Aldershot’s Quebec Uranium Search Garners Mixed Reviews

Vancouver — Aldershot Resources (ALZ-V, ALZTF-O) says it’s considering holding town hall meetings in southwestern Quebec to respond to allegations that its activities may be infringing on the rights of cottagers and residential property owners.

“It might have to come to that,” says Don Scott, a technical consultant to Vancouver-based Aldershot, which has staked 345 sq. km in the Pontiac area, about 100 km northwest of Ottawa, looking for uranium showings.

As some of those claims cover privately owned residential properties and at least one golf course, the company is facing opposition from some residents.

“Most people were taken by surprise,” says Richard Vezeau, a carpenter who lives in the Pontiac area, in Shawville, Que., and an opponent of nuclear power in the 1980s.

The community was alerted to Aldershot’s activities by a letter that appeared recently in a Shawville newspaper.

It was written by Ian Huggett, an environmentalist from Gatineau, Que., who has alarmed cottage owners in the area with claims that Quebec mining laws give prospectors unprecedented rights to stake on private land without informing the owners.

“Empowered by new rights unleashed by Quebec’s revised 1998 Mining Act, prospectors from the Vancouver-based mining company Aldershot Resources will flood the region with licences granting them more powers on private land than any other legal authority, including police officers,” Huggett wrote in a letter obtained by The Northern Miner. “Their intent is to enter residents’ properties in June 2007, to conduct exploration work which can be as benign as ground surveying with a scintilometer, to bedrock stripping and excavation.”

Scott says the company is well aware of the issues raised in Huggett’s letter and is doing all it can to address them.

“We have people down there talking to people and asking for permission to go on their properties,” he says.

Having acquired its claims mainly through online staking, and by striking option deals with local prospectors, the company is operating in a region that was widely explored for uranium in the 1950s and early 1960s.

However, Scott says Aldershot is far from being in a position to drill or dig trenches.

“It could be next summer before we get anything going,” he says.

If Aldershot proceeds with its exploration plans, such activities will not concern woodlot owners in the area, says Huggett, who recently acquired a 100-acre nature reserve in Thorne Twp. But local cottagers may take a different view, he says.

Still, Vezeau says he is unaware of any united community front against uranium exploration per se, but added that residents are concerned about their properties being staked for exploration and the impact of any mining activity in the future.

Ross Vowles, the mayor of Thorne, Que., north of Shawville, says he would be concerned if any mining activity had a detrimental effect on the value of cottages and the ability of the owners to enjoy their vacation time.

However, he says he will support Aldershot’s ongoing search for uranium if the various government and regulatory authorities make sure it is done properly.

“If the resource can be safely extracted, I’m in favour of it,” Vowles says.