Geoscience project setting up shop in Whitehorse

A geoscience project employing at least 17 people is setting up shop in Whitehorse under a 5-year Mineral Development Agreement (MDA) between the Yukon and federal governments.

Acting MDA co-ordinator Gill McDougall said she received a bundle of applications for the five geologist positions, four hard rock and one placer. The hard rock geologists will focus on 1:50,000 mapping in four different Yukon terrains to develop a wide range of local expertise, McDougall said, while the placer geologist will likely work in the Dawson City area. Charlie Roots from the Vancouver office of the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) will also work out of Whitehorse for the next four years as a GSC employee, she said. Roots has been mapping in the Mayo area. And Grant Abbott, a Department of Northern Affairs geologist in Whitehorse, will also move to the downtown Whitehorse office space and continue doing mineral deposit studies.

The MDA agreement, signed in May, 1991, provides for $9 million over five years. Its aim is to increase the quality and quantity of available geological, geochemical and geophysical information, so as to encourage mineral exploration, which has dropped dramatically in the Yukon during the past few years.

“Both the amount of accumulated data and the current level of government geoscience research in (the) Yukon are significantly lower than the levels of service provided in all provinces except Prince Edward Island,” the agreement reads.

“The Yukon cannot compete effectively for exploration funds with a limited geoscience data base.”

The mapping project will be the largest Yukon MDA project during the next four years. The spacious office remained full of unpacked furniture in early March, while McDougall fielded all calls herself, such as one about her order for 144 specially designed packs for the geologists and their assistants. The government mapping differs from exploration work; McDougall explained that government projects cover a larger area in less detail. “And then of course, there’s more academic-type studios,” she said, naming geochronology, which means age dating, fossil studies, paleontology, whole rock chemistry.

She added, “They’re the kind of things that exploration companies, at least in Canada, expect to have done before they start their exploration.” Most of the Yukon is mapped at 1:250,000 scale, which the GSC usually does, but McDougall said the more detailed 1:50,000 scale is normally done by provincial geologists. “So we’re just starting to act more like a province,” she said.

(The federal government funds 70% of the MDA, and the territorial government 30%.)

This year the GSC will market its 150th anniversary, and McDougall said Roots is involved in a planned GSC ascent of Mount Logan in May. It’s the highest mountain peak in Canada, and expedition members will help do a more accurate measuring of the mountain.

Other smaller projects are also being funded under the MDA, which is divided into three categories: geoscience, mining technology and information. While most of the 1991-92 funding went to the mapping office, McDougall said a study was funded on placer mining and fisheries restoration. Roots’ field-work mapping last summer, a remote sensing course with a southern expert, an evaluation of airborne radar sensing and a report and video on placer dredging also qualify for funding.

(McDougall noted that the last-named contract, for Leslie Chapman and Bill Claxton of Forty Mile Placers outside of Dawson City, was delivered by dog teams of Yukon Quest dog race organizers because of the operation’s isolation in winter.)

Two other recently approved projects are an updated industrial minerals report, with high quality publishing, and a comprehensive Yukon minerals industry bibliography.

McDougall said that’s needed because some studies have simply sat on shelves, while other interested people didn’t know they existed. Aurum Geological Consultants Ltd. of Whitehorse has that contract.

Projects are approved by a technical sub-committee and then by an overall MDA management committee made up of representatives from the governments, the mining industry and aboriginal people.

McDougall admitted some money wasn’t spent in this past fiscal year, although she stressed “it’s not a big chunk” of the MDA funds. She said part of the problem was a lack of strong proposals.

“It’s partly just getting the program started again,” she added, “getting the committees working again…getting the information out to the public that this money’s available.”

McDougall said the Yukon government did advertise last year and more is planned.