued on page 24

23

2018-04-09 6:04 PM

BC & YUKON |

geology & projects snapshot ASCOT RESOURCES • PREMIER/DILWORTH

The birth of the Omineca

After the Stikinia-Cache and Creek-Quesnellia landmass docked onto North America, it buckled, deformed and metamorphosed intervening basins of sediments that were deposited along the margins of ancestral North America up to 2 billion years ago.

In the eastern reaches of B.C. and the Yukon, the rocks were only mildly affected, and organic-rich peat bogs were metamorphosed into coal. Two main coal fields in B.C. – the East Kootenay and Peace River – were exhumed by the deformation, and have resources similar in quality to many Permian-age coals exported from Australia.

Rocks closest to the deformation front, however, were complexly deformed and highly metamorphosed. Today, the mountain chain is referred to as the Omineca, and represents the deeper roots of a mountain chain created between 180 and 60 million years ago. The Omineca is divided into four main terranes – Yukon-Tanana, Cassiar, Slide Mountain and Kootenay.

The mountain-building event exhumed a number of pre-existing sedimentary exha-

Gold

Junior explorer ASCOT RESOURCES (TSXV: AOT) is focused on its flagship 65-sq-km Premier/Dilworth gold property in northwest British Columbia.

The property is close to the town of Stewart, in the southern portion of the Golden Triangle district and includes two past-producing gold mines which produced more than 2.1 million oz. gold and 44.9 million oz. silver. The property hosts a trio of deposits, Big Missouri, Martha Ellen and Dilworth, in which Ascot outlined resources of more than 4.6 million gold-equivalent oz. in 2014.

In 2017 Ascot drilled more than 118,000 metres, largely following up on identified targets in the Northern Lights zone, near the historic Premier mine. The drilling campaign included broadly-spaced holes to outline targets, as well as tighter drilling on higher-grade areas to help inform a resource estimate currently in development for the Premier mine area.

The company plans to use the resource estimate as a step towards a PEA that will investigate mining scenarios using existing infrastructure on site including a mill, crusher setup and tailings area.

SEDEX deposit in the Omineca belt. Hosted within a package of sediments belonging to the Kootenay terrane, the 1.4 billion-year-old Sullivan deposit yielded 17 million tonnes of zinc and lead, and 285 million oz. silver – more than $20 billion worth of metal – over its century-long mine life.

lative (SEDEX) lead-zinc-silver deposits, which formed when metal-rich fluids – derived from basinal brines – either exhaled onto the seafloor via hydrothermal vents, or migrated through permeable sediments.

Teck’s historic Sullivan lead-zinc-silver mine, near the town of Kimberley in south-central B.C., is a textbook example of a

Continued on page 26

CANADA

QUÉBEC

UNITED STATES

BE PART OF THE PLAN BASE METALS

|

GOLD

|

DIAMOND

The Québec government’s Plan Nord: a unique and diversified mineral potential.

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LITHIUM

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GRAPHITE

|

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plannord.gouv.qc.ca information@ spn.gouv.qc.ca 24

19-27_2018 Focus on Canada_BC&Yukon.indd 24

Focus on Canada 2018

2018-04-09 6:04 PM

SPONSORED CONTENT Western Copper and Gold’s Casino copper-gold project.

CREDIT: WESTERN COPPER AND GOLD

THE JUNIORS AREADY KNEW What the majors just discouvered

BY ANNE LEWIS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR – YUKON MINING ALLIANCE

T

HE MAJORS MOVED IN… at least that has been Yukon’s headline story for the past 18 months, and it was certainly exciting – but the real story is why they moved in and what’s next for Yukon.

The major gold producers staked their claim in experienced, well-managed and highly prospective Yukon juniors that have been exploring the region for years, and for some, over a decade. This strategic investment reflects what the juniors here already knew – that the region is underexplored, hosts exceptional geology and is a geopolitically safe and progressive jurisdiction, where partnerships help to move projects forward.

Mining in Yukon is advancing on all fronts in 2018. From exploration to development and finally into production – we saw the foundations being laid throughout the past year.

At Roundup 2017, the newly elected Government of Yukon reaffirmed their commitment to advancing Yukon’s mineral industry and to renewing their relationship with Yukon First Nations by signing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on mining with self-governing First Nations. The MOU set the stage for creating a framework to work collaboratively on all processes related to the minerals sector in Yukon.

We also saw all three levels of Government – Federal, Territorial and First Nation – as well as industry come together to commit nearly half a billion dollars towards infrastructure development that will directly benefit the advancement of our mining sector. Importantly this will create road access to the well-established White Gold district, which is host to companies such as Goldcorp, Western Copper and Gold, White Gold Corp, Triumph Gold Corp, Trifecta Gold Corp and many more. On advancing to production, Victoria Gold Corp recently announced a financing package for the Eagle Gold Project, to take it all the way through to first gold pour in late 2019. Next door to Eagle is the significant silver past-producer,

BC & YUKON

19-27_2018 Focus on Canada_BC&Yukon.indd 25

Alexco Resource Corp which received permits to proceed back into production on Flame & Moth Bellekeno, Lucky Queen, Bermingham and Onek mines, setting up an impressive pipeline of high-grade silver deposits.

At the time of writing, Yukon also had exciting news out of London, UK. Pembridge Resources have announced their interest to acquire the Yukon’s only operating mine, the copper-gold-silver Minto Mine, from Capstone Mining. Minto has been in production since 2007 and is both an open-pit and underground mine in central Yukon, located on Selkirk First Nation Category A Settlement Land. The deal is set to close in late spring and with copper prices trending upwards, this is an exciting development for the Yukon.

Leading into a busy PDAC 2018, ATAC Resources received a positive decision document from the Government of Yukon, and affected First Nation, the Nacho Nyak Dun, for an allseason tote road into the Rackla Gold Project. The decision marks a major de-risking milestone for the company and all three projects within the Rackla Gold Property, which includes 780-sq.km it is developing under an exploration partnership with Barrick Gold Corp.

Throughout the year, Yukon Mining Alliance (YMA), and its growing group of leaders in exploration and development, promoted Yukon at home, nationally and internationally.

Through its unique partnership with Government, Yukon First Nations and mining partner organizations, we connected with investors to share the benefits of investing in our corner of the world and ensuring the jurisdiction remained at the forefront.

When you tally all of Yukon’s many competitive advantages, one thing consistently rises to the top – the remarkable level of collaboration, cooperation and commitment to ensuring a positive future for Yukon’s mining sector, its people and communities.

25

2018-04-09 6:04 PM

BC & YUKON |

geology & projects the high-strain deformation corridors that bound the Kootenay terrane with the Slide Mountain terrane in the east. The Kootenay terrane is similar, if not identical, to the Yukon-Tanana terrane.

Deformation in the Stikinia

Workers building a drill platform at ATAC Resources’ Rackla gold property in the Yukon.

