Regional Geology

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Q-Gold’s Mine Centre Properties are located 65 kilometres east of Fort Frances in Northwestern Ontario, 150 miles southeast of Red Lake. They lie within Pre-Cambrian Archean age (2.6-2.9 billion years old) Greenstone Belt rocks of the Superior Province of the Canadian Shield. Archean rocks of the Superior Province contain most of Canada’s important gold producing areas. The 100%-owned Properties, totalling over 32,000 acres near Mine Centre, are contained in a large wedge situated between two major geologic Subprovincial boundaries, the Wabigoon Subprovince to the North and the Quetico Subprovince to the South. The Wabigoon, in which the majority of Q-Gold’s properties lie, is a classic gold-bearing granite-greenstone terraine, whereas the Quetico is sedimentary-gneissic in character and is less prospective for precious and base metals. The area is bounded by two deep-seated, major regional faults, the Quetico to the north and the Seine River to the south, which were both thought ot have a role in the implacement of gold-bearing fulids in the area.

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Local Geology – Mine Centre
The Mine Centre are has long been known to be rich in various mineral commodities, ranging from precious metals to magmatic copper-nickel and iron-titanium deposits, to volcanogenic copper-zinc.

Gold-bearing Jumbo Vein - 2m Wide at Surface

However, until now, modern exploration efforts have been limited because of a previously fragmented land position. Gold production on the Properties, under primitive mining methods in the late 19th and early 20th Century, yielded over 16,000 ounces from the Foley and Golden Star Mines and established the Mine Centre area as a prospective host for a large Archean lode gold system. Which may be further revealed as exploration moves underground at depth.

At Mine Centre, the Wabigoon Subprovince rocks north of the Quetico fault consist of both supracrustal, dominantly mafic (magnesium-rich) to felsic (silica-rich) volcanic rocks, gneissic and migmatitic equivalents of these supracrustals, and granitic to intrusive rocks. The supracrustal rocks are greenstone belt rocks comprised of both granitic (tonalites and granodiorites) intrusive rocks and gneissic and migmatitic derivatives of the supracrustal sequence.

The emplacement of a number of intrusive bodies, and regional faulting in the Mine Centre area were the result of extreme volcanic and tectonic activity early in the Archean age followed by crustal shortening and later Archean secondary felsic intrusions, faulting and shearing. The area also contains numerous felsic and ultra-mafic intrusives (dikes) including lamprophyres, whose origins deep in the earth’s mantle are thought to be both a host and sometimes a source, for the gold deposition in the area.

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Extensive lateral displacement in connection with the two large regional faults has resulted in a major “Deformation Zone” at Mine Centre, characterized by large, deep-seated fissures, cross-cutting faults, extensive shearing and brecciating. These features have acted as both conduits and hosts for gold-bearing fluids which accompanied subsequent Archean intrusives into the Mine Centre Deformation Zone resulting in the gold-bearing system now under intensive exploration by Q-Gold.

Gold Mineralization at Mine Centre
Gold largely occurs as coarse, “free gold” associated with sulphide minerals in bands within quartz veins. These associated minerals include tellurides, sphalerite, argontite, chalcopyrite, pyrite, molybdenite, bornite and galena. Sampling and assaying of veins over the years and historical mining records from the Foley Mine indicate that gold concentrations within some of the principal veins of the Bad Vermilion Group averaged between 0.35 and 0.85 ounces of gold per ton. Some even higher-grade zones have been demonstrated by the many assay intersections and gold shoot samples from early underground and surface sampling and limited diamond drilling. In 1933-34, an additional 800 tons mined from the Foley Mine’s South shaft (Bonanza Vein) produced 855 ounces of gold (1.07 ounces per ton) and 149 ounces of silver (0.19 ounces per ton). The gold, in nugget form, is “free milling”, is not associated with any contaminant and can be 90% recovered by a simple gravity (crushing) circuit. Up to an additional 7% can be recovered with the addition of flotation circuits. The ore has been tested and deemed "compatable" with that processed by two ontario custom smelters in bulk sample tests.

Bad Vermilion Claim Group

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The majority of the known gold deposits at Mine Centre occur within quartz veins in rocks designated as the Bad Vermilion Claim Group. This Group includes both the historic Foley and Golden Star Mines. The veins are hosted within the Bad Vermilion tonalite-trondhjemite felsic intrusive, a deformed elongated, “s”-shaped body approximately 12 kilometres long by 1.5 kilometres wide. There is little compositional variation within the trondhjemite, which is dominantly equigranular. Plagioclase is the most common feldspar, with subordinate potash feldspar. Quartz is commonly present in the form of "eyes" within the trondhjemite.

Within the Bad Vermilion Group, gold occurs primarily within sheeted fissure quartz veins emplaced in northwest to north-northwest trending ductile shear zones within the large intrusive mass of tonalite-trondhjemite. Some gold also occurs in veins with the same trend, within meta-volcanic mafic to felsic rocks outside of the trondhjemite body to the northwest at the Golden Star Mine, which produced 10,632 ounces of gold in the 1890s. In excess of 100 gold-bearing quartz veins are known to exist within the Bad Vermilion Group of claims owned by Q-Gold.

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Q-Gold’s exploration targets on the Bad Vermilion Claims include the over 100 sheeted fissure veins where gold has been assayed, the 45+ kilometers of “shear zones” where numerous gold occurrences have been identified, and at least 13 known conductive geophysical anomalies, indicative of prospective sulfide mineral bodies (and perhaps gold-bearing) at shallow depths.

The Ontario Geologic Survey reports proven and probable and speculative resources of 220,000 ounces of gold at Q-Gold’s Foley Mine (for more information, Click Here ). These reserves are not qualified under NI 43-101 and are subject to confirmation by diamond drilling and assaying.

Iron Ridge
The Iron Ridge Prospect is located within a 2520 acre block on the west shore of Bad Vermilion Lake about five kilometers southwest of the hamlet of Mine Centre.  It is contiguous to the Company’s other extensive holdings at Mine Centre and is part of a 10+ km linear magnetic anomaly containing pockets of conductivity as determined by airborne surveys.

The layered mafic-ultramafic intrusive complex hosting Iron Ridge has been named the “Bad Vermilion Lake Intrusive.” It consists of a 4 x 15 kilometre gabbro/ anorthosite suite of intrusive rocks containing gabbros and pyroxinites with thick, intervening lenses of magnetite and ilmenite (Titanium Oxide).  These in turn, are underlain by zones of massive sulfides, including chalcopyrite.  Iron Ridge has the potential for both platinum group elements (PGE’s) and a copper/ nickel/ cobalt suite of mineralization, and if metallurgical complexities can be overcome, a future source of both Iron and Titanium metal. 

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Cousineau Claim Group
The east-west trending sequence of predominantly felsic, volcanic and meta-sedimentary green-schist facies rocks that runs across this group of claims has potential for, and has been explored for, both base metals and gold. Earlier work on the claim group (which totals 6,480 acres), dating back to the late 1800s, was focused largely on gold. Most of the work carried out after 1940 was directed towards base metals, although Q-Gold has continued to investigate the five known significant gold showings on the claims.