TomaGold keeps good company 
in Quebec and Ontario

For a junior gold explorer trading at 9¢ a share, TomaGold’s (TSXV: LOT) list of joint-venture partners on projects in central Canada could come as a surprise.

The company has three joint-venture properties in Quebec with Iamgold (TSX: IMG; NYSE: IAG) — Monster Lake, Winchester and Lac-à-l’Eau Jaune — and two joint ventures in Ontario with Goldcorp (TSX: G; NYSE: GG), Sidace Lake and Baird. New Gold (TSX: NGD; NYSE: NGD) joins Goldcorp and TomaGold as a partner on the Baird project.

“Our strategy is to optimize project value through joint ventures with majors,” TomaGold’s president and CEO David Grondin says. “All the projects are in renowned mining camps close to mining infrastructure, and our goal is to acquire other advanced or producing projects, and secure additional joint ventures.”

In early May, Iamgold and TomaGold reported assay results from the first 11 diamond drill holes (5,100 metres) Iamgold completed over the winter at the Monster Lake project, 50 km southwest of Chibougamau.

Iamgold owns a 50% stake in the project, while TomaGold holds 45% and junior explorer Quinto Real Capital (TSXV: QIT) has a 5% interest. Iamgold has an option to earn another 25% interest for a total of 75% if it spends $10 million more on the project within seven years, starting from January 2015.

A highlight from the first half of the year’s 10,700-metre drill program is an intercept measuring 5.21 grams gold per tonne over 4.4 metres. Another hole returned 3.1 metres of 121.67 grams gold and a third cut 1.8 metres of 85.27 grams gold.

“The grades were quite amazing and the drilling is encouraging,” says Grondin, adding that Iamgold’s strategy to advance the project “continues to bear fruit,” and that the company’s technical team can “unlock the full value” of the project.

The second batch of drills results from the early 2017 drill program at Monster Lake is due in a few weeks, and Grondin says the partners expect to finish a maiden resource estimate before year-end.

The drill program targeted high potential areas along the 4.5 km trend of the Monster Lake Structural Corridor and associated shear zones. So far five major zones have been identified: 52, Megane, 325, Annie and Eratix. All of the zones are within a 600- to 700-metre radius.

Over time, 70,700 metres of drilling has gone into the project, with over 25 drill intersections returning grades ranging from 10 grams gold to 237.6 grams gold.

When TomaGold picked up the Monster Lake project in 2011, previous operators had drilled 30,200 metres (224 diamond drill holes).

Soquem drilled 20,000 metres (142 holes) between 1984 and 1995, and excavated a large number of trenches along the 4.5 km long mineralized corridor.

Soquem’s historic drill results confirmed at least 22 gold showings with gold intersections, including 27.55 grams gold over 4.2 metres, 4.05 grams gold over 3.9 metres and 6.3 grams gold over 5.1 metres.

In 2010 and 2011, Stellar Pacific Ventures drilled 5,200 metres (46 holes) into gold-bearing structures on the mineralized corridor. One hole completed in the Megane-325 zone intersected 101.2 grams gold over 4.5 metres at 49.5 metres.

In late 2011 and early 2012, TomaGold drilled 18 holes (2,400 metres), to test the continuity of Zone 52 at depth and confirm the northern extension of the Annie zone.

This program led to a major discovery in terms of grade and continuity, where TomaGold intersected 5.7 metres grading 237.6 grams gold at 69 metres in hole 12-60. The hole lay in the northeastern extension of the Annie zone and caught the eye of Iamgold.

At the beginning of 2013, TomaGold completed a 5,000-metre drilling program on the property. The goal was to explore the 325 gold zone at depth, which had not been done by previous operators. All the drill holes intercepted the mineralized zone.

Meanwhile, at properties surrounding the Monster Lake property — Lac-à-l’Eau and Winchester — joint-venture partner Iamgold has flown a Versatile Time Domain Electromagnetic airborne survey that has found several strong conductors that coincide with prominent magnetic anomalies similar to those observed along the Monster Lake shear zone. Other work has included geological and structural mapping, and selected geochemical and geophysical surveys. Iamgold owns 50% and TomaGold owns 50% of the two projects.

