History

The best place to find gold is in the shadow of a producing mine. As drilling results are showing, historic gold exploration and production on Goldstone lands left behind large amounts of ore in known deposits and missed other neighbouring resources altogether. In its first production phase — which ended primarily because of a $35 fixed gold price and issues related to fragmented land holdings at the time — the Geraldton-Beardmore gold camps ranked among the top five producing areas in Canada, generating 4.1 million ounces of gold from high grade ore.

The Northern Empire Mine produced nearly 150,000 oz of gold from high grade ore and has been chosen by Goldstone as the first mine to be re-opened in the Beardmore Camp.

Roxmark’s current holdings, which consolidate key properties in the camp, eliminating boundary issues and maximizing effective use of existing infrastructure, include nine of the camp’s former producing mines. (Magnet mine in 1936)

The Magnet Mine (shown in 1936) produced 152,000 oz. of gold from 360,000 tons of ore.

Mines in The Hardrock Project- a joint venture in the Geraldton Camp operated by Premier Gold Mines in which Roxmark has a 30 percent interest- collectively produced nearly 3.0 Million ounces of gold from relatively shallow depths (within 600 metres of surface) from 1938-1968. Early drilling by Premier in 2009 focused on open pit-style mineralization and but is now targeting the huge potential to expand higher grade mineralization amenable to efficient underground mining methods. Historically at Hardrock, little effort was made to define narrow vein, high grade mineralization as bulk mining methods were used to extract the ore.

According to Premier, the Hardrock Project has the potential for defining several styles of mineralization capable of hosting resources, with grades and widths similar to many of Ontario's major gold mines including Open pit-style mineralization with grades exceeding 1.5 g/t Au (Timmins, Hemlo), broad zones of mineralization with grades averaging 5.0+ g/t Au (Musselwhite), and narrow vein zones with higher gold grades often exceeding 7.0g/t (Red Lake, Pickle Lake). As Premier's website states: "Many past-producing sites in Canada are undergoing a renaissance and today are being recognized for their exceptional potential to host future world class discoveries. Recent discoveries in Red Lake (Red Lake Gold Mines, Bruce Channel) and at Malartic underscore the importance of exploration in such historic camps... We regard the Hardrock Project as having potential to host multiple discoveries of 1 million ounces or more."

Magnet mine in 1936
The Leitch Mine was once Canada's richest. The Sand River/Leitch complex produced more than 900,000 ounces of gold. Like other Goldstone mines in both Camps, it remains open at depth.

The Leitch Mine (now 100% owned by Goldstone) was one of Ontario’s highest grade and most profitable gold mines, producing 860,648 ounces from 906,395 tons of ore at an average recovered grade of 0.91 oz.Au/ton. Even more impressively, the average recovered grade over the last ten years of the mine’s operation was 1.15 oz.Au/ton.

References in Ontario Ministry of Northern Development and mines publications show clearly that the molybdenum deposit on Goldstone’s Nortoba-Tyson property has been known for more than 50 years. However, while the 1958 annual report of Nortoba Mines Limited talks of “definite economic possibilities”, development of the property awaited today's dramatically higher molybdenum prices which are a result of sharply higher demand, largely because of a worldwide upswing in steel production.

The Nortoba-Tyson property had historical reserves of 72,000 tons grading 1.73% MoS2 (molybdenite) estimated in 1958 to a depth of 375 feet; however diamond drilling in 2005 extended the strike length and encountered moly at a depth of more than 1,000 feet. In addition, historical bulk sample results show that 135 tons extracted at Nortoba in 1964 produced 139 ounces of gold, an average of 1.03 ounces of gold per ton. (Geological Report 122 of the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines, 1975,Mackasey). Several grab samples taken in 2006 by Roxmark from the bottom of the previous bulk sample area assayed at values ranging from 0.17 to 7.64 oz/t.