There is an old saying in this business: “The discovery is made in the shadow of the head frame.” Exploring adjacent to and along strike of existing deposits is exactly the strategy that has led a group of likeminded individuals to consolidate greater than 26,000 hectares of land, including two historic mines within the Temagami Greenstone Belt, a sub-province of the Abitibi 145 kilometres south of Kirkland Lake.
In Northern Ontario, 450 kilometres due north of Toronto via ON-11, there is a town called Temagami, which hosts what could be the most overlooked mining camp in Canada – and Progenitor Metals Corp. owns most of it. Mining has been a significant part of Temagami’s history. The municipality was the scene of active prospecting and mining ventures throughout most of the 20th century, resulting in a legacy of trenches, open cuts, open pits, adits, shafts and drifts in the regional bedrock. Mining began in the early 1900s with the discovery of precious metals, such as gold and silver, creating a modern gold rush at the time. Thirty-two producing operations were developed within the 20th century and commodities extracted from these mines included precious and base metals with cobalt and platinum credits. From the early 1960s to mid-2000s, some of the most prospective lands were tied up by Teck, Dofasco (Sherman Mine) and, most recently, Falconbridge/Glencore. The vast majority of these lands became available for staking, most of which has been acquired by Progenitor Metals Corp.
“We have a fantastic chance to make a significant discovery within the Temagami Greenstone Belt. The Temagami Belt missed two phases of modern exploration in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and is substantially underexplored in comparison to the northern Abitibi gold camps. The area exhibits the same structural controls that govern mineralization at the older siblings’ Kirkland Lake and Timmins mining camps and has many high-grade precious and base metals occurrences associated with substantial structures, which have never been targeted by modern exploration. We are very excited to apply our knowledge, energy and time focusing on the geoscience that can add significant value to our shareholders through new discovery,” Christopher Reynolds, president of Progenitor Metals Corp., says.
From 1978 to 1996, the area was closed to staking of mineral claims through the Temagami Land Caution, a moratorium linked to settlement of First Nations land claims. The caution was lifted in 1996, and the area was covered by new claims. It is significant that the region was closed to exploration during a sequence of active exploration cycles in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and has received less intensive evaluation work and modern exploration practices than other accessible parts of Ontario, despite the geological merit. The district was excluded from the various exploration and development boom cycles, which led to major developments in other greenstone terranes in Canada, and with careful, systematic exploration, the potential for new precious and base metal mineral discoveries is excellent within the Progenitor property. Understanding that this area offers the same structural controls which govern the more well-recognized and developed Kirkland lake and Timmins mining camps, the management of Progenitor resolved that investing into this area for precious and base metals offered a fantastic price/value entry point with significant exploration upside potential for its shareholders and investors.
“The Temagami Greenstone Belt has been the subject of regional prospecting since the late 1800s and is an Archean sequence which hosts diverse mineral deposits. We are coming across carbonate alteration, which is typical of regional scale, large gold systems such as the Timmins and Kirkland Lake Camps in the northern Abitibi and Kalgoorlie in Western Australia, which adds to our confidence for significant discovery. The economic foundation of Temagami has come from primary industry: forestry and mining. Progenitor hopes that it can add to the economy of the town and surrounding region through significant discovery.”
Progenitor Metals has identified from exploration work in the summer of 2018 a continuous structure that has widths up to 12 metres, grades up to 25g/t Au and has over a three-kilometre strike length, which has never been drilled effectively. The mineralization is associated with the Vermilion Lake shear zone, which extends for over 15 kilometres northeast through the property analogous to the more well-known Cadillac-Larder or Porcupine-Destor shear zones. The structural and hydrothermal overprints are important controls to the mineralized bodies in the region and represent a significant upside for the company. The two most advanced projects Progenitor is building include the Leckie and Kanichee Mines, which add tremendous excitement for the Progenitor shareholders as both deposits are open and represent two resources, currently not compliant to CIM standard, in gold, copper and nickel, respectively, with a collective 23 kilometres of drilling inherited to interpret. There will be further information released by the company as this interpretation proceeds and the geometry of these deposits becomes more understood.
Exploration work can be conducted during all seasons. In the past, the operations at the Sherman Mine and the Teck Corp. Copperfield Mine were significant employers. Logging was important in the past but is not a major factor now. Skilled workers are available from the larger population centers of New Liskeard and Sudbury. The regional electrical grid and the Northern Ontario natural gas line are readily available, and the Ontario Northern rail line and Ontario Highway 11 pass through Temagami. Rail loading facilities are present in Temagami and Cobalt. Mining supplies and equipment must be obtained from Sudbury, Cobalt, Kirkland Lake or Timmins. The property offers ample room for future accumulation of tailings, mine waste rock, storage and plant sites.
The management of Progenitor is excited to offer this opportunity to the public and have a clear roadmap to list the company on the Canadian Stock Exchange within the first half of 2019 to raise the capital necessary to drill its exciting prospects.