CREDIT: CATHIE ARCHBOULD

Similar deposits are also found in the Yukon, such as the Selwyn Chihong Mining’s Howard’s Pass zinc-lead project at the border with the Northwest Territories.

As the Omineca terrane towered to new heights, deeply-buried rocks were metamorphosed, and fluids laden with gold travelled upwards along terrane-bounding structures until encountering a structural or chemical trap.

This orogenic-gold style of mineralization is most prolific in the Yukon’s Klondike goldfields, a placer gold camp in the Yukon-Tanana terrane that produced over 20 million oz. gold since 1896.

The bedrock source of the Klondike has never been found, with the exception of Kinross Gold’s (TSX: K; NYSE: KGC) White Gold deposit, which hosts 9.8 million inferred tonnes of 2.67 grams gold for 840,000 oz. gold.

Another wave of orogenic-style gold mineralization that was introduced roughly the same time as the Klondike is the Barkerville gold camp near the town of Wells in south-central B.C. The camp saw over 3.1 million oz. placer gold and 1.3 million oz. lode gold from historical production.

Mineralization in the Barkerville camp occurs as replacement pods and veins along

About 100 to 115 million years ago, two, offshore volcanic terranes belonging to the Insular belt – called the Wrangellia and Alexander – smashed into Stikinia, compressing the metal-rich arc by more than 160 km, or nearly half of its width. Many of Stikinia’s deposits were highly deformed, and most structural clues that explorers use to hone in on mineralization were either overprinted or reactivated, making them more challenging to find.

Wrangellia and Alexander’s volcanic crust is known for its world-class VMS polymetallic deposits, such as Nyrstar’s Myra Falls mine near Campbell River, Vancouver Island, and 10 0

100

200

300

km

1 1 2

3 10

4

6 3 7 3

10

6

9

4 7 9

12 8

5

4 1 11

CANADIAN CORDILLERA TERRANES Foreland and Omineca belts (ancestral North America)

1 Platform rocks (incl. Cassiar terrane)

2 Basinal rocks (incl. Kootenay terrane)

3 Yukon-Tanana terrane

4 Slide Mountain terrane Intermontane belt

5 Quesnellia terrane

6 Stikinia terrane

7 Cache Creek terrane 11 Okanagan terrane 12 Bridge River/Cadwallader/ Methow terranes 13 Chilliwak/Harrison terranes Coast belt

8 Coast Plutonic Suite Insular belt

9 Wrangellia terrane 10 Alexander terrane

26

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Focus on Canada 2018

2018-04-09 6:04 PM

the 300 million tonne copper-cobalt-gold Windy Craggy deposit in B.C.’s extreme northwest.

As the terranes pushed into the continent, gold-rich fluids were driven into parts of the Yukon, most notably at Goldcorp’s (TSX: G; NYSE: GG) Coffee project, where resources total more than 4 million oz. gold.

Subduction beneath the continent picked up speed and the crust was injected with enormous volumes of granitic magma and active volcanism for 50 million years.

During this period, pulses in magmatism farther inland created a range of porphyry copper-gold deposits, such as Imperial’s Huckleberry and Taseko Mines’ (TSX: TKO; NYSE-MKT: TGB) Prosperity deposits in B.C., and Western Copper and Gold’s (TSX: WRN; NYSE-MKT: WRN) Casino project in the Yukon.

This deformation event was also responsible for the many porphyry and related deposits across western U.S., Mexico and beyond.

As time passed, the tops of the mountain chain that existed between Stikinia and Wrangellia eroded away, including any potential porphyry-style deposits, and the granitic

SELECT DEPOSITS, DISTRICTS AND GEOLOGY IN THE YUKON

1 Klondike 2 White Gold 3 Coffee 4 Casino 5 Howards Pass

1 2 3 4

core – known as the Coast belt – was exposed.

5

The western margin today

In the last 50 million years, the structural regime off the coast of modern-day B.C. has transitioned more towards sideways-slipping faults than subduction, with earthquakes and erosion taking precedent over volcanism and mountain building. b

50

snapshot SKEENA RESOURCES • SNIP Gold This year SKEENA RESOURCES (TSXV: SKE) is accelerating its search for gold

at the historic Snip mine in northwest British Columbia’s prospective Golden Triangle region.

Depressed gold prices closed the mine in 1999, when gold sold for an average of US$290 per oz. The mine operated for nine years with ore averaging 27.5 grams gold per tonne, yielding 1.1 million oz.

With today’s higher gold prices and improved road and power service in the region, Skeena spent 2017 drilling 9,000 metres from inside the underground workings.

Several assays returned high-grade intervals including 19.26 grams gold per tonne over 11.85 metres and 91.56 grams per tonne over 3.82 metres.

The project has more than 280,000 metres of historical drill assays, which Skeena has reviewed and modelled with its recent drilling. In 2018 Skeena expects to drill 15,000 metres at Snip.

BC & YUKON

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27

2018-04-09 6:04 PM

NORTHWEST TERRITORIES & NUNAVUT |

data dashboard

NUNAVUT

NORTHWEST TERRITORIES FACTS CAPITAL: Yellowknife

ACTIVE MINES

FACTS

ACTIVE MINES

PRIMARY PRODUCT

CAPITAL: Iqaluit

PRIMARY PRODUCT

POPULATION: 44,100

4

AREA: 1,143,793 km2

DIAMONDS: 4

3

POPULATION: 35,944 AREA: 1,877,788 km2

GOLD: 2 IRON ORE: 1

POPULATION DENSITY:

POPULATION DENSITY:

0.02 persons per km2

0.04 persons per km2 Source: Mining Intelligence 2018

Source: Statistics Canada, 2016

Source: Mining Intelligence, 2018

Source: Statistics Canada, 2016

MINERAL PRODUCTION

TOTAL VALUE

TOTAL VALUE

1.5B

700M

$

$

DIAMONDS

GOLD

IRON ORE

SILVER

$1.5B

$506M

$189M

$5M

Source: Natural Resources Canada, 2016

Source: Natural Resources Canada, 2016

EXPLORATION & DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS

DIAMONDS 36

TOTAL

86

POLYMETALLIC/OTHER 30 (Including coal, chromium, cobalt, copper, diamonds, gold, iron ore, lead, nickel, PGMs, silver, uranium, zinc)

GOLD 36 TOTAL

101

GOLD 18 IRON ORE 4

POLYMETALLIC/OTHER 23 (Including coal, cobalt, copper, gold, iron ore, lead, nickel, niobium, PGMs, REEs, silver, tantalum, tungsten, zinc)

ZINC 5

URANIUM 10

DIAMONDS 21

LITHIUM 4

Source: Mining Intelligence, 2018

Source: Mining Intelligence, 2018

EXPLORATION & DEPOSIT APPRAISAL EXPENDITURES PRECIOUS METALS $12.1M PRECIOUS METALS BASE METALS $1.2M

$179.6M

DIAMONDS $59.5M TOTAL $

73M

OTHER $0.2M

TOTAL

204.5M

$

IRON ORE $13.7M BASE METALS $6.4M DIAMONDS $2.9M URANIUM $1.9M Source: Natural Resources Canada, 2016

28

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Source: Natural Resources Canada, 2016

Focus on Canada 2018

2018-04-09 6:06 PM

7M

SPONSORED CONTENT North Arrow Minerals drill testing and re-sampling the EG-05 kimberlite in March 2018.

