MINING SCENE: The Sudbury Star/Tuesday, April 20, 1999
Val Caron company grabs rights to rich deposit
By BARB BLAKELY
A junior mining company from Val Caron has secured the rights to a new, rare-metals discovery in northwestern Ontario. Houston Lake Mining Inc. optioned 256 hectares of property considered to be rich in cesium, tantalum, lithium and rubidium on March 22.
The deposit is known as the Pakeagama Lake Rare Metals Property.
“It's about 150 to 170 kilometres north of Red Lake,” says Houston Lake president, Grayme Anthony. Anthony says his company has a 100 per cent option on the property over the next three years.
Although the discovery of The Big Whopper, a pegmatite deposit in the
Separation Rapids area several years ago brought much attention to rare metals, Anthony was one of the few people in the industry who understood the potential of rare metals before they were commonly discussed in Ontario. “My background is in geology, and I've worked on rare earth which is a subset of that (rare minerals),” he explains. Anthony's background also includes working on contract for the Ministry of Northern Development and Mine's Ontario Geological Survey.
When Anthony heard there was a rare-metal's deposit discovered by the OGS at a prospector's meeting, he knew the deposit would be worth looking at in greater detail. He soon learned that the property's potential was first identified by Denver Stone of the OGS in the early 1990s. In 1998, Fred Breaks, (the OGS geologist who a few years previous had identified the potential of The Big Whopper) studied the Pakeagama Lake property in greater detail.
A report written by Breaks and his colleagues from the OGS this January confirmed that the Pakeagama Lake discovery had tremendous potential. The study states, “It is now clear that the Pakeagama Lake occurrence represents the second-largest complex-type, petalite subtype pegmatite in Ontario, being only surpassed by the Big Whopper pegmatite in the Separation Lake area. This pegmatite system also contains the pollucite, the only ore mineral for cesium.
This occurrence represents only the fourth occurrence in Ontario, and
indicates a high exploration potential for zones rich in cesium.” While petalite is commonly used in glassware, cesium is often used for high-pressure drilling. Anthony says there are also indications of the presence of tantalum on the property. “The tantalum market has grown at about 10 per cent a year since 1992, and that's because it is used in the computer industry,” he says.
Anthony says he and his colleagues at Houston Lake Mining are excited
about the potential the area offers them. “I believe this property could be a company builder,” he says. Since acquiring the property, Anthony says Houston Lake has raised $236,000 of an immediate target of $300,000 in private placement. “We do have enough funds to commence work,” he says. Over the next year, Houston Lake hopes to raise $500,000 for the Pakeagama Rare Metal's project. Anthony says if the company reaches its financial target, it will spend about $200,000 in surface exploration, and about $300,000 for drilling. Anthony adds that a number of private investors in the Pakeagama Lake project are from the Sudbury area.
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