Talk about a notable lack of success. In Canada, we produce tons of by-product silver, enough to rank us fourth in the world, and the Sudbury Basin coughs up sufficient platinum group metals to make Canada a bit player on the world’s PGM stage. But there are precious few “pure” silver mines and not one true PGM operation. Madeleine Mines’ Lac des Isles project in northwestern Ontario might be the first when and if it gets going. Among advanced exploration plays, gold is the single precious metal that has warranted any excitement.
It could be that the vagaries of metal markets, the slow pace of metallurgical advances and the capricious blessings of nature have conspired in varying degrees to rob Canadian mining of any noteworthy finds of PGM deposits and silver orebodies (with the very large exception of Cobalt, Ont., earlier in this century). In the modern era of Canadian precious metal mining, it seems we’re stuck (stuck]?) with gold.
Ah, but remember Harry Oakes, Sir Harry Oakes in his later years. He reportedly had the notion that gold veins in the north country always ran under lakes. Today, we know they don’t, but early in this century, he staked claims along the south shore of Kirkland Lake, started digging a shaft and, at 300 ft, ordered his crews to drill horizontally under the lake. The bit cut weak gold values, and observers at the time judged that Oakes’s dream had finally and irretrievably been shattered. Shaken perhaps but undaunted, the mulish Oakes set the crew to drifting under the lake and, as it turned out, into the deposit that would become the Lake Shore mine.
Could it happen with PGMs today? Is there another Cobalt maybe? Who knows? Doubters say that, with all our sophisticated exploration gadgetry, such deposits should have been detected already.
Why was it, then, that an elephant like Hemlo took so long in coming to light?
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