The kimberlite is located within the Northwest Territories’ Lac de Gras near the southern shore and was originally discovered by Kennecott in the late 1990’s. CREDIT: CLINT AMBROSE

THE NWT DIFFERENCE It’s More Than Just Mining

O

n the surface, Canada’s Northwest Territories (NWT) is like many prolific mining jurisdictions around the world: vast, remote, geologically blessed.

But while the rocks may come out of the ground in much the same way, there are big differences behind the scenes that set the NWT apart — especially for today’s socially-discerning investor.

Mining companies, public governments and Indigenous governments are working together to ensure the physical, social and digital infrastructure invested in — and enabled by — mining projects is also building healthy, vibrant, accessible communities.

Innovative approaches such as mutually-crafted socioeconomic agreements mean that in addition to extracting resources, today’s mining operations foster local industry, build a skilled workforce and empower communities.

Notably, it is the NWT’s three world-class operating diamond mines that are leading the way. NWT diamond mines have spent more than $13 billion with northern businesses since 1996, with $5.6 billion of that spending going specifically to northern Indigenous businesses.

With this has come a thriving and ever-maturing sector of local and Indigenous businesses providing the expertise and skills to service them.

Settled land claims have given Indigenous governments the financial resources to capitalize on this economic development.

Working through Indigenous government development corporations — and buoyed by NWT mines — they have developed successful business models where community members are now employed and mines are serviced locally.

In addition to general contracting, service and logistics companies, these grown-in-the-NWT corporations own airlines, engineering, trucking and helicopter companies.

They supply specialized expertise in areas like winter building NORTHWEST TERRITORIES & NUNAVUT

28-35_2018 Focus on Canada_NWT&Nuna.indd 29

and ice road construction.

It is about more than just business growth. It has empowered a host of NWT residents with the chance to gain valuable, transferrable education and experience across many sectors, sciences and trades. These opportunities — created by mining companies and the government — are second to none.

This includes prospector training, heavy equipment and environmental science courses, and leadership programs priming locals with the skills to find success at the mine site and beyond.

And far beyond those benefits traditionally associated with economic activity, there are also direct investments made by mines in communities.

From community centres to ice roads, mining companies have found mutually beneficial ways to leave positive legacies that will endure long after the last load of ore is processed.

It’s this well-defined relationship between communities and companies which help NWT projects get the social support they need to get off the ground and continue smoothly throughout the life of the mine.

It makes sense that this unique ethical profile has come together in the birthplace of ethical diamonds.

But what does it mean for those looking to invest?

At a time when resource projects must stand up to increased skepticism and scrutiny, the NWT offers a low-risk jurisdiction setting the bar for Indigenous partnership and a proven track record of making projects work.

An investment in the NWT is, after all, an investment in more than just minerals.

It’s an investment in the future of communities, their people and their economies long after the life of a mine; and one that pays off in profit and profile for companies doing business here.

That’s the NWT difference.

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2018-04-09 6:06 PM

NWT & NUNAVUT |

geology & projects

Canada’s final frontier

Dominion Diamond Mines’ 88.9%-owned Ekati diamond mine in the Northwest Territories.

Diverse geological framework and lack of detailed exploration speaks to huge mineral potential

B

eneath the glacier-scoured lakes and barren tundra of the Northwest Territories (N.W.T.) and Nunavut is a collection of disparate Archean- to Proterozoic-aged crust that was stitched together along vast mountain ranges during the assembly of the supercontinent Columbia about 2 billion years ago.

One of the first collisions occurred when metamorphosed crust belonging to the Hottah terrane in N.W.T. collided with the Slave craton, an Archean-aged package of weakly metamorphosed, volcano-sedimentary terranes called greenstone belts.

The collision triggered subduction along the western margin of the Hottah, and the crust was either injected with locally ura30

28-35_2018 Focus on Canada_NWT&Nuna.indd 30

nium-enriched magmas or metal-rich fluids driven by underlying iron-oxide copper-gold (IOCG) systems.

This mineral-rich tectonic margin, known as the Great Bear magmatic zone, hosts the historic Port Radium uranium-silver mine and Fortune Minerals’ (TSX: FT) Nico gold-bismuth-cobalt-copper IOCG deposit. The combined rock package is known as the Wopmay orogen.

All that glitters is not gold: Diamonds

The accretion of the Wopmay to the Slave thickened the crust to a depth where immense pressures transformed carbon-rich material into diamonds.

CREDIT: DOMINION DIAMOND MINES

The diamonds remained undisturbed until 55 million years ago, when volatile, rich magmas drove up through the crust, moving the precious stones to surface. These diamond-bearing kimberlites were later uncovered by explorers in the Lac de Gras region of N.W.T., most notably at Dominion Diamond Mines (TSX: DDC; NYSE: DDC) and Rio Tinto’s (NYSE: RIO; LON: RIO) Diavik, Dominion’s Ekati and De Beers’ Gahcho Kué diamond mines. Farther north, the former Jericho diamond mine is hosted within Nunavut’s portion of the Slave.

The untapped gold potential in the Slave

The greenstone belts that occupy the Slave Focus on Canada 2018

2018-04-09 6:06 PM

SELECT DEPOSITS, DISTRICTS AND GEOLOGY IN NORTHWEST TERRITORIES AND NUNAVUT

Kilometres

50

1 Prairie Creek 2 Cantung 3 Howards Pass 4 Redstone 5 Pine Point 6 YCG

25

26

17 2 3

9

4 1

8 7

10

16 11 12

6

24

15

13

14

19

27

7 NICO

8 Colomac

9 Jericho 10 Lupin 11 Ekati 12 Diavik 13 Gahcho Kue 14 Kennady North 15 Hackett River 16 Back River 17 Hope Bay 18 Meadowbank 19 Kiggavik 20 North Rankin Inlet 21 Meliadine 22 Pistol Bay 23 Amaruq 24 Committee Bay 25 Polaris 26 Mary River 27 Chidliak

23 18 20 21

5

22

Continued on page 32

craton are similar, if not identical, to those of the Superior craton in the gold-prolific regions of Ontario and Quebec, but are relatively unexplored.

Most of the gold exploration work in the Slave craton has focused on the Yellowknife Gold greenstone belt, which hosts the historic 7.6 million oz. Con and 5.5 million oz. Giant gold mines, located outside the capital city of Yellowknife, N.W.T. TerraX Minerals (TSXV: TXR) is exploring the rest of the belt, whereas 200 km north, Nighthawk Gold (TSXV: NHK) is uncovering a goldrich greenstone belt at its Colomac property.

