General News and Comments Female professionals do best in Nova

Women still make up less than one per cent of the workforce in the Nova Scotia mining industry, although they are slowly becoming more involved, Cape Breton Development Corp. coal geologist Heather MacLeod-LaFosse told members of the Mining Society of Nova Scotia at their centennial meeting recently at Keltic Lodge in Cape Breton.

In her talk on Women at the Face — Pioneers in Nova Scotia Mining, Ms MacLeod LaFosse said “high unemployment and strong mining traditions have been deterrents for women entering the mining industry in eastern Canada in general and Nova Scotia in particular.” However, the percentage of female professionals in Nova Scotia’s mining industry is significantly higher than in any other province in Canada.

Before 1979, the Cape Breton Development Corp. did not allow women to work underground except as nurses, because federal regulations prohibited employment of women underground. Even though the Canadian Human Rights Act removed that barrier, the number of women employed in Nova Scotia mines has been slow to increase, due in part to an oversupply of unemployed trained men.

“In Nova Scotia, 43% of the mining companies now operating or doing active exploration here have hired females, and all seem to be very pleased with thei r performance,” Ms MacLeod-LaFosse said. When women perform their jobs well, they are usually accepted quite willingly by their co-workers, she noted.

Nearly one-quarter of Atlantic Canada’s graduates in geological sciences are women, as are about 1/10th of the graduates in mining engineering. Some of the non- traditional occupations in mining now performed by women include mill operator, chemical engineer, coal sampler, surveyor, metallurgical lab technician and environmental technologist. Basic prospecting

Avard Hudgins, vice-president of Acadia Mineral Ventures and president of mex Explorations, gave his views on the past and future of mineral exploration in eastern Canada. He noted that in the last 25 years, most Nova Scotia deposits have been found by basic prospecting, using valuable data on file in the library of the provincial department of Mines and Energy.

“Targets were developed, followed up by boot and hammer prospecting,” he said. “Celestite, barite, gold, silver, uranium, lead, zinc, tin and tungsten deposits have all been found this way.”

The future looks bright for more discoveries using geologists’ thinking about mineral environments and getting out in the field, Mr Hudgins said. “The challenge to the young geologist is to be able to maintain constant enthusiasm, tempered with cautious optimism, in recognizing favorable geologic environments.”

Unfortunately, modern technological developments will preclude the future existence of old-time geological methods, he said, but he still advocates using the “basics,” saying they will lead to new discoveries in new geological environments.

As examples, he mentioned platinum and platinum group metals associated with Triassic-age intrusions along the flank of the Fundy Rift system; high grade gold and silver deposits related to tin-rich granitic plutons in Yarmouth Cty.; gold, silver and platinum deposits related to iron carbonate deposits in the Cobequid Fault; gold and silver deposits associated with Lake Carboniferous granitic plutons in Pictou Cty.; and fossil placer gold deposits at the base of Carboniferous age conglomerate beds. Precious and base metals

John Amirault, vice-president mining at the Halifax geotechnical firm of Jacques, Whitford and Associates, discussed the future of precious and base metals in Nova Scotia. Although the province is not a leader in base metal production, he said, the natural attributes of the province, such as geological endowment and geographical location, as well as the government and social structure, can encourage the development of mineral-related operations. “This augurs well for the production of such commodities as zinc, lead, copper and tin in the future” he said.

“Extensive geological work by the government has indicated good potential for the production of base metals associated with the numerous `granitic’ intrusives,” he said, adding that Nova Scotia has high potential for the development of polymetallic orebodies similar to those of the Grand Massif in Europe. He cited the examples of the East Kemptville tin deposit, uranium occurrences at Millet Brook and pegmatitic occurrences at New Ross.

There is also potential for the development of porphyry-type base metal deposits in Cape Breton, Mr Amirault said. They would probably produce copper and zinc, molybdenum and industrial minerals such as topaz or mineral sands. Need advanced technology

“In order to effect economies of scale, mineral operations will be required to extract every possible valuable substance from their ores so as to optimize economic recovery from mining operations,” he said. Lower grade depos its would be operated using advanced technology which would permit efficient extraction of many valuable commodities from the same ores.

Mr Amirault was also positive in his prediction for the prospects of gold production in the province. “If current exploration activity is sustained, new properties will be developed, new exploration plays followed and new production will be gained from new geological environments,” he said.

After examining factors that influence metal prices, Mr Amirault concluded that the market for base metals down the road will be highly competitive, and the prospect for increased prices is not good. Therefore, marketing strategies will have to closely match supply with demand. Similarly, “survivors in the gold industry will be those which can tune their operations to the demands of the marketplace and respond quickly by increasing production with rising gold prices and reducing it when prices fall,” he said. Gold best opportunity

Gold offers the best opportunity for mineral development offshore Nova Scotia, said resource geologist Peter Hale of the ocean mining division of Energy, Mines and Resources Canada. Gold occurs in offshore sediments and may be present in economic proportions. In their paper, he and John Fowler of the Nova Scotia department of Mines and Energy anticipate that “offshore gold dredging could be a reality before the year 2000.

Sand and gravel have already been mined off Nova Scotia, and gold has been mined from some beaches in the province, such as The Ovens near Lunenburg. More recently, Seabright Resources located gold in the sediments off Isaacs Harbour and Country Harbour in 1980, and other companies have conducted field work both offshore and onshore.