I used to live in Red Lake. The mines are actually in nearby Balmertown just a few miles west. I thought that that property is on a big plug of granite. Have to get my maps out to be sure, but that is what my impression was.
So whatever happened to Dan Willans? And the Cochenour?
Where would Canada be without its prospectors? Wouldn't be a mine in the country without 'em. For a geologist to find a mine you have to hold him by the hand, explain to him how to use his compass, walk him over to the quartz vein and point out the gold to him. And then you have to listen patiently while he expounds on the theory of why there should be gold in it according to his advanced degree of insight.
All they would have to do is teach structural geology to prospectors and the geologists would be totally superfluous. (At least those how know any at all.)
Reminds me of the time we were on an outcrop in Kirkland Lake sampling it hither and yon, and a well known professor of Geology from some college came by with some of his grad students. He pronounce that he had formed the theory that the gold in Kirkland Lake was structurally controlled. There were 4 prospectors working at the showing, and they all looked at one another kind of quizzically. After he left they begain to converse amongst themselves. "Now if it weren't structurally controlled, how the hell do you suppose the gold would get in there in the first place?" they mused. They just shook their heads and laughed. They professors were catching up with the prospectors. It would be no time at all before they were in line with Sherman Tough and Harry Oakes who had found the veins that made Kirland Lake famous 50 years before. Oakes had even sunk a shaft on his vein, when all manner of companies told him to quit. When he was asked at the PDA after a presentation how far the mine "went down" He replied, "about a mile". He must have wondered why people began to laugh. Surely he knew that the basement cutoff for these type of deposits was 1500 feet? That the granite would come up and the greenstone would peter out? That gold grades would die and copper increase? Harry replied that he knew nothing about a basement complex and if there were one, it was safely tucked down there miles out of sight. For the record, Harry was right.
Graduate geologist have told myself about mines that had geochemical cutoffs, or precipitation temperature limits. When I doubted that and drilled below the limits I had found ore. Similarly will-o-wisp hunches about veins possibly folding around intrusives, almost naively hopeful and full of uncertainty turned out to be true when all said otherwise.
Trust your hunches and follow your dreams. When it comes to having X-Ray eyes, no geologist I know is Ray Milland. But the prospectors dreams often get all the respect of Rodney Dangerfield.
EC<:-}
