Filing claim staking by `fax’ marks end of an era; but few turn

What was earmarked “the last staking rush of its kind” barely caused a stir last week as a mere handful of individuals competed for ground on the western tip of the Shebandowan greenstone belt. As mining recorder Roy Spooner waited expectantly for a flood of explorationists at his Thunder Bay, Ont., office, Gold Fields Canadian Mining, a unit of Hanson PLC of England, managed to tie up most of the 2,400 acres of open ground without losing their breath.

“This is much like the boy who cried wolf,” Spooner said on Oct. 30, the day the ground came open. “It isn’t turning out to be as much of a competition as we expected it to be.”

Despite previous inquiries about the prospective ground, which lies 11 miles from Central Crude’s (TSE) Moss Lake gold play and surrounds a former producer, resident geologist Moe Lavigne said some major companies backed away at the last minute.

Inco (TSE), for instance, which already holds ground along the belt and was expected to be an active player, pulled out when Inco Gold announced its merger with Consolidated TVX Mining (TSE). Under the merger, Inco Exploration and Technical Services, which would normally handle the staking, no longer has a mandate for gold exploration,Lavigne said.

The lack of interest was also a symptom of the financing squeeze currently affecting several junior concerns. Hiring a helicopter to cover the more than 100 miles from the staking area to the mining recorder’s office in Thunder Bay was simply out of the question for most juniors, said Jim Mysklicki, president of Thunder Bay-based Wye Resources (COATS).

“The mining recorder should have had a trailer up there (at Moss Lake)” said Mysklicki. “Then I would have been there and my friends would have been there and you’d have seen a staking rush.”

But as it turned out, Gold Fields stakers got around the distance problem by packing a fax machine. Staking information was transmitted from the nearest pay phone by way of fax to a Gold Fields’ agent in Thunder Bay.

“This is the first time fax machines have ever been used for a rush in Ontario,” said Lavigne. “But, at this point, our mining lands people say it is perfectly legal.”

The advent of the fax machine is one of the reasons why the “claims rush,” or race to the recorder’s office, is becoming a dying tradition, he said.

More important are amendments to Ontario’s Mining Act scheduled to take affect next year. Under the new act, claim stakers will no longer be required to race to the recorder’s office. A time record of the staking activity will be sufficient.

But for now, the apathy with which the mining industry is approaching new ground is merely a symptom of bad times, said Lavigne.

“It’s a measure of how sick the industry is right now,” he told TheNorthern Miner. “This (The Moss lake ground) is as attractive as it gets.”