Historic gold mining in Nova Scotia, including mining in the Moose River Gold District, has focussed on quartz-vein hosted gold deposits within the Goldenville Formation, typically associated with the limbs and hinges of anticlines. This setting is often referred to as ‘Meguma style’ gold mineralization.

In recent years the existence of disseminated gold mineralization and potential to develop large tonnage, open-pitable resources in Nova Scotia has been recognised, particularly since 1986-87 when drilling around old workings at Moose River Gold Mines intersected wide intervals of relatively low grade gold mineralization in what is now known as the Touquoy gold deposit. Since then, disseminated gold mineralization has been identified at a number of locations, spatially associated with anticlinal fold hinges. Most of that mineralization is associated with argillites or mixed greywacke-argillite units within the Goldenville Formation, including Touquoy, Beaver Dam and Fifteen Mile Stream.

The potential to develop a large tonnage, open pit resource at Touquoy was recognised in 1986 1987 when drilling around old workings at Moose River Gold Mines intersected wide intervals of relatively low grade gold mineralization.

It is this disseminated style of gold mineralization, localised in an anticlinal fold hinge and attended by a relatively small proportion of gold mineralised bedding-parallel quartz veining, which is the focus of the on going development of the Touquoy Gold Deposit.

At Touquoy, by far the largest concentration of gold on the Touquoy Property, the bulk of the gold mineralization, including disseminated mineralization, occurs within the Touquoy Argillite. Gold mineralization in the greywackes, particularly the coarser grained greywackes is mostly restricted to Meguma style, narrow quartz vein hosted gold mineralization. However, both styles of gold mineralization also occur within the mixed argillite and greywacke sequence (Quarry Belt to Higgins Greywacke) overlying the Touquoy Argillite on the northern limb of the anticline. Disseminated and vein-hosted styles are superimposed over the length of the deposit – some 600 m – but at the western end of the deposit, thick sequences (~100 m) of less variable grade gold mineralization predominate while narrower widths (10-20 m) of marginally higher grades become more apparent to the east.

The Touquoy host rocks have been metamorphosed to lower greenschist facies. Detrital minerals, including quartz, feldspar and muscovite, are preserved in the coarser grained (greywacke) lithologies but are largely replaced by metamorphic minerals in the finer grained (siltstone and claystone) lithologies such that the dominant mineral assemblage in the argillites is quartz, muscovite and chlorite +/- albite with accessory illmenite and rutile.

Sulphide minerals accompanying the gold mineralization are pyrrhotite, usually aligned along the axial plane cleavage (1-2%), arsenopyrite, often as coarse porphyroblasts (1%) and pyrite (<1%). Other sulphides are rare. At a macro scale there is poor correlation between arsenic and gold content.

Mining is based on conventional open pit methods suited for the project location and local site requirements.

Mine operations are anticipated to begin at Touquoy, and move to Beaver Dam once the Touquoy pit reserves are exhausted in year 5.

Touquoy Phase 1, West Phase.
This pit targets the west portion of the Touquoy deposit, which contains higher grade gold than the east portion. This phase contains about 3 years’ worth of mill feed. This phase mines from the pit exit at the 115 m elevation, down to the pit bottom at the -25 m elevation. The ramp runs counter-clockwise down from the 115 m pit exit in the north end of the pit, and switchbacks at the 35 m, 10 m and -5 m bench elevations.

Touquoy Phase 2, East Phase.
This phase targets the remaining east portion of the deposit and contains about 1.5 years’ worth of mill feed. It mines from the pit exit at the 125 m elevation, down to the pit bottom at the 50 m elevation. The ramp runs clockwise down from the 125 m pit exit in the south of the pit. Three separate pit bottoms are defined below the 90 m elevation; each is accessed through spurs off of the main ramp at the 90 m bench elevation.

The Touquoy operations require two 4.5 m3 bucket hydraulic excavators and one 7.0 m3 bucket front end wheel loader, which are sized to match the 64 tonne payload haulers and to meet the production requirements of the mining schedule.

The hydraulic excavators are specified to handle the bulk of excavation from the pits, including all identified mineralized zones and the waste rock in those mineralized zones. The wheel loader is specified for mining waste only areas of the pit, re-handling stockpiled material, pit clean up, road construction and snow removal. Blasted patterns will be mined on 5 m or 2.5 m split benches in all mineralized zones, depending on grade control requirements and on 10 m benches or 5 m half benches in all gold barren areas.

The excavator size is chosen based on its ability to minimize losses and dilution for the proposed ore control operations, as well as its proven reliability and relatively large population. It can work effectively on 2.5 m or 5 m split bench heights and can be utilized on full 10 m benches.

The wheel loader is chosen based on its ability to load the truck in 4-6 passes, which is an efficient target for bench face loading scenarios, as well as its proven reliability and relatively large population. The wheel loader is also sized as appropriate for feeding the crusher when required.

Ore and waste rock haulage will be handled by off-highway rigid frame haul trucks with a 64 tonne payload. Haulage profiles are estimated from pit centroids at each bench to designated dumping points for each scheduled time period. The following hauler productivity parameters are applied to calculate the cycle times.

The Touquoy process plant is designed for an ore treatment of 2 Mt/a or 250 t/h based on an availability of 8,000 h/a, or 91.3%. However, the crushing section design is set at 60% availability since it operates outdoors and uses modular semi- mobile equipment. It will accept Touquoy ROM ore for the first five years of operation and thereafter ROM ore from the Beaver Dam deposit at the same treatment rate using the same unit operations. Only relatively minor equipment modifications are expected to be needed at Touquoy to treat the Beaver Dam ore.

The main plant building houses the grinding, gravity recovery, reagent, elution and refinery sections. The crushing and CIL sections are located outdoors. The three-stage crushing circuit ahead of a single-stage ball mill is based on modular semi-mobile crushing equipment so as to allow the modifications necessary to allow the introduction of Beaver Dam ore.

ROM is hauled from the Touquoy pit to the primary crusher and ........