In Nunavut’s portion of the Slave craton, major gold projects include TMAC Resources’ (TSX: TMR) 4.9 million oz. gold Hope Bay project and Sabina Gold & Silver’s (TSX: SBB) 5.3 million oz. gold Back River project.

While most explorers focus on gold and diamonds in the Slave, volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) base metal deposits are also known to occur, such as Glencore’s Hackett River in Nunavut.

Churchill’s overlooked greenstone belts

The eastern side of Slave is sutured against the Churchill province, a geological domain NORTHWEST TERRITORIES & NUNAVUT

28-35_2018 Focus on Canada_NWT&Nuna.indd 31

31

2018-04-09 6:06 PM

NWT & NUNAVUT |

geology & projects

Agnico Eagle Mines’ Meliadine gold project under development in Nunavut. CREDIT: AGNICO EAGLE MINES

Ascot Resources is a gold and silver focused exploration company with a portfolio of advanced and grassroots projects in the Golden Triangle region of British Columbia. The company’s flagship Premier Project is a near-term high-grade advanced exploration project with large upside potential. Ascot is poised to be the next Golden Triangle producer.

Continuing British Columbia’s Golden Legacy TSX.V: AOT 32

28-35_2018 Focus on Canada_NWT&Nuna.indd 32

Ascot Resources Ltd.

1550 - 505 Burrard Street Vancouver, BC, V7X 1M5 T. 778-725-1060 F. 778-725-1070 info@ascotgold.com www.ascotgold.com

divided into two cratons: Rae and Hearne.

Rae and Hearne are separated by the enigmatic, 1.9-billion-year-old Snowbird tectonic zone, which stretches northeast for 2,800 km from the Canadian Cordillera, before disappearing beneath Hudson Bay. Geologists believe that the Rae-Hearne cratons are geologically similar to the Slave craton – being composed of a mix of greenstone belts and intrusives – but are slightly younger in age, and covered more extensively with Proterozoic-aged sedimentary rocks.

The Rae craton is more deformed than the Hearne, having been hit repeatedly on both sides by cratons from 2.6 billion to 1.9 billion years ago. These events intensely metamorphosed parts of the crust, and any pre-existing metal deposits that are common in greenstone belts would have been obliterated by the immense pressures and temperatures.

Most of the known gold occurrences in the Churchill occurred during deformation related to the assembly of the supercontinent, 1.9 to 1.8 billion years ago – almost 1 billion years after the main gold mineralizing events in the Slave or Superior craton.

In this younger event, gold-rich fluids – drawn from the partial melting of crust during metamorphism, or remobilized from older deposits – circulated through structures until it found chemical traps, Continued on page 34 Focus on Canada 2018

2018-04-09 6:06 PM

The Kelvin camp at Kennady Diamond’s Kennady North diamond exploration project in the Northwest Territories.

CREDIT: KENNADY DIAMONDS

snapshot AURYN RESOURCES • COMMITTEE BAY Gold AURYN RESOURCES (TSX: AUG) is pressing forward exploring its wholly-owned Committee Bay gold project in

Pt

Co Mo

Nunavut.

The property hosts the high-grade Three Bluffs gold deposit which contains more than 1.2 million oz. gold (indicated and inferred), all grading more than 7.6 grams gold per tonne.

Since updating that resource in mid-2017, the company has not stopped drilling the deposit and announced several promising intercepts. Auryn will keep up its efforts in 2018 to both expand and better understand the deposit.

Auryn has identified several other targets at Committee Bay, and has recently announced a follow up, step-out drill campaign around the Aiviq discovery hole (12.2 metres grading 4.7 grams gold per tonne) for the spring 2018.

Elsewhere in Nunavut, the company has identified eight priority gold anomalies from a regional till sampling program at its Gibson MacQuoid gold property. In the summer of 2018 the firm plans to advance the anomalies to a drill-ready stage by conducting infill till sampling, boulder mapping and ground magnetics.

NORTHWEST TERRITORIES & NUNAVUT

28-35_2018 Focus on Canada_NWT&Nuna.indd 33

33

2018-04-09 6:06 PM

NWT & NUNAVUT |

geology & projects

snapshot NIGHTHAWK GOLD • INDIN LAKE Gold Junior explorer NIGHTHAWK GOLD (TSX: NHK) continues to ambitiously drill multiple promising gold targets at its 899 sq. km Indin Lake advanced exploration property in the Northwest Territories.

In 2017 the junior drilled more than 21,000 metres, and plans another 25,000 metres in 2018. The property is anchored by the Colomac project, where a 2.1 million oz. gold resource (grading 1.64 grams gold per tonne) was tallied in 2013. Nighthawk plans to release a resource update in the first half of 2018.

Earlier this year Nighthawk released impressive drill results from the Grizzly Bear deposit where it hit 12.6 metres of 4.96 grams gold per tonne, and from the Leta Arm area, where it intersected 9.55 metres of 4.03 grams gold. Leta arm is one of six regional priority exploration targets outside of Colomac, five of which have been drilled.

The company has also engaged in some metallurgical test work on a high grade sample from Colomac, which

A drill rig at TerraX Minerals’ Yellowknife City gold project in the Northwest Territories.

showed the rock is amenable to all

CREDIT: TERRAX MINERALS

standard gold recovery methods, with gold recovery rates of up to 98%.

such as banded-iron formations (BIF), and deposited the metals.

The most significant examples of Proterozoic-aged, BIF-hosted gold deposits are found where the Snowbird slices through the Rae craton. These deposits include Agnico Eagle Mines’ (TSX: AEM; NYSE: AEM) 3.5 million oz. Meadowbank mine in south-central Nunavut, its 4 million oz.

Amaruq exploration project, 55 km north of Meadowbank, and its 3.4 million oz. Meliadine deposit in southeastern Nunavut.

Aside from Amaruq, the most advanced exploration project in the Rae craton is Auryn Resources’ (TSX: AUG) Committee Bay, 180 km northeast of Meadowbank. The project occurs within a weakly metamorphosed section of the 300 km long 34

28-35_2018 Focus on Canada_NWT&Nuna.indd 34

Committee Bay greenstone belt, home to the 2.5 million oz. gold Three Bluffs BIFhosted deposit.

In some parts of Nunavut, the BIF is a minable resource of iron. Baffinland Iron Mines’ Mary River in northern Baffin Island is home to one of the highest-grade iron mines in the world, with reserves of 365 million tonnes of 65% iron.

Compared to the Rae craton, Hearn hosts few known gold occurrences, despite its greenstone belts being well-preserved and sheltered from intense metamorphism.

The most advanced project is Nordgold’s (LON: NORD) 742,000 oz. gold Pistol Bay project along the coast in southern Nunavut, nearby the historic North Rankin Inlet magmatic nickel-copper deposit.

