MINING MARKETS & INVESTMENT NEWS – QUERY — Two companies named St. Maurice, both gone

I’m searching historical archives about the St-Maurice Mining Company, which exploited concessions in Preissac Twp., Abitibi, Quebec, in 1916-21 and 1943-44. Is there a place where I can find this information?

Ghislain Drolet,

Amos, Que.

There were two mining companies that carried the name St. Maurice — St. Maurice Mines Co. Ltd. and St. Maurice Gold Mines Ltd.

You’re probably looking for information on the first of these, St. Maurice Mines, which had its head office in Amos and worked in the Abitibi district in the 1920s. It held a Quebec corporate charter, granted in 1916, and our files say it was a subsidiary of another company, Indian Peninsula Molybdenum Company Ltd., from 1920 or so.

There is little information on St. Maurice Mines, though the 1934 Canadian Mines Handbook says that on Sept. 3, 1932, its assets were forfeited under a sheriff’s order — something that usually happens when a civil judgment is made against the company, or when it owes back taxes. That year was perhaps the darkest of the Great Depression, which may account for the company’s problems.

St. Maurice Mines’ assets, including its properties, were sold on Oct. 4, 1932. There is no record of its charter having been cancelled. Indian Peninsula’s charter was cancelled in 1959.

The Northern Miner carried no articles about the company during those months in 1932, nor could we find any information about Preissac and Amos in our area files. We can’t be sure what part of Preissac Twp. the company worked on, or what commodity it was after. It definitely wasn’t around to work in the area in the 1940s.

But during that period Indian Molybdenum Ltd. entered the picture. It was a subsidiary of Dome Mines, now Placer Dome (PDG-T), and was formed under a Quebec charter in early 1943 to develop a molybdenum deposit on the Indian Peninsula, between Lac Fontbonne and Lac Preissac. The company worked in the area in 1943 and 1944.

Prospecting in 1942 had revealed a showing about 135 metres long and 10 metres wide on a marginal part of the Preissac-Lacorne batholith, a big granitic intrusion centred on La Motte and Lacorne twps., immediately east of Preissac. The company drilled the showing later that year, expanding the known mineralized zone to 225 metres, with an average width of 8 metres. Early estimates of the grade were around 0.9% molybdenum. The company drove a decline to a depth of about 60 metres and erected a mill on the site.

Production started in September and the molybdenite (molybdenum sulphide) concentrate was sold directly to the government of Canada, which was buying the material for the war effort. The government cancelled the contract in May 1944 and the mine shut down, having produced 317 tonnes of molybdenite. The financial statements showed a net loss of around $200,000 during the life of the mine.

A 1981 map series published by the Quebec Department of Energy and Resources is the Bible of mineral prospects in the Abitibi region. It shows the “Preissac Molybdenum” mine and identifies it as a vein-type deposit with bismuth and copper as well as moly.

The compilation unfortunately does not show discovery dates or the companies that did the work, so it is hard to prove that this is the same ground on which St. Maurice Mines worked in earlier years. It is possible that St. Maurice had simply staked in Preissac Twp. and was doing reconnaissance prospecting, rather than working on a known showing.

A possible source of information about the earlier work is the Department of Natural Resources. There is a regional geologist’s office in Val d’Or at 400, boul. Lamaque, local 1.02, Val d’Or, J9P 3L4. Its phone number is (819) 354-4735 and its fax, (819) 354-4558. There may be some records of old work in the files there, or in government geological reports of the time.

The younger of the two namesake companies, St. Maurice Gold Mines, was organized in 1944 by Ottawa and Montreal interests and by Amos developer J.F. Davies. By 1951, the Handbook listed St. Maurice Gold Mines as “dormant,” and its charter was cancelled in 1954.

According to the files, it never held property in Preissac Twp. but had a 10-claim property in Duverny Twp., about 20 km northeast of Amos, where it did some surface work on a gold showing.