Meanwhile in Ontario, TomaGold acquired a 39.5% stake last year from Planet Mining Exploration (TSXV: PXI) in the Sidace Lake project, 25 km northeast of Balmertown in the Red Lake mining district. Goldcorp owns the other 60.5% interest in the project.

Since 1998, 90,100 metres have been drilled (246 diamond drill holes) at Sidace Lake, and in April 2009 a resource estimate was completed on the two most advanced of six prospects on the claims — the Main Discovery Zone (MDZ) and the Upper Duck Zone (UDZ).

The resource was prepared from two block models, each using a cut-off grade of 1.5 grams gold, resulting in a 1.4-million-tonne indicated resource grading 3.21 grams gold for 141,300 oz. gold, and another 2.1 million tonnes averaging 3.24 grams gold for 218,800 contained oz. gold in the inferred category.

The MDZ and UDZ zones are open laterally and at depth, and Grondin says the MDZ zone shares characteristics with the Hemlo deposit.

“There’s a resource on it, so it’s something that we can expand on,” he says. “It’s another case of a major doing work with us. With their expertise and technical team, they can accelerate things a lot faster than if we were doing it ourselves, so it changes the game plan and makes it go faster.”

In addition to Sidace Lake, TomaGold acquired a 24.5% stake from Skyharbour Resources (TSXV: SYH; US-OTC: SYHBF) last year in a small joint-venture project called Baird, in which Goldcorp holds a 51% stake and New Gold holds a 24.5% stake.

Baird is 14 km southwest of Goldcorp’s Red Lake mine and 6 km north of the Madsen mine.

The property lies within the highly prospective Balmer assemblage of volcanic rocks, and Grondin says it shows structural and alteration systems that are typical of the Goldcorp Red Lake and Campbell gold mines.

During the 1980s, drilling at Baird by United Reef returned assays of 172 grams gold over 1.2 metres and 19 grams gold over 1.8 metres.

Earlier this year, TomaGold started a 1,700-metre drill program on its wholly owned, past-producing Obalski gold-copper project, 2 km south of Chibougamau. The initial program will consist of priority targets based on data compiled since acquiring the property in May 2016.

In March, the company reported that drill hole 17-2 intersected 2 metres of semi-massive sulphides grading 15 grams gold, 46.8 grams silver and 10.4% copper, including 1 metre of 21.3 grams gold, 52.3 grams silver and 8.6% copper, at a vertical depth of 95 metres.

TomaGold says that hole 17-2 could be the eastern extension of Zone A, from which United Obalksi Mining produced 90,000 tonnes at grades of 3 grams gold, 6.2 grams silver and 1.5% copper, between 1964 and 1972. This hypothesis is based on historic mine plans and sections, but more drilling is needed to confirm this theory, Grondin says.

More drilling could assess the property’s gold potential at depth. Although over 60,000 metres have been drilled on the property in the past, Grondin says, most of it was shallow.

Obalski hosts seven mineralized zones, an 85-metre shaft and two ramps.

Before TomaGold’s acquisition the project was last drilled by a prospector in 2012, who completed six short holes. One hole (12-1) cut 0.8 metre of 9.72 grams gold per tonne, 19.50 grams silver, 0.82% copper and 0.44% zinc from 37 metres deep, and a second (12-2) returned a 0.6-metre intercept of 1.81 grams gold, 5.40 grams silver, 0.16% copper and 0.03% zinc from 33.6 metres deep.

Drill hole 12-4 returned 2.8 metres of 27.81 grams gold, 23.74 grams silver, 1.2% copper and 0.2% zinc starting from 35 metres deep.

TomaGold finished an option to earn a 70% stake in the Hazeur property next to its Monster Lake project from Visible Gold Mines (TSXV: VGD).

TomaGold released drill results from a small drill program last September. Seven holes were drilled into geophysical anomalies.

The holes were drilled to test the mineralized structure of the Philibert deposit, which lies 1 km southeast of the eastern edge of the property. The structure hosting the deposit crosses the entire Hazeur property from east to west.

Hole 16-3 returned 4.8 metres of 1.09 grams gold from 100 metres deep, and hole 16-8 cut 2 metres of 6.50 grams gold from 82.5 metres, and 5.3 metres of 1.63 grams gold from 96 metres downhole.