A new generation of deposits

Once deformation came to a halt, sedi-

ments were eroded off the mountain peaks and deposited into deep basins, preserved today as the Athabasca basin in Saskatchewan and the Thelon basin that spans the N.W.T. and Nunavut border. About 1.5 billion years ago, uranium-rich fluids flushed into the Snowbird tectonic zone and deposited plumes of the metal into the Athabasca and Thelon basins. In Nunavut, the Thelon hosts Orano’s 134 million lb.

U3O8 Kiggavik project.

Through the Paleozoic to about 70 million years ago, shallow seas inundated the lowlands, depositing blankets of carbonates, shales and sandstones. During a resurgence of deformation in the north, called the Innuitian orogen, immense pressures squeezed metal-rich fluids out of the shales and flushed them into the carbonates. The deformation created two Mississippi Valley Type lead-zinc deposits: Polaris in northFocus on Canada 2018

2018-04-09 6:06 PM

snapshot FORTUNE MINERALS • NICO ern Nunavut and Pine Point in southern N.W.T, which both formed about 360 million years ago.

During the onset of deformation of the Canadian Cordillera, 180 million years ago, some of the sediments and ancient crust in the west were uplifted into a vast mountain range. Today, an arc-shaped segment of that range, known as the Mackenzie Mountains, straddles the Yukon and N.W.T. border.

The Mackenzie Mountains hold 55% of the world’s known reserves of tungsten and significant reserves of lead and zinc, with major deposits including the skarn-related Cantung tungsten deposit and Canadian Zinc’s (TSX: CZN) vein-hosted and Mississippi Valley Type Prairie Creek deposit in the N.W.T., and Selwyn-Chihong Mining’s sedimentary exhalative (SEDEX) Howard’s Pass zinc-lead deposit on the border.

Diamonds punch through the Trans-Hudson

About 150 million years ago, entangled blocks of undeformed Archean crust – found

Cobalt-gold-bismuth-copper FORTUNE MINERALS (TSX: FT) is seeking financing to develop its advanced NICO cobalt-gold-bismuth-copper project in the Northwest Territories, 160 km northwest of the territorial capital Yellowknife.

The project also encompasses a proposed refinery in Saskatchewan where the company would process material from the mine into saleable battery-grade cobalt chemicals.

Fortune is updating its 2014 feasibility study on NICO to reflect design developments, improvements and the rising cobalt price, among other variables. Since the last study was released, the government has agreed to build an all-season road which will pass within 50 km of the NICO deposit.

Fortune is interested in modelling a production rate of up to 30% higher than the 4.650 tonnes-per-day scenario outlined in 2014, among other changes. The company expects the updated feasibility study to be finalized by the end of Q2 2018.

The NICO deposit contains more than 33 million tonnes of reserves, containing 1.1 million oz. gold, 82.3 million lb. cobalt, 102.1 million lb. bismuth and 27.2 million lb. copper.

within the remnants of an ancient mountain chain called the Trans-Hudson orogen – provided a pathway for diamond-bearing

kimberlites. Examples of which are found at Peregrine Diamonds’(TSX: PGD) Chidliak project in southern Baffin Island. b

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AGM_OGCA.1/2 pg.ad.03.18.final.indd 1 NUNAVUT

28-35_2018 Focus on Canada_NWT&Nuna.indd 35

35 2018-03-26 12:31 PM

2018-04-09 6:06 PM

PRAIRIE PROVINCES |

data dashboard ACTIVE MINES

FACTS

PRIMARY PRODUCT

PROVINCES: Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan

30

POPULATION: 6,443,892 AREA: 1,780,651 km2

ZINC: 2 COPPER: 1 URANIUM: 1

COAL: 11 POTASH: 9 GOLD: 4 NICKEL: 2

POPULATION DENSITY:

3.62 persons per km2 Source: Statistics Canada, 2016

Source: Mining Intelligence, 2018

MINERAL PRODUCTION TOTAL VALUE

6.2B

$

POTASH

$3,732M

URANIUM

NICKEL

GOLD

ZINC

COPPER

SILVER

$1,249M

$318M

$302M

$286M

$272M

$27M

Source: Natural Resources Canada, 2016. Excludes confidential values for coal, cobalt and PGMs.

EXPLORATION & DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS

OTHER/POLYMETALLIC 102

URANIUM 141

(Including chromium, cobalt, copper, diamonds, gold, graphite, iron ore, nickel, lead, lithium, magnesium, molybdenum, potash, PGMs, REEs, silver, tantalum, uranium, vanadium, zinc) REEs 5 GRAPHITE 3 LITHIUM 13 COAL 13

TOTAL

403

NICKEL 15 POTASH 20

GOLD 42

DIAMONDS 20 Source: Mining Intelligence, 2018

EXPLORATION & DEPOSIT APPRAISAL EXPENDITURES

URANIUM $160.8M

TOTAL

292.8M

$

DIAMONDS $7.2M IRON ORE $0.3M OTHER $74.7M

BASE METALS $15.4M PRECIOUS METALS $34.4M

Source, Natural Resources Canada, 2016

36

36-40_2018 Focus on Canada_Prairie.indd 36

Focus on Canada 2018

2018-04-09 6:07 PM

PRAIRIE PROVINCES |

geology & projects

Canada’s promising prairie provinces From Thompson and Flin Flon to the Athabasca basin and beyond

B

eneath the rolling prairie landscape of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba is a juncture point between three of earth’s earliest cratons – Superior, Rae and Hearne – brought together some 1.9 billion years ago during the assembly of the supercontinent Columbia.

As the cratons collided, the deformation was so intense that it produced a 3,000 km long, Himalayan-scale mountain chain – known as the Trans-Hudson orogen – that has since been eroded down to its core.

Many of the world-class metal districts in the Prairies stem from the events surrounding the Trans-Hudson orogen, but others were formed long before, when the cratons were just disparate fragments of some of earth’s oldest continental crust.

PRAIRIE PROVINCES

36-40_2018 Focus on Canada_Prairie.indd 37

Setting the stage

The Superior craton dates back 4 billion years ago in the Archean eon, when immense volcanism began to dot the earth’s surface with chains of volcanic islands.

Once plate tectonics emerged 3 billion years ago, the islands were driven together into massive blocks of continental crust, and the rocks were deformed and variably metamorphosed into what’s known as “greenstone belts.”

Some of the world’s largest and oldest accumulations of greenstone belts are found in the Superior craton, which extends across Ontario and Quebec before terminating in eastern Manitoba. The belts are rich with Archean-aged orogenic gold, base-metal rich volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS)

The headframe at Hudbay Minerals’ 777 copper-zinc mine in Flin Flon, Manitoba.

CREDIT: HUDBAY MINERALS

and magmatic nickel-copper and chromium deposits, with notable examples found within the 150 million oz. gold Abitibi greenstone belt across Ontario and Quebec.

Another world class district, the 31.4 million oz. Red Lake greenstone belt in Ontario, extends for 100 km along geological strike to Klondex Mines’ (TSX: KDX; NYSE-MKT: KLDX) True North gold mine in Manitoba, where past production and current resources amount to 3.2 million oz. gold.

