EDITORIAL AND COMMENTARY — `If you don’t explore, you won’t discover’ — In search of the unknown

After coffee and muffins and a few introductory remarks, Donald Cranston of Natural Resources Canada took the podium at the 54th Mines and Energy Ministers’ Conference in St. John’s, Nfld., and challenged mining companies to pay more attention to ore types unknown, or essentially unknown, in Canada.

“Vast areas of our country remain only superficially explored,” Cranston said, “because nothing much has ever been found there. But this may be self-fulfilling prophesy — if you don’t explore there, you won’t make discoveries, so you won’t explore. Some of those areas would benefit from more innovative geological mapping and exploration.”

He said the discoveries of the Voisey’s Bay deposit illustrate that, until recently, there had been a lack of exploration in this region of Labrador.

Going farther back in time, exploration companies have traditionally overlooked the country’s potential for hosting porphyry copper-Type deposits, such as those that exist in the Western Cordillera, and unconformity-Type uranium deposits, such as those that exist in the Athabasca and Dubawnt Basins.

He also pointed to the discoveries near Lac de Gras in the Northwest Territories as evidence that there had previously been insufficient exploration for diamonds in Canada (except for several low-grade, uneconomic diamondiferous kimberlites found since the 1960s or 1970s).

Cranston believes Canada’s huge expanses of Archean rocks in Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and elsewhere are examples of regions underexplored for diamonds.

“There must be many other as-yet-unrecognized exploration possibilities in Canada that can provide additional discoveries to geologists who apply originality and innovation to the search for them,” he added.

Cranston has a point. Some of the most spectacular exploration successes in this country began with individuals who went against the herd mentality and pursued their own goals.

Spud Huestis was one such pioneer — a prospector who saw the value and potential of British Columbia’s low-grade copper deposits, which many others saw as nothing more than waste rock.

Charles Fipke found diamonds in a region of the Territories that was once viewed as so unprospective that government geologists barely did any mapping in the area.

The Eskay Creek deposit in northwestern British Columbia is another unusual deposit type that resulted from good geological detective work and the unflagging determination of Murray Pezim’s exploration team.

Pezim also was a trail-blazer in Ontario, where he financed exploration work on a known gold prospect that few thought had much promise. The flamboyant promoter didn’t worry about the naysayers; he backed his geologists until the drills hit the Hemlo motherlode on the 76th hole.

The Quebec government has been a pioneer in its efforts to stimulate the search for non-Traditional deposits. Not only does it provide incentives for companies to pursue this exploration effort; it lays the foundation by gathering and providing geological data to support the private sector.

All in all, Cranston believes that, although exploration and discovery levels in Canada are healthy, domestic spending is growing more slowly than spending on international projects. Still, as the old saying goes, we can not rest on our ores. We need more exploration leaders; that is, people charting their own course and not just following the pack.

But, please, no bulk-Tonnage, maar-diatreme deposits with “paystreaks” of alluvial gold and miraculous metallurgy. That production number has already been staged, and Hollywood is making the movie.