Old Mines get new polish with rising prices

Apr. 15, 2010
Golden Goose Resources isn't alone when it comes to revisiting the past.
The Montreal-based junior exploration company has invested significant dollars in recent years revisiting its Magino Mine property, 40 kilometres northeast of Wawa.
Magino, shuttered for nearly 20 years, produced more than 105,000 ounces of gold over five years, 1988 through 1992, before closing due to low market prices prices which have since rebounded to more than $1,100 an ounce.
"Exploration activity is picking up on the strength of rising commodity prices," said Delio Tortosa, president of the Sault & District Prospectors Association, during a break Wednesday at the two-day Northeastern Ontario Mines and Minerals Symposium at the Delta Waterfront Hotel.
"Old properties once thought no longer feasible to work are being revisited and reassessed . . . Rising prices are changing the economics of deposits."
In the not-to-distant past area mining was contained to narrow, high-grade, easily-accessible deposits and now developers are looking for larger, perhaps lower-grade sources, often overlooked in the past, that can provide long-term opportunity.
The Batchewana Bay area is once again "interesting," for its copper potential, he said, the price near doubling to more than $3.50 an ounce in the past two years.
The symposium, which wrapped up Wednesday, attracted more than 100 delegates, from geologists and prospectors to mine operators and exploration companies, to network and get updated on area developments.
Algoma District has had its significant discoveries, including the designation of Bruce Mines as one of North America's first copper-mining towns in the mid 1850s, and Elliot Lake proclaiming itself uranium capital of the world for a period in the 1960s, but it's all history.
Copper was actively mined in Bruce Mines, nearly 70 km east of the Sault, for 30 years, 1846 through 1876, employing at least 300 hard-rock miners.
Elliot Lake, 170 kilometres to the east, had 12 uranium mines produce more than 270 million pounds of oxide over four decades, from the mid 1950s through the mid 1990s.
The community, whose last mine closed in 1996, underwent several boom-and-bust cycles and its population ranged from 6,600 to more than 26,000 through the years.
There are currently two commercial gold mine operations employing more than 250 miners within 150 km of Wawa, including Richmont Island Gold, near Magino, and Wesdome Gold.
Tortosa, whose association represents about 50 area prospectors, believes there are still significant deposits yet undiscovered in the region.
"We don't really know the true mineral wealth of the district," he said.
"Much of the land is privately owned and hasn't been worked . . . The mineral potential of entire townships is unknown because owners don't want mining activity on it."
It means the district cannot take advantage of significant investment dollars being thrown around by junior exploration firms, estimated at more than $660 million in 2008, the latest data available, in exploration expenditures.
He hopes Sault Ste. Marie can benefit from the Ring of Fire chromite discovery, 500 km north of Thunder Bay.
Chromite is essential in the manufacturing of stainless steel and the massive Ring of Fire, essentially the size of Prince Edward Island, its welcomed by supporters as one of Canada's greatest mining opportunities in generations.
"Should it ever get off the ground I imagine Essar Steel would be a likely destination for the chromite (as it would diversify into stainless steel production), and a processing plant would have to be constructed," he said.
The timeline from deposit discovery until commercial production is at least a decade, he said, "but all of Northern Ontario could benefit from this discovery."
Pele Mountain Resources, which has done extensive diamond exploration in the Wawa area in recent years, and hopes to open an underground uranium mine and processing plant near Elliot Lake, is also drilling its Highland gold properties north of Wawa.
The Highland properties, in the vicinity of the Hemlo mining area, near Marathon, where the discovery of gold nearly 30 years ago, in the early 1980s, triggered a staking rush not seen in this country in 100 years, since the Klondike.
Three of the largest mines in the Hemlo area employed more than 1,100 miners in 1990 and produced over one million ounces of gold that year about one quarter of Canada's entire gold output.
Wesdome Gold Mines employs about 150 and produced nearly 100,000 ounces of gold last year while Richmont Island Gold employs about 120 and produced more than 40,000 ounces.
Ontario Trap Rock, an aggregate producer near Bruce Mines, is the other other known commercial operator in the area.