Claim staking on Vancouver Island a hint of boost in business for strike-weary towns
Credit to Author: Derrick Penner| Date: Mon, 02 Mar 2020 21:23:06 +0000
Prospectors were staking mineral claims even before Geoscience B.C. put a helicopter in the air to fly a geophysical survey of northern Vancouver Island to sniff out the magnetic potential for minerals from its craggy landscape.
“(This) is exactly what we wanted to see it inspire, or stimulate,” said Geoscience B.C. CEO Gavin Dirom, said of the staking activity that started last July, just after the agency announced the $1.1-million survey would take place in October.
Prospectors, individuals and exploration companies filed 83 claims for mineral-exploration rights with the province to 113-square kilometres of land within the 6,000-square-kilometre swatch of Vancouver Island flown with a flurry of 35 following the Jan. 21 publication of data from the work.
Not that it will spark a mining boom, prospecting that leads to actually building a mine can take decades, but the follow up exploration work required will be a boost to a region loosely centred on forestry-dependent Port McNeill, which suffered through a record eight-month labour dispute that devastated the North Island.
“In B.C., when you stake mineral claims, you have one year to do work on a claim or pay a fee (of $10 per hectare to keep it active),” said Brady Clift, manager for minerals at Geoscience B.C. “Most people choose to do the work on the ground and when they do it, they have to do it on the actual claim.”
For Port McNeill town councillor and commercial landlord Derek Koel, even that amount of activity sounds good for the town of 2,000 that knows the ups and downs of being a one-industry town.
“I think people are pretty realistic that we’re not going to get a major employer like the Port Alice pulp mill or (Island Copper Mine) in the near future,” Koel said.
“The bottom line, it’s a few more people in our hotels, a couple more meals, people renting vehicles or looking for guides to get them out into the back country.”
Poring over the mapped-out results from a geophysical survey of northern Vancouver Island conducted by Geoscience B.C. in 2019 aimed at discovering the mineral potential of the region.
Koel said a crowd of more than 40 locals, which was practically standing-room-only for the room, showed up for an open-house event hosted by its Chamber of Commerce in Port McNeill Feb. 18 and the crowd asked a lot of knowledgeable questions about mineral exploration.
The staking activity raised some concerns with First Nations, said Dallas Smith, President of the Nanwakolas Council, a land-use planning organization of five North Island First Nations, because mineral claims don’t have to go through the same notification process with First Nations that other Crown land applications do.
“It was interesting to see, overnight, 35 people making claims in First Nations territory that doesn’t go through the process,” Smith said, but added that Nanwakolas is working on its own meeting with Geoscience B.C. with respect to identifying opportunities, or cultural concerns.
“We understand this isn’t decisions being made,” Smith said, but the process now will involve “making sure our communities understand we’re trying to get as close to the driver’s seat, when it comes to decision making, as possible.”
Northern Vancouver Island isn’t one of B.C.’s hottest spots for mineral exploration, all of southwestern B.C. saw $7.8 million in exploration work in 2018 versus $164 million in the northwest, which includes the so-called “Golden Triangle” north of Stewart.
But the North Island does have considerable history with mining. The last major mine there, the Island Copper mine near Port Hardy, closed in 1996, taking 550 direct mining jobs with it, but points to mineral potential in the geology.
Port McNeill Town Councillor Derek Koel.
Clift said the aerial survey work, which maps the magnetic signals given off by rock formations, doesn’t identify minerals specifically, but does target anomalies that suggest mineralization might be there, and the ones they’ve found hint at mineralization for copper, gold, lead, zinc and silver.
Vancouver Island has been under-explored for mineral potential, as far as exploration geologist Jaques Hogue is concerned.
Hogue, a former regional geologist on Vancouver Island for the Ministry of Energy and Mines, sits on Geoscience B.C.’s technical committee and lobbied for this year’s survey work, which is an extension of a previous survey done in 2012 on land to the north of this swatch, which stretches from just north of Port McNeill southward to Tahsis close to the west coast.
“Exploration is like shooting in the dark,” Hogue said, requiring a lot of patience and “boot time” with crews and geologists walking grids in their claim areas.
The initial impact of it might be small, but can be significant for small communities and escalate depending on what exploration yields and whether it justifies more expensive drilling programs that evaluate potential mineral reserves.
“These things we look for are elusive,” Hogue said, “they don’t stare at you in the face. You have to find them.”