By Jessica Smith
Q Gold Resources Ltd. has recently amassed a total of five historic gold mines and is now conducting the most comprehensive exploration program of gold properties ever conducted in Mine Centre in Northwestern Ontario.
Last year, the company completed an airborne survey of its property five kilometres south of the township, which includes two past-producing gold mines developed in the 1890s and most of the gold lands in that area. A $1.5 million exploration program includes draining water and conducting underground sampling of the largest-producer, the Foley Mine, and a 5,000-metre drilling program of areas across the 32,000 acre Archean Greenstone Belt gold property, located 110 km east of Fort Frances.
With two diamond drills running, “we’re going to be quite, quite busy,” said vice president of exploration Jack Bolen.
“Now we’re doing an exploration program on the whole area, which never happened before because there were so many individual claims and patents, etc. For the first time we can do a comprehensive program, where no one was ever able to do that before.”
It’s been a 20-year process for Fort Frances area native Bolen. He staked his first claim in 1985 and continued acquiring mining claims and leases until a private Flagstaff, Arizona company funded $1 million in additional area gold property acquisitions six years ago. In 2005, Q Gold became a public company with Bolen as one of four Canadian directors working from the Fort Frances field office. The head office is located in Flagstaff.
The very name, Mine Centre, indicates the community’s long mining history. Foley and Golden Star mines yielded 16,025 ounces of gold from the 1893 to 1934. Considering the small labour force, old-fashioned equipment and the under-reported potential, those totals are a positive signs, says Bolen.
The 400-acre Foley Mine is one of the most prolific mines, with an 850-foot shaft and 2.5 km of underground drift development. In modern dollars, this previous development is equivalent to around $12 million worth of exploratory work.
Canadian British Mines began mill construction in 1926, but the stock market crash, ensuing Depression and Second World War brought work to a grinding halt.
“They did a huge amount of work, but before the equipment was in the mill, they ran out of money,” said Bolen.
The mine changed hands many times over the years. In 1933, 800 tons of ore was mined from the South Foley Shaft, producing 855 ounces (oz) of gold and 149 oz of silver at an average of 1.07 oz/t.
The Golden Star (Resources) mine produced 10,632 oz in the 1890s from two shafts and one vein, with an average grade of 0.56 oz/t. The mine has 13 unexplored gold veins, and like the three non-producing mines (the Manhattan, Decca and Ferguson), they also contain numerous unexplored veins.
“Unfortunately, records are very poor,” said Bolen.
New drill holes will establish the tonnage and grade of unexplored veins.
“We’re hoping [that] within the property we can find a larger zone that will justify a milling operation. [Then] we can take small tonnage from all those veins and mill it. We just need a higher grade to justify the milling expenditures.”
Q Gold’s most recent property acquisition includes former Nipigon Gold Resources Ltd.’s gold prospects, two gold veins, plus a small mill for processing bulk samples. With such close proximity to Highway 11, the Mine Centre Gold Camp has easy access to rail, power and water through logging roads, and has the existing infrastructure to carry out year-round exploration.
The company hopes to confirm 238,000oz of gold, not including any ore resources from this years’ exploration.
Based on geological, structural and mineralogical similarities and recorded gold occurrences at depth and in surface samples, “there is significant potential to host a modern world-class gold camp similar to the Red Lake and Kirkland Lake Camps, which host a combined production of 47 million ozs.”
