Quebec prospectors gather for rendez-vous

“Perseverance” may well have been the unofficial theme of this year’s joint convention of the Quebec Prospectors Association (APQ) and the Quebec Association of Professional Geologists and Geophysicists, being both the name of the province’s most exciting grassroots project and one of the qualities displayed by the province’s exploration community over the past year.

Noranda‘s (NOR-T) Matagami exploration office won the APQ’s “entrepreneur-of-the-year” award for their discovery of the Perseverance zinc-copper-gold-silver deposit within the prolific Matagami mining camp.

In quick succession, two more lenses were found within a few hundred metres of the Perseverance lens, and were named Equinox and Perseverance-West. Inferred resources at the Perseverance lens stand at 947,000 tonnes grading 19.12% zinc, 1.37% copper, 0.4 gram gold per tonne and 32 grams silver. Inferred resources at Equinox are pegged at 2.6 million tonnes of 16.6% zinc, 1.1% copper, 0.36 gram gold and 34 grams silver. Resources for P-West have not yet been released.

The lenses were found by drilling electromagnetic (EM) anomalies that lay beneath some 35 metres of overburden. Noranda geologist Grant Arnold says more EM anomalies remain to be tested in the area.

Noranda is cracking the whip over its exploration crew at Perseverance, with six drill rigs in operation and some 30,000 metres of drilling having now been completed. The company expects to have wrapped up its drilling campaign by year-end. It also hopes to complete a feasibility study by the end of the first quarter of 2001, just one year after the collaring of the discovery hole.

Mining the lenses could be relatively cheap. Lying only 30 to 250 metres from surface, all three lenses could potentially be accessed from a single ramp, with ore being trucked along an existing paved road to Noranda’s MLM concentrator, just 6 km away.

Meanwhile, Quebec’s junior explorers continue to plug away in search of a wide variety of commodities, including diamonds, gold, platinum-group metals, nickel, copper, zinc and speciality items such as niobium, titanium and magnesium.

Twin Mining (TWG-T) won the “prospector-of-the-year” award in recognition for its swift advancement of its Torngat diamond project in the Ungava region of northernmost Quebec. The junior remains well-financed and is now considering following up this summer’s mapping and mini-bulk sampling of the prospect’s 50-km-long dyke system with a larger 500-tonne sampling program.

While still struggling at the corporate level, McWatters Mining (MCW-T) won the “developer-of-the-year” award for its efforts in revolutionizing the understanding of the reserve and resource base at its flagship Sigma-Lamaque gold complex in Val d’Or.

Farther east in the Abitibi, South-Malartic Exploration (MSU-M) hopes to mimic McWatters’ technical success through the expansion and reinterpretation of gold mineralization at the Croinor property. A new resource estimate is due to be released soon.

Another exploration play being watched is Virginia Gold Mines‘ (VIA-T) Gayot nickel-platinum-palladium project situated in the Caniapiscau Reservoir area, a possible extension of the La Grande belt. Virginia has teamed up at Gayot with Britain’s Billiton, which is funding this year’s $1.2-million exploration program in partial fulfillment of a $4.5-million option agreement. This fall, Virginia will be drilling about 20 shallow holes into an ultramafic unit that has contained high-grade nickel, platinum and palladium values in hand samples. Previous drilling at Gayot last winter had tested EM targets that proved to be a barren exhalite horizon.

Globex Mining Enterprises (GMX-T) has launched a drilling campaign at its Lyndhurst volcanogenic-massive-sulphide discovery near Rouyn-Noranda. Downhole geophysical surveying indicates that massive sulphides extend down-plunge to the southwest and up-plunge to the northeast. Quebec’s Ministre des ressources naturelles has granted Globex $280,000 for work at Lyndhurst, allowing Globex to budget expenditures of at least $350,000 for the project this fall.