In northeast Manitoba, a lesser known greenstone belt named Oxford-Stull is mostly recognized for Yamana Gold’s (TSX: YRI; NYSE: AUY) 3.6 million oz. gold Monument Bay deposit, but also has granitic pegmatites that are rich with technology metals, such as Continued on page 38

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2018-04-09 6:07 PM

PRAIRIE PROVINCES |

geology & projects

Klondex Mines’ True North gold mine near Bissett, Manitoba.

CREDIT: KLONDEX MINES

beryllium, lithium, tantalum and niobium.

Magmatic nickel-copper deposits, formed out of metal-rich sills and dikes that once fed Superior’s ancient volcanoes, are prolific in the Bird River greenstone belt in southern Manitoba. The belt hosts the past-producing Dumbarton and Maskwa West nickel-copper deposits, which produced 2.7 million tonnes of 1.02% nickel.

Before the Trans-Hudson

Sitting between the Superior and the Hearne craton, some 2 billion years ago, was a vast ocean called Manikewan that contained extensive belts of submarine volcanoes. The volcanic activity spewed metal-rich fluids from deep-sea hydrothermal vents, which in turn peppered the seafloor with VMS deposits.

Just before the onset of the Trans-Hudson orogen, sedimentary rocks that were deposited along Superior’s northwestern

coastal shelf began to rift open. The extension triggered a surge in nickel-copper rich dikes and sills into a 400 km long, 10 to 35 km wide belt known today as Manitoba’s world class Thomspon Nickel Belt (TNB).

The top three deposits in the TNB –

Thompson, Birchtree and Pipe – have produced more than 150 million tonnes of 2.3% nickel, 0.2% copper, 0.1% cobalt and 0.83 gram per tonne platinum group metals since 1961.

The prolific package of rocks – called the

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adjacent to Cameco’s world-class McArthur River uranium mine, in northern Saskatchewan’s Athabasca basin.

Cameco is carrying out a 6,200-metre drill campaign in Q1 2018 at West McArthur to follow up on a discovery announced in November 2017.

The company has also been acquiring and developing base metal properties in prolific regions in northern Manitoba. In March, CanAlaska announced it has staked new claims (3,744 hectares) in the Thompson Nickel Belt, close to the historic Manibridge nickel-copper mine. In total CanAlaska holds over 16,000 hectares in the region.

In late 2017 CanAlaska staked three claims in a newlyopened area for staking in the Athabasca basin, which contain kimberlite-style targets shown in electromagnetic surveying. The company controls more than 85,000 hectares of diamond claims in the Prairie provinces and inked three option deals with diamond explorers in 2016.

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Focus on Canada 2018

2018-04-09 6:07 PM

Examining core samples at NexGen Energy’s Arrow uranium project in northern Saskatchewan.

CREDIT: NEXGEN ENERGY

12 million and 55 million tonnes ore at 1.4-2% copper and zinc, and up to 0.5 gram gold per tonne. The camp also has 5 million oz. in untapped gold resources, with the biggest deposits to date including Alamos Gold’s (TSX: AGI; NYSE: AGI) 4.7 million oz. gold MacLellan and Farley Lake deposits.

The historic Lynn Lake mine was the third-largest nickel producer in Canada before being surpassed by Vale’s (NYSE: VALE) Voisey’s Bay nickel-copper mine in 2005. Between 1953 and 1976, Lynn Lake produced over 22 million tonnes of 1.02% nickel and 0.5% copper.

Superior Boundary Zone – extends northeastwards in north-central Manitoba, under Hudson Bay, and skylights at the Raglan nickel-copper camp in northern Quebec.

Similar rocks are also found in northeastern Manitoba’s Fox River belt, but explorers have yet to define an economic nickel-copper deposit.

largest gold-only mine in the province, having produced over 1 million oz. gold since 1991.

In the Lynn Lake camp, the most productive VMS deposits include the Fox Lake and Ruttan deposits, which produced

Uranium in the Athabascan basin

Erosion off the Trans-Hudson landmass deposited basins of Proterozoic-aged sediments seen today in Saskatchewan’s Athabasca Basin. The basin overlies a suture zone Continued on page 40

The Flin Flon camp daylights

As deformation of the Trans-Hudson ensued, the ocean between them began to close and the volcanic crust was either subducted or squeezed into a mountainous belt, giving way to a variety of Proterozoic-aged greenstone belts riddled with intrusives.

Remnants of Manikewan’s VMS deposits are seen today in the Flin Flon-Snow Lake belt along the border of Manitoba and Saskatchewan. The world-class district produced 180 million tonnes of copper-zinc ore from 31 mines, including the Flin Flon mine, where resources exceeded 62.4 million tonnes of 2.2% copper, 4.1% zinc and 2.7 grams gold per tonne.

The Flin Flon-Snow Lake greenstone belt extends southwestwards into Saskatchewan, where it’s called the Glennie and La Ronge.

It then bends northwards back onto itself, and trends into the Lynn Lake district in Manitoba.

The Glennie and La Ronge belts in Saskatchewan are popular stops for gold hunters. Small historical mines straddling the highway have together produced 600,000 oz. gold over the past 30 years. SSR Mining’ (TSX: SSRM; NASDAQ: SSRM) Seabee and Santoy mining complex is the PRAIRIE PROVINCES

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The Largest Gold Resource in Atlantic Canada

The Largest Gold with Resource in Atlantic Canada 2.9Moz gold resource significant blue-sky potential of gold at 1.88 g/t M&I potential 2.9Moz gold1,847,000 resourceoz. with significant blue-sky 1,012,000 oz. of gold at 1.65 g/t Inferred 1,847,000 ofon gold at 1.88 g/t M&Irelease 88% Open Pit andoz.

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Contact: Christopher Haldane, IR Manager chaldane@marathon-gold.com

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2018-04-09 6:07 PM

geology & projects

PRAIRIE PROVINCES |

SELECT DEPOSITS, DISTRICTS AND GEOLOGY IN ALBERTA, SASKATCHEWAN AND MANITOBA

2 1

7

3

9

8 4

5

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Buffalo Head Hills Athabasca Basin Glennie-La Ronge Flin Flon Candle Lake Fort a la Corne Lynn Lake Thompson Nickel Belt Fox River Monument Bay Rice Lake Bird River

10

6

11 12

Kilometres

50

Talmora Diamond -125°

Inc.

The Prairies since the Paleozoic

-120°

70°

-130°

between the Rae and Hearne cratons, whereby structures became a conduit for uranium-rich fluids some 1.5 billion years ago. The basement-hosted structures, and where they pierce the overlying sediments, created a plethora of uranium deposits that today accounts for 20% of global supply.

