Bay, Stratmin, Jilbey commit $9 million to Fontana bet

Pierre Gauthier should be smiling. His company, St. Genevieve Resources, through the 89.7%- owned Montreal junior Bay Resources and Services, has hit some better-than-average results on it’s Fontana property near Amos, Que.

So encouraging are the latest drill results, the joint venture partners: Jilbey Industries (newly listed in Montreal) and a small Montreal company which has shares trading on the “over-the-counter” market in Montreal, Stratmin Inc, have commited $9 million to a major underground and surface exploration program on the property this year.

That work includes dewatering an old 350-ft shaft, erecting a new headframe, installing a new hoist and driving an incline ramp to take bulk samples and further explore the five major shear zones outlined from the surface.

Four drill rigs and seven full-time geologists are working on the property. Foundations for the headframe and hoistroom have been poured and the ramp has been collared.

Extensive drilling, stripping and channel sampling in 1987 has followed the gold-bearing structures for a combined length of 8,000 ft. Only one zone does not lie in an area that can be explored from the planned underground openings.

The zones, which average about six ft in width, have been explored to depths of only 750 ft, but results indicate an increase in thickness at depth, according to St. Genevieve director Jean DePatie. On the main Fontana Shear, for example, the last hole cut 45 ft of good sulphide mineralization. That hole is currently out being assayed.

“Mineralization occurs mainly as fine to very coarse free gold particles erratically distributed, sometimes in spectacular amounts, within the vein systems and in a lens pattern,” DePatie says.

As a result of the nature of the gold mineralization, St. Genevieve has found surface bulk samples, which give results up to 0.256 oz gold per ton across six ft, and channel samples, which returned values of 19.25 oz across five ft, are consistently giving better results than drill core intersections. Results from the Fontana shear zone include:

Inter-

section Assay Hole (ft) (oz/ton) 51 7.3 0.195

3.6 0.17

3.0 1.33 54 4.9 0.78

4.0 0.47 61 5.0 0.17 66 2.0 0.79 67 1.0 0.23

3.7 0.23 78 5.0 0.12 91 5.0 0.10 93 1.4 0.58 95 3.0 0.27 108 3.0 0.78 117 3.0 3.32

The joint venture partners believe bulk samples from underground will give a more accurate picture of the grade of the deposit, which could potentially contain in the order of three million tons of mineralization.

Another company with shares trading on the over-the-counter market, but in Toronto, Portfield Industries, has a 15% royalty in the form of a net profit return in the property.