B. C. Figures Large In This Year’s List Of PDAC Awards Winners

British Columbia will be prominent at this year’s PDAC awards evening, to be held on Monday, March 2 at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel in Toronto.

Four of the seven PDAC’s 2009 awards winners are based in British Columbia: Goldcorp Inc. of Vancouver will receive the Viola R. MacMillan Award for company development; David Barr of Vancouver will be honoured with the Distinguished Service Award for his long time commitment to health and safety in mineral exploration; BioteQ Environmental Technologies of Vancouver will receive the Environmental & Social Responsibility Award; and the Britannia Beach Historical Society will be recognized with a Special Achievement Award for its part in the restoration of the Britannia Mine and the establishment of the B. C. Museum of Mining.

The remaining three awards go to HudBay Minerals Inc. which will receive the Bill Dennis Award for a Canadian discovery for its discovery of the Lalor zinc deposit near Snow Lake, Manitoba; to Richard Garnett and NovaGold Resources Inc. who will be presented with the Thayer Lindsley Award for an international discovery for their respective roles in the discovery and further exploration of the Donlin Creek, Alaska, gold deposit; and to Tli Cho Logisitics which will be presented with the association’s second Skookum Jim Award for aboriginal achievement for the company’s success in the provision of high quality services to diamond mines in the Northwest Territories.

Award recipients are selected by the association’s board of directors, based on the recommendations of the PDAC’s awards committee.

Thayer Lindsley Award -Discoverers of the Donlin Creek, Alaska, gold deposit –Richard Garnett and NovaGold Resources Inc.

Richard Garnett, who was technical director of the Anglo American subsidiary that began working exploration at the Donlin Creek site, and NovaGold Resources Inc., which is on the verge of completing a feasibility study in preparation for beginning construction at the site, will share the Thayer Lindsley Award for their roles in the discovery of this Alaskan gold deposit. This award honours the discoverers of a recent significant mineral discovery anywhere in the world.

Recent drill results, identifying almost 32 million ounces of measured and indicated gold, grading 2.5 grams per tonne gold, suggest that the Donlin Creek deposit could be one of the largest unmined gold reserves in the world. The property is currently a 50-50 joint venture with NovaGold Resources and Barrick Gold Corporation.

Garnett and Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, president and CEO of NovaGold, will accept this award.

Bill Dennis Award -HudBay Minerals Inc.

HudBay Minerals Inc. receives this award, which recognizes a significant mineral discovery in Canada, for its 2007 discovery of the Lalor zinc deposit in the Flin Flon Greenstone Belt, Manitoba.