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in Bas ary nd Bou

Kilometres

200

70°

0

Cretaceous Basin

Arctic Ocean Proterozoic

SEARCH FOR

68°

Paleozoic

Lena West

68°

Talmora

LARGE “SUPER-DEEP” -130°

-125°

Great Bear Lake

-120°

CSE : TAI Shares outstanding: 69,611,801 Contact: Raymond Davies Phone: 416 491 6771 Email: rayal.davies@sympatico.ca Website: www.talmoradiamond.com 40

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66°

DIAMONDS

Cretaceous Basin

B Bo asin un da ry

66°

Proterozoic

The core of ancestral North America continued to erode through the Paleozoic until the ancient mountain chains were eventually levelled. Erosion picked up again 180 million years ago as terranes began to accrete onto Canada’s western margin, producing the current-day Canadian Cordillera.

Blankets of sediments, coupled with deposition from ancient seas, buried parts of Alberta and beyond with sediments up to 5 km thick. Even to this day, the deep burial transforms any organic layers into oil, which is then moved along with vast groundwater brines for hundreds of kilometres before being caught in impervious traps.

In northern Alberta, extremely permeable quartz-rich sand – sourced from a Ganges-sized river system that spanned Canada 90 million years ago – eventually became today’s prolific oilsands deposits, which are the third-largest oil reserve on the planet.

About 55 million years ago, volatilerich magmas punched up rapidly through the thick Archean to Proterozoic-aged cratons, and erupted at surface in the shape of cylindrical pipes.

Some of the kimberlites picked up diamonds during their ascent, depositing them in the more established Fort de la Corne, Sturgeon Lake and Candle Lake kimberlite fields in the central parts of Saskatchewan. Some diamond-bearing kimberlites are also found in the Buffalo Head hills region of Alberta. b Focus on Canada 2018

2018-04-09 6:08 PM

EAST COAST PROVINCES |

data dashboard ACTIVE MINES

FACTS

PRIMARY PRODUCT

PROVINCES: New Brunswick, Newfoundland and

13

Labrador, Nova Scotia, Price Edward Island POPULATION: 2,333,322 AREA: 500,513 km2

GOLD: 5 COAL: 3 COPPER: 1 IRON ORE: 1

POPULATION DENSITY:

4.66 persons per km2 Source: Statistics Canada, 2016

NICKEL: 1 POTASH: 1 ZINC: 1

Source: Mining Intelligence, 2018

MINERAL PRODUCTION TOTAL VALUE

2.7B

$

IRON ORE

NICKEL

COPPER

ZINC

GOLD

LEAD

SILVER

POTASH

$1,597M

$702M

$240M

$98M

$35M

$30M

$23M

$4M

Source: Natural Resources Canada, 2016. Excludes confidential data for coal, cobalt, and PGMs.

EXPLORATION & DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS

OTHER/POLYMETALLIC 120

GOLD 69

(Including cobalt, copper, diamonds, gold, graphite, iron ore, nickel, lead, lithium, molybdenum, potash, niobium, PGMs, REEs, silver, tantalum, tin, tungsten, uranium, zinc)

TOTAL

292

BASE METALS

55 REEs 9 IRON ORE 27

URANIUM 12

Source: Mining Intelligence, 2018

EXPLORATION & DEPOSIT APPRAISAL EXPENDITURES

PRECIOUS METALS $14.7M

BASE METALS

$19.6M

TOTAL

42.4M

$

IRON ORE $2.8M URANIUM $1M OTHER $6.8M

Source, Natural Resources Canada, 2016

EAST COAST PROVINCES

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EAST COAST PROVINCES |

geology & projects

The geology underlying the quest for minerals on Canada’s East Coast

Anaconda Mining’s Point Rousse open-pit gold mine in Newfoundland’s Baie Verte gold district.

CREDIT: ANACONDA MINING

Continental collision set the stage for rich deposits in the Atlantic Canada

T

he geology of eastern Canada largely owes itself to a series of events that began 350 million years ago, when the Iapetus Ocean (analogous to today’s Atlantic Ocean) closed and ancestral North America collided with the North African craton to make the supercontinent Pangaea.

The deformation triggered the birth of the Appalachian orogen, a 3,000-km-long Himalayan-scale mountain belt that stretched from northern Alabama in the U.S., to Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, southern Quebec and beyond.

Over its more than 100-million-year

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tectonic history, volcanogenic massive sulphide deposits that once peppered the ocean floor of Iapatus were thrusted upwards, and erosion off the towering land mass supplied enough sediments to basins to generate metal-rich brines that would later deposit lead and zinc within carbonate rocks.

At the root of the mountain range, melting of crust created large volumes of granitic magma – some of which carried tungsten and molybdenum – and gold-rich hydrothermal fluids. The fluids travelled upwards through the crust and deposited metals in chemically or structurally-favourable rocks, forming a plethora of orogenic-style gold deposits.

Deformation eventually came to a halt, and about 180 million years ago, the present-day North Atlantic Ocean rifted open and the African continent broke away – albeit leaving behind some continental fragments on the east coast of Newfoundland.

Over time, the Appalachians were levelled by erosion, and a number of worldclass metal districts were exposed across eastern Canada.

Treasures at the bottom of the ocean

The vestiges of Iapetus’ oceanic crust are where eastern explorers like to hunt for VMS deposits. The most significant camps Focus on Canada 2018

2018-04-09 6:09 PM

snapshot ANACONDA MINING • POINT ROUSSE & GOLDBORO Gold Gold producer ANACONDA MINING (TSX: ANX) is scheduled to deliver 16,000 oz. gold to market in 2018 from its Point Rousse project in Newfoundland, while busily working to more than triple its annual production in the next three to five years.

The junior is simultaneously developing its Goldboro project in Nova Scotia, where it has tallied resources of more than 800,000 oz. gold and recently completed a PEA, which modelled an operation producing 41,000 oz. gold per year. The operation would require $89 million in up-front capital and produce gold at $797 per oz (all-in sustaining costs).

Anaconda has begun work on a feasibility study for Goldboro and will carry out a bulk sample, as well as expansion and infill drilling at the property this year.

The company is targeting 2021 for production at Goldboro, which will give Anaconda 50,000 to 60,000 oz. of gold production annually, including gold from Point Rousse.

Other notable VMS deposits in Newfoundland include Teck Resources’ (TSX: TCK.B; NYSE: TCK) recently-closed Duck Pond copper-zinc mine and Rambler Metals and Mining’s (TSXV:RAB) Ming

copper-gold mine, whereas the only genuine example of VMS in Nova Scotia is the Stirling deposit in southeast Cape Breton Island, also known as the Mindamar mine.

Continued on page 44

Sampling at Marathon Gold’s Valentine Lake gold project in Newfoundland.

CREDIT: MARATHON GOLD

discovered to date include the Buchan’s VMS camp in west-central Newfoundand and the Bathurst mining camp in New Brunswick.

The Bathurst camp is New Brunswick’s flagship metal and mining district, having generated over $27.5 billion from zinc production for over a half century. The camp hosts 45 VMS deposits, but most historical production came from Glencore’s (LSE: GLEN) Brunswick No. 12 mine, which produced 136.6 million tonnes of 8.7% zinc, 3.4% lead, 0.4% copper and 102 grams silver per tonne between 1964 and 2013.

