I was with Cominco way back when the company was exploring for Zn in the Archean rocks of the Meen-Dempster belt in Ontario. They had come up with the company motto, "Think Zinc". They had this proprietary goop which when put on a rock turned yellow when there was sulphide zinc there. They called it "Zinc Zap". I think it was dimethylglymoxime with ammonia salts added. I developed a slogan for the program which we put on T-Shirts with the Cominco logo which, looking like a bottle cap, gave me the inspiration to write, "McVicar Lake - No Deposit - No Return" There was some smallish sulphide body found there later amongst the impressive rhyolite flows which had attracted the company's attention. Most of what they explored in the way of anomalies were on the edge of iron formations and were a bust. It was the iron formation that was conducting often.
There were interesting gold values found in one outcrop I had sampled. I had nocked a rock where I had seen quartz and sulphide, which I thot might carry values. I noted to geos at the time that Murray Watts had explored this area for gold in the early part of the century and it had been the focus for a staking rush for gold in the 1920's. We found posts with 4 number tags on them dating to that era. This was along the Pickle Lake gold trend. When you took to the air back then (about 1978) you could count dozens of drills down below as you flew back into Red Lake. A few years later the Bond Gold discovery was found along that belt. It was in between Pickle Lake and where we were.
A geo who was with us at the time ended uphttp://www.siliconinvestor.com/subject.aspx?subjectid=34458 with a stock on SI. Tyhee in the NWT exploring the old Discovery Mine, which along with the Leitch was on of the highest grade gold mines ever to operate in Canada.
Did you know that zinc and gold have a definite affinity? As strong as copper often. Often in sheared quartz vein areas you will find definite zinc values,up to 1%, where you find economic gold. Some gold mines could recover the zinc in their ores, although it is rare to see worthwhile values. I mined in a deposit in Ontario which had values over 1% that they actually thought of going after along with the gold. It had a sulphide core. Not high sulphides, less than 5%, but the zinc was appreciable. The Blake River Volcanics in Ontario and Quebec are known for the sulphide base metal deposits that run so high in gold that they could be classed as gold mines. They often contain high quartz. The Blake River Volcnics have yielded 685 metric tons of gold in their history.
I know of some copper veins that run close to 2% copper in quartz, and the gold runs to 1/2 ounce. Geco Mines in Ontario was classed as a base metal mine, but although massive sulphides ran near a 1/10 of an ounce gold, and thus made it a respectable gold mine as well as a copper mine, and not small either. Flin Flon and Callinan in Manitoba were similar. Kidd Creek is one of the largest and most productive silver mines in the world, and the Horne mine (in the Blake River group) in Quebec was a good gold mine for many years of its copper production. Ditto the McIntyre in Timmins, which had both a gold mine of good value and a bornite copper mine too in the same deposit.
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