Acadia bullish on Millstream Fault area near Bathurst, N.B.

One and a half million dollars is to be spent by Acadia Mineral Ventures on gold exploration in the Bathurst area of northern New Brunswick this year.

Noranda Inc., through Noranda Exploration, by comparison is managing the expenditure of about $4 million on a number of joint- venture projects with Brunswick Mining & Smelting and, most recently, with Vancouver-listed Lucero Resource Corp. in the Ramsey Brook-McCormick Brook project area.

Lacana Mining, too, is planning to spend large sums of money on several projects in the area. Expenditures could be about $750,000.

A contract for 15,000 ft of diamond drilling has been signed by Acadia to drill at least eight targets in an area northwest of the town of Bathurst, in a structural province which is quite separate from the volcanic belt to the south which host the huge base metals deposits that made the town famous.

Drilling was scheduled to start this week.

In the past six months Acadia has staked additional claims in the area to acquire a significant land position comparable to Noranda Exploration and Lacana. These companies have been acquiring claims in the area steadily over the past two years (Lacana now holds about 1,600 claims) — ever since Lacana discovered a silver deposit at California Lake and a gold deposit at Elmtree Brook.

Drilling should resume on the Elmtree property Oct 1, according to Lee Barker, Lacana’s chief geologist. Drill-indicated reserves stand at about 500,000 tons grading 0.15 oz gold per ton. Acadia has a 32% interest in this property.

Not much favorable land remains open in the area.

Avard Hudgins, vice-president of Acadia, is of the opinion that the area is geologically similar to areas of the state of California which host the famous Mother Lode gold deposit. “A classical zoned pattern, from base metals to gold, trends outwards from metal-rich granitic plutons,” he says of the geological model of the area being used by Acadia to plan exploration work.

Noranda’s manager of exploration in eastern Canada, Clarence Logan, concurs. “We don’t think it’s stretching it to use that model at all,” Mr Logan says. “That model is very real. We are seeing a very similar environment in our work. We just have not demonstrated it conclusively. Perhaps Acadia has something more significant than we’ve seen so far.”

Lee Barker is less emphatic. “We are not big believers in geological models. We tend to go out and find the gold, then find a model to fit the style of occurrence rather than try to find an occurrence to fit the model,” he says. “But to use that model is not necessarily incorrect.”

Two of the properties held by Acadia are in joint venture with other companies:

On the Millstream East property, a 50-50 joint venture with Seabright Exploration, a number of promising gold-silver targets have been delineated from ground geochemical and geophysical programs conducted this summer. They are located immediately west of known base metal-silver deposits, according to Mr Hudgins.

A second joint venture property with Seabright (37.5%) and Cuvier Mines Inc. (25%), is located in an area surrounding several large stratabound base metal deposits south of the Tetagouche River. Several drill targets have been identified here as well.

The order in which these properties are to be drilled has not been determined.