MOOSE RIVER GOLD MINES, NOVA SCOTIA, Canada — Amid the dull claystone of a tube-shaped sample of rock, the gleaming, pulse-quickening swirl of gold is unmistakable.
“It’s quite a special specimen of gold — it’s by far the best visible section of gold we’ve ever intersected,” said Tim Bourque, a geologist with Atlantic Gold Corp, cradling the metre-long sample in his arms. The rock was gathered last fall at the firm’s Fifteen Mile Lake property, one of four deposits it owns in Nova Scotia’s old gold districts.
The discovery of the precious metal in such unremarkable hunks of stone is helping to revive a dormant industry — and Bourque hopes it will keep the company’s Moose River Consolidated Project flourishing after its initial Touquoy mine starts up here in September.
The company says Touquoy will stamp out 87,000 ounces of gold in its first year — each ounce currently worth over US$1200 each — an indication of the potential riches that have drawn Atlantic Gold (CVE:AGB) and other miners to the interior of the province’s Eastern Shore region.
The number of provincial exploration licences shot up from 259, covering 35,000 hectares, to 417 licences covering almost 97,000 hectares last year. Those include other minerals, but the Department of Natural Resources says “gold is a target for many.”
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