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Gold/Mining/Energy : Canadian Diamond Play Cafi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Famularo who wrote (520)	1/24/2003 8:40:18 PM
From: Famularo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16206

Ashton Mining of Canada Inc.: Second Renard 2 Mini-Bulk Sample Returns 65 CPHT VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--Robert T. Boyd, President and CEO of Ashton Mining of Canada Inc. ("Ashton"), is pleased to report an estimated diamond content of 65 carats per hundred tonnes ("cpht") for a 2.50 tonne sample collected from the Renard 2 kimberlitic body in 2002. Situated in the Otish Mountains region of north-central Quebec on the 153,000 hectare Foxtrot property currently being explored by Ashton and its joint venture partner, SOQUEM INC. ("SOQUEM"), Renard 2 was discovered in late 2001 by drilling a geophysical anomaly. As shown in the table below, an initial 2.44 tonne mini-bulk sample collected in early 2002 returned an estimated diamond content of 69 cpht. A second sample weighing 2.50 tonnes was collected during the summer mini-bulk sampling program by drilling three core holes. The sample consisted dominantly of kimberlitic breccia with numerous intersections of hypabyssal material and country rock. After processing through the dense media separation plant at Ashton's North Vancouver laboratory, the sample returned a total of 1.62 carats of diamonds larger than 0.85 mm using a square aperture screen. As shown in the table below, these results give the sample an estimated diamond content of 65 cpht. Larger, more representative samples are required to determine the diamond grade of the Renard 2 body. /T/ Summary of DMS Diamond Results - Renard 2 --------------------------------------------------------- Date Reported Sample Diamonds Diamond Weight Recovered Content (tonnes) (greater than (cpht) 0.85 mm) (carats) --------------------------------------------------------- January 24, 2003 2.50 1.62 65 June 11, 2002 2.44 1.69 69 Total 4.94 3.31 67 --------------------------------------------------------- /T/ Intersections of hypabyssal material that ranged from two to six metres in length were selected from each of the three drill holes. Weighing 434 kg in total, these hypabyssal intersections were processed separately and returned 1.17 of the 1.62 carats recovered from the 2.50 tonnes of material. The 2.50 tonne sample returned five diamonds greater than 0.10 carats. Four of these diamonds are colourless and originated from the hypabyssal material. They are described as follows: a 0.38 carat composite crystal, two fragments weighing 0.16 and 0.11 carats, and a cube weighing 0.14 carats. The fifth diamond is a pale brown composite crystal weighing 0.12 carats that was recovered from the breccia. Ashton's news releases dated June 11 and October 4, 2002 summarize the data from the nine holes drilled to date at Renard 2. These data suggest that this body has approximate minimum surface dimensions of 120 m x 65 m. The combined results of the 4.94 tonnes of material tested to date confirm the potential of Renard 2. As outlined in Ashton's news release dated January 13, 2003, the joint venture will implement an aggressive winter exploration program that will include additional sampling and delineation drilling of this and other Renard kimberlitic bodies. Mobilization for this program will commence in early February. Ashton is the operator of the joint venture's exploration programs and Brooke Clements, Professional Geologist and Ashton's Vice President, Exploration, is responsible for their design and conduct and the verification and quality assurance of analytical results. SOQUEM is a wholly-owned subsidiary of SGF Minerals Inc., a subsidiary of Societe Generale de Financement du Quebec ("SGF"). The mission of the SGF is to carry out economic development projects in cooperation with partners and in accordance with accepted requirements of profitability.

To: Famularo who wrote (520)	1/25/2003 12:35:51 PM
From: E. Charters	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16206

Wheat Board, Milk Board, CBC, Bell Telephone, Microsoft, Stalin and DeBeers. Monopolies, monopolies. Good or bad? Without DeBeers, diamonds would have been mined in Canada in the 1960's. Without them the price may have fallen or fluctuated to the extent that many mines would have dubious economics. Or would they? The experience in SA was that with standard mineral flood from competing enterprise before the DeBeers monopoly, the many mines would often suffer from tragedy of the commons or competitive pricing. (we know that is often the reverso and the customer will suffer from fixing.) Obviously the Russians with their long running raw production in diamonds have looked at every facet and the best part of the equation they could come up with despite out producing DeBeers and SA was to co-operate. So did Australia and with their limited control of their own mines, so have the Canadians. We could have had control of our own discoveries, except for the investor's mind control by DeBeers. The street whispers and the limited financial clout of our discoverors, not to mention their abysmal real expertise in the diamond trade, prevented them from raising the money in Canada (what's new?) and in the States and England where Debeers could block their money with the right "plonking". Our negativity artists did not help. Neither did I. I slammed MPV and Winspear right from the start. No one was paying me to promote their mining enterprise, and to praise them to the skies with their management and evident expertise would have been jejune. I could see their chances were slim, even without my negativity. Underplaying this overture was the constant theme that the big money was all important as well as the management vision, in geology, mineralogy and worldwide diamond politics. When the latter qualities were lacking, why help them, particularly for the traditional lack of reward of this industry? You could not, and it appears, even with a good gold price, cannot, re-brainwash the Canadian investor into supporting evident discovery that could become production. Long term money in Canadian mining is some skittish. And the principles in the racket look slippery enough for ample encouragement of this factor. We did a lot of mine development with US and English risk money in the past. Mine building money is frequently not Canadian either. Our investors are cash hungry. Our houses with the ability to smarm and re-brainwash the little guy are fleecing the little guy on swing trading "evil necessities", while refusing to back developers with a cold heart. A house that backs mine development? Why bother with the management that is out there? Why bother when few geologists or mine engineers or trade experts with any experience or vision sit on the board of or even work for Canadian houses? Question. HOw many geos or engineers do Canadian Brokerages or Investment capital houses employ? Answer. None to damn few. The whole lot have an average of NO industry experts on their staff. I talked to a few mining guys in a couple of investment houses Canadian in the nineties. They told me they had NO latitude to make grass roots project recommendations. In a few years they were on the street. One house had a PhD geo. He left to pursue his own land deals in Borneo during Bre-X! Cannacord? They do not do mining development at all. They drill holes. No mill money. Whew hah! EC<:-}