1911 Gold (TSXV: AUMB) has received an exploration grant of C$300,000 from the Manitoba Mineral Development Fund (MMDF). The funds will be used for the company’s 2021 field exploration program and to advance the 100%-owned Rice Lake gold project in the province.
The exploration budget at Rice Lake was set at C$1.2 million with work conducted on six targets. It involves geological mapping, prospecting, stripping outcrops, geochemistry and geophysical surveys. So far this year, about 5,000 samples have been collected. Results from the sampling program will be combined with historical data and that from a new high resolution drone magnetic survey to define targets for the 2021-22 exploration drilling program to begin this fall.
1911 Gold recently announced it was consolidating its landholdings near Bissett, Manitoba, with the acquisition of the Palomar Lake and Pleiades properties. Both are about 20 km east of the company’s True North mill and former mine. The company now controls more than 58,000 hectares within and adjacent to the Archean Rice Lake greenstone belt.
The True North complex includes a modern, fully permitted 1,300 t/d mill, a tailings management area and reprocessing operation, a suspended underground gold mine, and the True North deposit. The deposit produced over 2 million oz. of gold over a mine life that spanned close to 100 years, including continuous production from 1932 to 1968 from the historic San Antonio gold mine.
The prefeasibility study prepared in 2016 for the True North mine put measured and indicated resources at 1.4 million tonnes grading 7.26 g/t gold, containing 294,000 oz., and inferred resources at 2.8 million tonnes grading 5.65 g/t gold, containing 460,000 oz. of gold.
Manitoba launched its MMDF in August 2020 with the goal of jump starting mineral and economic development projects in the province.
(This article first appeared in the Canadian Mining Journal)