Exploration successes, particularly in remote regions of Canada, usually result from good properties, exploration know-how, persistence, and a dash of luck.
One junior hoping its properties will benefit from the right combination of these elements is Explorations Diabior (TSE). Drilling has just started on two of the company’s joint venture projects in the northern reaches of Quebec, east of James Bay.
Diabior and partner Virginia Gold Mines (ME) recently started a 5,000-ft. drill program to test five showings on the Eastmain property, 180 miles north of Chibougamau, Que. The Eastmain and the contiguous Auclaire property encompass a 211-sq.-mile land package in the Eastmain greenstone belt. The showings to be tested are proximal to drill holes completed by Dome Mines in 1936. One of the more notable intersections from that program averaged 0.04 oz. gold per ton over 46 ft.
Diabior and Virginia became interested in the property when a staking ban covering the area was lifted. This ban was implemented by the provincial government while the James Bay hydro-electric project was under construction. After construction ended and the ban was lifted, Diabior used the newly developed roads and infrastructure to gain better access into the area. Diabior and Virginia used LANDSAT imagery and completed an airborne geophysical survey which outlined a major east-west trending structure over 30 miles long.
The companies completed till sampling over the entire property, and several of the till samples returned gold grain counts in excess of several hundred grains. Anomalous till samples were not restricted to the area near Dome’s earlier drilling, but were recovered along the entire length of the property. “We discovered a 9.3-mile long, east trending, gold-in-till anomaly with a smaller arsenic halo,” says Andre Gaumond, president of Diabior. Elsewhere on the property, the companies found other shear zones, mineralized intrusives and iron formations with coincident anomalous till samples. With this encouragement, the partners completed an induced polarization survey and several trenches. About 10% of the trenched surface area hit bedrock and revealed several gold-bearing zones hosted in highly sheared, dioritic intrusives. Anomalous gold values were associated with tourmaline and arsenopyrite in quartz veins.
Gaumond believes that the gold and arsenic till anomalies, coupled with tourmaline and abundant quartz veins in bedrock, may be indicative of a large, hydrothermal system which could host a gold deposit.
Diabior ranked this regional target as having good potential and began looking for other properties with similar mineralogical and structural characteristics.
The company completed a regional lake sediment sampling program in the James Bay Lowlands, looking for gold and arsenic lake-sediment anomalies. The regional program outlined a small, highly anomalous, arsenic lake sediment anomaly, 43 miles southeast of Radisson, Que.
Diabior and partner, Garde, Societe d’exploration Miniere (ME), staked the a 84-sq.-mile La Grande project.
Last fall the companies completed a till sampling and a small trenching program in conjunction with LANDSAT imagery and an airborne geophysical survey. The most encouraging samples from the trenched bedrock assayed up to 1.3 oz., and appeared to be associated with a 9.3-mile, east-west trending shear zone.
In total, 15 showings were discovered within a few hundred meters of the original showing which assayed up to 0.6 oz. over 6.5 ft.
Diabior and Garde are completing a 5,000-ft. drill program to test the showings on the La Grande project.
With any luck, after the drill programs are completed, one or both of the projects will merit additional work.
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