Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

Natural resources are important for the economic future of Canada. Gold is especially valuable and several past-producing gold districts in Canada have potential for hosting giant new discoveries. Since mining ended in many of those districts, our understanding of ore genesis and geology has progressed and those advances provide a basis for new research that will guide renewed exploration in those districts. The proposed research addresses the genesis of gold deposits in the Snow Lake district of the Trans-Hudson Orogen in northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan. The Snow Lake district hosts the New Britannia mine which produced over 1.4 million ounces of gold. This places the New Britannia mine as the most important gold past-producer in northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan. The main goals of the research are (1) to identify the rock formations and geological structures, such as folds and faults, that control the location of the New Britannia deposit and other gold occurrences in the Snow Lake area, (2) to characterize the geochemical footprint of the ore system as this can significantly increase the size of an exploration target, (3) to determine if gold was emplaced during a single or multiple stages because different types of gold ore systems may require different exploration strategies, and (4) to determine the relative and absolute timing of mineralization with respect to tectonic events in the Trans-Hudson Orogen as this will expand the applicability of the research to the entire orogen. The research will further contribute new information on the tectonic history of the Trans-Hudson Orogen and therefore advance our understanding of this major trans-continental orogen.