After finishing his BSc and MRes in Geology, specialising in ore deposits, at the University of Portsmouth, Will went onto read for a PhD in Mineral Exploration at Cardiff University, with a focus on optimizing exploration programmes for Ni-Cu-PGE deposits with Northern Shield Resources in Northern Quebec

The world’s need for new resources demands that exploration geologists travel father than we have before in the hopes to uncover the next world-class metal deposit. This concept allowed me to travel to Ottawa, the capital of Canada, to work with Junior Exploration Company, Northern Shield Resources on exploration projects across the Labrador Trough in Northern Quebec.

 

Ottawa is a great city filled with majestic parliamentary buildings and close to Gatineau National Park. However, metal deposits are not found in the city and fieldwork took me northwards to Northern Quebec; an isolated region occupied only by native Indians and Inuits. Small indigenous communities are scattered across the region, but for the most part this region is untouched wilderness, submerged in snow most of the year with extreme temperatures of below -40°. Evidence for past glaciations can be seen along the trough, where esker deposits (under-glacial rivers) form long sandy snakes, which border the lakes, and striations (ice-carvings in the rocks) show the direction of ice movement. On the other hand, however, outlines of forest fires can cover tens of kilometres throughout the warmer, drier season. Accessible trains and roads only go as far north as Schefferville, a small community once world famous for its Caribou hunting. Nowadays, the community is known for local Iron mines, which have been exploiting voluminous Paleoproterozoic banded iron formations since the 1950s.

As well as the banded iron formations, the whole region is filled with primitive magmatism that erupted across the province about 1.88 billion years ago. The interaction of this magma with the local crustal rocks means that magmatic sulfide deposits exist in the region. Magmatic sulfide deposits contribute a huge proportion of the world’s nickel, copper and platinum group element supplies. Due to the remote nature of this area, everywhere you leap out of a helicopter, you could well have been the first person to stand on that outcrop! Large orange-brown stains on the rock can be indicative of sulfur-rich rocks, a key characteristic of this deposit type, so keep your eyes peeled as you head into the wilderness.

Into the Wilderness

To venture northwards into the wilderness, a helicopter is required not only for the great views, but also because you can depart virtually anywhere of interest. Before getting started there are a few essentials to retain: survival kits in case of emergencies, a bug net (trust me this is essential) and ‘bear bangers’ in case a local black bear catches you eating their wild blueberries.
Before beginning our reconnaissance survey, we stopped by a former mining camp used by Northern Shield Resources during their recent drilling survey at the Huckleberry Prospect; a great chance to see what working on a remote project is all about. Fuel, food, and equipment would have been shipped over by seaplane and the drill programme would have continued into the harsh winters from the bug-infested summers. Just north from here is the Huckleberry Prospect; a prospective nickel-copper and platinum group element deposit owned by Northern Shield Resources, named after Huckleberry Hound.

We spent three days rock-hopping across the Huckleberry Prospect and the surrounding geology, gathering samples for analysis as well as taking in the spectacular views. The helicopter spiralled around cliff faces and hovered over rivers to get the best views of the prospective outcrops over the vast terrain. We were keeping our eyes open for outcrops stained orange (named gossan), which is an indicator of the presence of sulfides and would make ideal exploration targets. The helicopter would hover over an intriguing outcrop, giving us enough time to jump out and inspect the outcrop for sulfides. We would spend time here, taking notes, photos and rock samples before hopping back onto the chopper before heading to the next stop. Days were long and necessarily so to ensure the maximum amount of time possible spent on the rocks. Helicopter travel was governed by weather patterns, which often forced us out the way

A bit on the Geology

The Labrador Trough, or New Quebec Orogen, is a volcano-sedimentary fold-and-thrust belt that formed when the Southern Rae Craton accreted onto the Superior Craton at around 1.88 to 1.86 billion years ago. Three cycles of passive margin sedimentation in-filled extensional rift basins during the docking, which were later intruded by voluminous mafic-ultramafic magmatism, collectively known as the Montagnais Sill Complex.

The Montagnais Sill Complex comprises a spectrum of mafic-ultramafic rocks, but none prettier than the aptly named Snowball gabbros; glomeroporphyritic gabbronorites, sometimes enclosing coarse magmatic sulfide ore. The controls on mineralization in the region remains unclear and is a key question in my own project. The relationship between multiple pulses of magmas and their interaction with local country rock are important factors in de-coding the genesis of metal deposits in this region. Active exploration by Northern Shield Resources has uncovered multiple pulses of mafic-ultramafic magmas, each of which dosed with variable degrees of sulfide mineralization. The prettiest of which are the snowball gabbros (or glomeroporphyritic gabbros). A lot more remains to be discovered in this remote terrain, which I will hopefully learn in field seasons to come.

If you are interested in the work of Northern Shield, you can learn more about their projects on their website, which spans both magmatic sulfide and gold deposits. To keep up to date with my own on-going work, you can find me at @ExplorePGE.

 

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