The cluster of deposits in Newfoundland’s Buchan’s camp produced 16.2 million tonnes of 14.5% zinc, 7.6% lead, 1.3% copper, 1.4 grams gold per tonne and 126 grams silver between 1927 and 1983.

EAST COAST PROVINCES

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EAST COAST PROVINCES |

geology & projects

The port site at Vale’s Voisey’s Bay nickel-cobalt-copper mine in Labrador.

CREDIT: VALE

When metal-rich basinal brines meet carbonates

Basins of sedimentary rocks deposited along the edge of ancestral North America served as favourable traps for metal-rich brines that flushed along basin-bounding structures during the Appalachian orogen. Although a plethora of carbonate-hosted lead-zinc deposits exist across eastern Canada, the most significant district occurs in the Gays River area of central Nova Scotia. The district hosts ScoZinc Mining (TSXV: SZM) historic Scotia mine, formerly known as Gays River, which hosts measured and indicated resources of 7.9 million tonnes at 3.3% zinc and 1.7% lead, and an inferred resource of 3.7 million tonnes at 2.4% zinc and 1.5% lead.

Emerging gold camps

In eastern Canada, gold is largely mined as a by-product in VMS operations, but the yellow metal is also found along region-

al-trending structures that pierce through the sedimentary or volcanic terranes.

In 2018 Atlantic Gold (TSXV: AGB) achieved commercial production at its Moose River Consolidated gold project, 110 km from Halifax, Nova Scotia. It expects to produce 82,000 to 90,000 oz. gold in 2018.

Anaconda Mining (TSX: ANX) is also mining gold in the region, targeting 16,000 oz. of gold production this year at its Point Rousse project, 6 km northeast of Baie Verte, Newfoundland.

As for exploration, a number of gold projects through central Newfoundland are showing promise, including Marathon Gold (TSX: MOZ) at its 1.3 million oz. gold Valentine Lake project and First Mining Finance (TSXV: FF) at its 954,000 oz. gold Hope Brook project and former mine.

Nova Scotia’s gold inventory, from existing resource estimates, totals 1.8 million oz. gold as measured and indicated, and 2.5 million oz. gold as inferred. Major projects include the former producing Dufferin gold mine.

In New Brunswick, intrusions drove gold-rich fluids along a number of structural corridors, such as the Annidale gold belt where Wolfden Resources’ (TSXV: Continued on page 46

Atlantic Gold’s Moose River Consolidated gold mine in Nova Scotia.

CREDIT: ATLANTIC GOLD

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Focus on Canada 2018

2018-04-09 6:09 PM

SELECT DEPOSITS, DISTRICTS AND GEOLOGY IN NEWFOUNDLAND & LABRADOR, NOVA SCOTIA & NEW BRUNSWICK

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2

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3

Kilometres

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Geological Survey of Canada/Lesley Stokes

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1 Voisey’s Bay 2 Michelin 3 Carol Lake 4 Point Rousse 5 Ming 6 Moosehead 7 Buchans 8 Duck Pond 9 Valentine Lake 10 Staghorn 11 Hope Brook 12 Bathurst 13 Sisson 14 Fire tower 15 Clarence Stream

16 Gays River 17 Touquoy 18 Mooseland 19 Dufferin 20 Goldboro 21 Jubilee 22 Mindamar

10 11 Underground development at Trevali Mining’s Caribou zinc mine in New Brunswick.

CREDIT: TREVALI MINING

21 22 12 20 16 17

13

19 18

14

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vancouver

calgary

kitchener-waterloo

toronto

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regina

london

markham

montréal

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edmonton

guelph

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2018-04-09 6:09 PM

EAST COAST PROVINCES |

geology & projects

WLF) is exploring its 432,000 oz. gold Clarence Stream deposit.

Metal-rich magma takes precedence

The complexity of volcanic arc and continental plate interactions during the Appalachian orogen also generated a variety of structurally-controlled, intrusion-related ore deposits in New Brunswick.

Early exploration targeted tungsten-molybdenum and tin-indium-zinc mineralization in the province’s southwest. The region is known for the Fire Tower molybdenum-tungsten deposit at Adex Mining’s (TSXV: ADE) Mount Pleasant property, which produced 2,000 tonnes of 70% tungsten concentrate between 1983 and 1985.

Similar tungsten-molybdenum mineralization styles also occur in west-central New Brunswick at Northcliff Resources’ (TSX: NCF) Sisson Brook deposit.

Labrador: the remains of an ancient continent

The geology of Labrador is much older than the Appalachian orogen, with rocks dating

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snapshot MARATHON GOLD • VALENTINE LAKE

Gold

MARATHON GOLD’S (TSX: MOZ) advanced-stage Valentine Lake project contains four shallow gold deposits in Newfoundland. Early this year the company completed a resource estimate for the project, which defined 1.8 million oz. gold (measured and indicated) at 1.88 grams gold per tonne, plus 1 million oz. gold (inferred) at 1.65 grams per tonne. Metallurgical test work on the rock at Valentine Lake has shown 97% gold recoveries by flotation.

The junior is busy carrying out an aggressive 60,000-metre drilling campaign, aimed at further expanding the resource. So far, drilling has yielded a stream of notable high-grade intercepts from previously untested areas around the known deposits.

At the same time Marathon is scheduled to complete a preliminary economic assessment in Q2 2018. Following the PEA, the company will begin work on a prefeasibility study.

The Valentine Lake property is well serviced with year-round road access and sits close to existing power lines.

back to 4 billion years – some of the oldest on earth. Labrador is part of the much larger Churchill province that extends into Quebec, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, and represents a piece of conti-

nental crust belonging to ancestral North America.

Exploration in Labrador has mostly focused on two main areas: the Labrador Trough in western Labrador, and around Vale’s (NYSE: VALE) world-class Voisey’s Bay nickel-copper-cobalt deposit in the north.

The Labrador Trough is a 1,100 km long sedimentary basin spanning the Labrador-Quebec border that formed 2.3 billion years ago, when the oceans began to teem with oxygen-producing bacteria. The oxygen combined with iron-rich sediments on the seafloor and created vast iron deposits that today account for over 80 million tonnes of iron ore resources.

The world-class Voisey’s Bay magmatic nickel-copper-cobalt deposit in Labrador started out as deep-seated magma 1.3 billion years ago, and squeezed through a suture zone between the Churchill province and another craton called the Nain.

The melts, which contained a high amount of dissolved metals, devoured sulphur-rich country rocks during its ascent and pooled in quiescent magma chambers, allowing time for the sulphur to scavenge the metals. The melt eventually cooled, precipitating layers of massive sulphides that today account for 36.1 million tonnes at 1.1% copper and 2.2% nickel in proven and probable reserves and 382,800 tonnes copper and 548,000 tonnes nickel of production since 2005. b

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Shaping the mine of the future How can the decisions of today help to build the mine of tomorrow?

We’re here to help. Connect with us to discuss how at www.pwc.com/ca/mining

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