ODDS’N’SODS — The exploration geologist’s dream

Merton Stewart of Red Bank, N.B., is an active, living legend in the Maritime exploration fraternity.

I have never met a man who possessed such a keen curiosity and love for minerals, the outdoors and nature in general. All of this, combined with exceptional intelligence, patience and an appetite for hard work, has resulted in Mert’s having discovered numerous mineral showings of significance.

A master prospector nonpareil, Mert seems to have been born with a built-in radar for locating mineralization. Indeed, I know of no other prospector who has found so many diverse showings. Tin, tungsten, gold, copper, lead-zinc, silver, magnate, garnet, celestite, rutile, antimony, uranium — you name it, Mert has found it.

A geologist once described him as an agent of erosion, not unlike water, frost-action and wind. When he prospects an area or target, a great trail of broken rock and boulders is always strewn behind, his conviction being that minerals cannot be discovered “unless you look at a lot of busted rock.” For his part, Mert always prospects with a 6-lb. sledgehammer, which he considers to be much more efficient than the average 2-lb. hammer used by most prospectors. He is often kidded about his mighty “Hammer of Thor,” but he insists that nothing smaller will suffice.

Mert is an explorationist’s dream-come-true. Whenever he is sent into an area to prospect, there can be no doubt that if there are any anomalies — such as surface manifestations of mineralization, important alterations, gangue indicators, favorable mineral associates or geological situations of promise — he will find them, and rapidly.

His excellence in his field is attributable to two factors: he thinks like a geologist and he has the eye and the patience of a prospector. Mert’s methods of finding important mineralization are legion, his most intriguing discovery perhaps being the former tin project in Yarmouth Cty., N.S. It was in relation to this find that the following tale was told to me by Mert’s prospecting partner.

Mert and the partner, who was at the time a young lad in training, were driving to their motel following a hard day’s work. Mert was travelling at his normal, flat-out speed of 70 miles per hour, looking, as always, for unusual rocks on the road side (all of which agitated and frightened the boy to no end.)

Suddenly, Mert slammed on the brakes and exclaimed, “Look at that gossan on the boulders being dumped from that truck!” He jumped out of the vehicle, ran over to the large boulders, which were being dumped for the bed of a new highway, and broke several with his mighty sledgehammer. “Aha,” he muttered, “paydirt — massive sulphides and copper-zinc.” He asked the truck driver where he got the boulders, whereupon he was given directions to a large gravel pit near the Yarmouth airport, about 25 miles away.

Mert and the kid drove hellbent directly to the pit and found many glacially derived, highly mineralized boulders or floats. They sampled some and then sent them away for assaying.

The style and type of sulphides and alterations struck Mert as unusual-looking, so he requested spectrographic scan assaying for some samples, in addition to normal assays for copper, lead, zinc, silver and gold. Sure enough, the scan showed very high tin. This triggered the great tin play of 1977, which eventually led to Shell Canada’s finding the large East Kemptville mine.

I once asked Mert how he recognized the rusty boulders as being significant. After all, rusty boulders were common in Yarmouth, where a lot of pyrite is known to exist. He explained that the gossan (rust) looked a bit browner than usual.

I guess Mert’s built-in mineral sensor was working well that day, notwithstanding the speed at which he and his parter-to-be were travelling. — Avard Hudgins, a frequent contributor to this column, resides in Truro, N.S.