The Opemiska Copper-Gold Project, Chapais Quebec: A Legendary Mine... Reborn

Charles Beaudry, Director and VP Exploration, QC Copper and Gold Inc.

Mr. Beaudry is a seasoned mining executive with over 40 years experience in project generation, business development, exploration geochemistry and international project management.  He has been involved in a number of deposit discoveries during his carreer and worked with Noranda/Falconbridge/Xstrata (now Glencore) from 1989 to 2006 and worked overseas in Brazil (country manager 1996-2001) and Papua New Guinea (2004-05).  In 2008-2009 he was General Manager for New Opportunities for Iamgold Inc. and from 2010 to mid-2013 he was founding President and later Chief Executive Officer of Xmet Inc., outlining a NI 43-101 compliant, 850,000 ounce gold deposit in the Abitibi greenstone belt of Quebec.  Charles is currently the VP Exploration for QC Copper and Gold Inc. with its flagship project trying to develop an open pit mine on the old underground Springer and Perry mines in Chapais, Quebec.  Charles is a fully trained Six-Sigma black belt and uses and teaches QAQC using Quality principles.

Talk Abstract:

The Opemiska Project is located in the town of Chapais Quebec, approximately 40km west of the Chibougamau Mining Camp and consists of four historical mines that produced over 22M tonnes of ore at 2.40% copper and 0.33 grams per tonne gold.  QC Copper and Gold Inc. has an option to acquire 100% interest in the Opemiska Property and two adjacent properties that together cover approximately 13,406 hectares.  The opportunity arose from the recognition by the Company that the mined veins are surrounded by significant halos of low grade mineralization and initial drilling by the company in intersected long intervals of copper mineralization that was above the likely cut-off grade in an open pit that confirmed our fundamental thesis that we could redefine the historical underground mines as an open pit.   A 23 holes, 3,400m drill program in 2019 was followed up with a 90 holes, 20,000m diamond drilling program in 2021 which lead to our maiden mineral resources estimate of 81.7M tonnes @ 0.88% CuEq of pit constrained Measured and Indicated Mineral Resources and 21.3M tonnes @ 0.73% CuEq of Inferred Mineral Resources [CuEq% = Cu% + (Au g/t x 0.72) + (Ag g/t x 0.01)].  The Mineral Resource is pit-constrained and contains more than 532,000 tonnes or 1.17 billion lbs of copper and 816,000 ounces of gold in the Measured & Indicated (M&I) classification and an additional 109,000 tonnes or 240.3 million lbs of copper and 209,000 ounces of gold in the Inferred classification.  The project is very robust with an average grade at 0.85% Cu-Eq, at least four times the likely cut-off grade.  The project has significant upside potential including at depth at Perry Mine beneath the conceptual pit, along strike to the east and along the Beaver Lake Fault corridor which is host to both the Robitaille and Cooke Mines.

The geology of Opemiska is very well understood.  Copper and gold mineralization is hosted in moderate to steeply dipping shear veins that are axial planar and radial to post D2 fold structures in the Venture and Bourbeau Sills, which represent two of three, co-magmatic stacked sills occurring in the Blondeau Formation.   Although direct isotopic dating is not available the evidence suggests that the mineralization formed during drag folding along the regional-scale, NE-trending, sub-vertical Gwillim fault.  Traditional interpretation has the Gwillim Fault postdating the mineralization which would have simply been sinistrally offset by the fault approximately 3.5 km.  Our new interpretation, based on structural relationships and underground geology at the Cooke Mine by Falconbridge, suggests the mineralization formed contemporaneously with the late history of the Gwillim Fault when the regional compression direction rotated from NS to NW-SE which caused dilation of the EW and NW structures, and puncturing of the Gwillim Fault by the Beaver Lake Fault structure.  The Puncturing of the Gwillim Fault was followed by re-activitation of the Gwillim fault but with a 300-500m dextral displacement, the same movement direction as found on the Gwillim-parallel NE fault in Chibougamau Camp that host the Portage and Henderson mines.   

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