Atlantic Report Cornish Miners in N.S.

Seabright Resources of Halifax is taking steps to maximize gold production at the Forest Hill deposit by contracting 20 experienced narrow vein miners from Cornwall, England, for a year.

The miners will help Seabright to move rapidly to a monthly production rate of 5,000 tons and will accelerate Seabright’s training of local miners in narrow vein mining techniques, according to Jack Garnett, Seabright’s senior vice- president administration.

“We conducted a national advertising campaign across Canada for narrow vein miners and got only five of the 25 miners we needed,” says Garnett. “We’d discovered that at Forest Hill, we were using narrow vein mining techniques identical to those in underground tin mines in Cornwall, so we took advantage of the uncertainty in the tin business to recruit experienced narrow vein miners,” he says.

“The secret of success in Nova Scotia may be to become proficient at narrow vein mining, rather than always trying to bulk mine,” he says. “Seabright will be thinking positively about narrow vein mining at Forest Hill.”

At Beaver Dam, another Seabright gold project, both underground and open pit bulk sample material are being run through the company’s Gays River mill. “The bulk samples are being batched from different parts of the underground and from the open pit to get a handle on the grade,” says Garnett. One of the objects of the bulk testing is to find out how to mine the deposit efficiently — whether to use a bulk mining technique or narrow vein mining.

Actual ore reserves will not be known until after the full bulk testing program has been completed and revisions to current estimates are done. The last estimates for the Beaver Dam deposit were geological reserves of 2.9 million tons grading 0.27 oz gold per ton.

Seabright does its own bulk tests at the Gays River mill, which was shut down recently for three weeks for rehabilitation and upgrading. Officially commissioned at 400 tons per day, the mill can now handle 900 tons per day. A security system has been added to the gravity circuit. Metallurgical recoveries of about 95% are expected to continue.

A bulk test of material from Novagold Resources’ Plenty zone at the Fifteen Mile Stream gold property in Halifax Cty. is scheduled for the mill in mid-January.

Seabright recently announced a successful financing that raised $2 million in flow-through funds. Two hundred units priced at $10,000 each were sold in a private placement that will result in 952 Class A shares being issued per unit. With a before-tax share price of $10.50 at a time when Seabright’s share price was around $6, the offer was attractive to investors. If a subscriber were in the 50% tax bracket and got the full 133% deduction, the after-tax cost of a Seabright share would be $3.50 or $4.40 after a 116% deduction.

Seabright Explorations of Halifax, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Seabright Resources, has retained the services of North Bay mining consultant John Hopkinson, who will be working closely with Seabrex’s exploration and operations groups. He will spearhead the underground exploration program at the Caribou gold property in Halifax Cty., which has been dewatered to the lowest levels of the old Cominco workings. Underground drilling and sampling are now under way.

At Moose River, also in Halifax Cty., Seabrex has completed its current drilling program and is in the process of deciding its next move: more drilling, stripping to assess the deposit’s open pit potential, or dewatering the existing workings to observe more closely the geology of the ore zone. Hopkinson will assist in making the decision, and will also co-ordinate a mine feasibility analysis of both the Caribou and Moose River properties.

Acadia Mineral Ventures of Toronto and Seabright Explorations are engaged in joint ventures on three Nova Scotia gold properties, according to Acadia’s Avard Hudgins. Programs have already started at Miller Lake in the Sherbrooke district, West Caledonia in Queens Cty., and in the Kemptville area of Yarmouth Cty., immediately to the west of the tin producer at East Kemptville.

At Miller Lake, about 450 tons of ore yielded 538 oz gold in past production. The Lone Cloud lead received the most attention in the early days and is said to be gold- bearing over a strike of 3,600 ft. Gold associated with considerable amounts of sericite was reported from the bottom of the Boak shaft.

The Kemptville gold district produced 3,062 tons grading 0.6 oz gold per ton. Arsenopyrite, pyrrhotite, silver and gold occur in bedding- parallel veins cutting rocks of the Goldenville formation. Gold was particularly enriched where these veins were cut by crosscutting Nash fissure. The Borea lead had a thickness of four to eight feet and an unnamed structure had 13 ft of “crushing material” that supposedly yielded 0.55 oz gold.

Visible gold has been encountered in nine of the first 10 holes drilled by Scotia Prime Resources at the company’s Lower Seal Harbour gold property near Goldboro, Guysborough Cty. Seven more holes have been completed but are not yet logged. Drilling, which began in September using two rigs contracted from Logan Drilling of Stewiacke, totals 5,000 m for all holes. The drills are now at another Scotia Prime property, the former Ecum Secum gold mine, where they will drill a further 2,500 m. A third drill is expected at Ecum Secum by mid-month.

“The objective of the first nine holes at Lower Seal Harbour was to trace extensions of ore zones mined by Seal Harbour Gold Mines between 1936 and 1941,” says Craig Miller, Scotia Prime’s president. Seven holes penetrated the target zone and each encountered visible gold within the zone at several different points between depths of 200 m and 300 m.

The 10th hole probed the Salt and Pepper vein, a northwest- trending crosscutting feature. Although gold was not seen in the vein, there is pyrite, chalcopyrite and arsenopyrite, minerals which were associated with gold in the Seal Harbour mine. “We did more drilling to cut this vein to determine its orientation and continuity to the south. If the Salt and Pepper contains anomalous gold values, it will add potential to the property,” says Miller. Eight of the first 10 holes completed were drilled on claims optioned from Lotus Resources of Dartmouth. Scotia Prime can earn a minimum interest of 51% in the claims. The other two holes were drilled on ground optioned from Robert Gingell of Maryland, and Scotia Prime can earn a 100% interest in them. Scotia Prime is a subsidiary of Petroco of Texas.

Nova Scotia has a new mines minister. In a cabinet shuffle in November, Ken Streatch was appointed to succeed Joel Matheson as minister of mines and energy. Streatch is the mla for Bedford- Musquodoboit Valley, the riding where Seabright Resources’ Gays River gold processing facility is located. His previous portfolios have included lands and forests, fisheries, labor and public works. Matheson becomes minister of health.

Geochemical soil surveys carried out by Westfield Minerals of Toronto on the Little River project in south- central Newfoundland have delineated several gold anomalies. Many of them were trenched by backhoe, and several of the trenches exposed arsenopyrite and stibnite mineralization with associated gold values intermittently along a 5-mile strike length. Best gold values were from trenches in the area of line 22W, where channel samples assayed 0.13 oz per ton across 13 ft. A 7,500-ft drilling program designed to test this mineralization got under way in November.

The Newfoundland branch of the cim attracted nearly 300 delegates to its 34th annual meeting in St. John’s in early November.

Among the speakers were Dan MacInnis, district geologist for Noranda Exploration; Ed Thompson, president of Mingold Resources; Colin McKenzie of bp Selco, who spoke on the Rattling Brook project, a gold prospect at western White Bay, Nfld.; Randy Miller of the Newfoundland mines department, whose topic was rare metals in the Letitia Lake area of Labrador; Howard Coates of mph Consulting, who spoke on Nova Scotia’s Fifteen Mi
le Stream gold deposit; and Garth Graves of Noranda Exploration, who gave an exploration case history of Deer Cove, a gold prospect near Mings Bight on the Baie Verte peninsula.

The branch’s new executive elected at the meeting are Bill Foster of Wabush Mines, chairman; Dan MacInnis, first vice-president; Bill Fotheringham, Hope Brook Gold, second vice-president; Robert Squires of Flygt Canada, treasurer; and Eric Swanson, secretary.