Strata of the Meguma Terrane in eastern mainland Nova Scotia include the basal greywacke-dominated Goldenville Group and the overlying, finer-grained, argillitedominated Halifax Group. All four of the deposits covered in this Report are hosted in the basal Goldenville Group.

According to Horne and Pelley (2007) the Goldenville Group in Eastern Mainland Nova Scotia comprises, from oldest to youngest:

• Moose River Formation: metasandstone with relatively thick (up to tens of meters), green–grey, locally banded, metasiltstone intervals;

• Tangier Formation: metasandstone-dominated cycles capped by dark grey slates;

• Taylors Head Formation: massive and tabular/planar metasandstone-dominated with lesser green–grey metasiltstone and rare conglomerate.

A number of argillite units, separated by greywackes, occur within the Touquoy property. Mineralization is hosted within the Touquoy argillite unit of the Moose River Formation of the Goldenville Group. The argillite is folded around the Moose River–Fifteen Mile Stream Anticline, a regional structure that can be traced for at least 47 km from a position approximately 6 km south west of the Touquoy deposit, to approximately 4 km northeast of Fifteen Mile Stream.

The anticline geometry varies along its length in the property area, from an upright tightly-folded anticline in the vicinity of the Touquoy deposit to multiple tight folds, overturned to the north, in the Stillwater area.

The argillite unit is as much as 180 m thick close to the hinge in the northern limb and appears to thin with depth. It is much thinner in the southern limb, typically 25–60 m wide. In the northern limb, the Touquoy argillite is separated into upper and lower units by a distinctive marker horizon, the rip-up unit, which varies from a thin (<2 m thick) horizon of sparse sandstone rip-up clasts in a finer grained matrix to a fine or medium grained greywacke. The rip-up unit has only rarely been recognized in the southern limb.

The Moose River–Fifteen Mile Stream Anticline is tightly folded and upright to overturned with both limbs dipping north. The anticline hinge is doubly-plunging, with shallow plunges to both northeast and southwest. It has been disrupted by a number of northwest-trending faults with contrasting fold geometries occurring on opposite sides of some of those faults showing that folding and some of the faulting had similar timing.

Two major faults appear to have a significant effect on mineralization thickness at Touquoy, the curvilinear West Fault and the relatively planar Northeast Fault:

• The West Fault is interpreted to show normal movement such that the anticline to the east of the fault has dropped and argillite on the southern limb of the anticline, west of the West Fault shows relative displacement to the south;

• The Northeast Fault comprises an approximately 10 m to 20 m wide zone with intensely faulted and fragmented intervals separated by weakly sheared or quite coherent intervals. It juxtaposes a sequence of barren or very weakly goldanomalous argillite and greywacke against the Touquoy argillite and its hanging wall units.

A discrete structure (or structures) parallel to the anticline axial surface and representing a hinge fault or faults has been tentatively identified in several drill sections, and may have a role in localising gold mineralization.

A series of north- to northeast-trending and east- to northeast-trending faults have displaced both stratigraphy and gold mineralization, although it is possible that some of these faults were also active during gold mineralization.

A well-developed axial plane cleavage is recognised within argillite layers while greywacke layers exhibit weakly developed pressure solution cleavage. Flexural slip occurred during folding and disruptions in bedding orientation in the hinge position is interpreted to reflect repetition (crumpling) of the fold hinge, to produce parallel fold axes at Touquoy.

The Touquoy host rocks have been metamorphosed to lower greenschist facies such that the dominant mineral assemblage in the argillites is quartz, muscovite, chlorite ± albite, with accessory ilmenite 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 located east of Moose River, northeast of the Touquoy open pit and northwest of the TMF.

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.

Crushing
ROM is hauled from the Touquoy pit to the primary crusher and tipped over a static grizzly sloped to bring oversize back to the loading side for removal by a front-end wheel loader (FEL). The FEL supplements the direct-tip feed from the Touquoy ROM stockpiles to maintain a continuous crushing operation. Mine operations retrieve any oversize and either use a mobile rock breaker to reduce the lump size or return oversize to the pit.

The mobile crushing plant produces a fine ore sized to a P80 of 10 mm. The throughput of the crushing plant package is 381 t/h at a crushing plant availability of 60%.

The vibrating grizzly feeder feeds the primary jaw crusher at the front of the mobile crushing circuit. The oversize from the vibrating grizzly enters the single toggle jaw crusher. A tramp magnet removes steel trash from the primary crushed ore.

The fine ore product is conveyed to a fine ore stockpile (12,000 t capacity; live volume of 3,000 t). Two variable-speed reclaim slot belt feeders provide two live pockets and an estimated 25% natural reclaim of the stockpile. The fine ore feed to the mill is conveyed by a 95 m long covered mill feed conveyor from the two fine ore reclaim feeders to the mill feed chute.

The fine ore is processed through one single pinion ball mill in closed circuit with hydrocyclones producing a final product of P80 150 µm. The mill has a nominal solids throughput of 5,479 t/d and can process 250 t/h at 91.3% availability. The overall ball mill circulating load is 250%

Grinding
The mill is sized to handle both the Touquoy and Beaver Dam ores without any mechanical adjustment required during the transition between mines. The Touquoy ore is expected to operate at a lower ball volume and steel ball consumption than Beaver Dam ore to compensate for the difference in hardness and abrasion characteristics.

Mill slurry discharge overflows onto a rubber-lined trommel screen with trommel oversize discharging to a bunker for regular collection and disposal. The trommel undersize gravitates to the cyclone feed hopper where the slurry is diluted with process water and pumped with a duty/standby cyclone feed pump to the cyclone cluster. A density meter
monitors and controls the amount of process water required to produce a target density to the cyclones.

The cyclone underflow splits, with up to 30% feeding the gravity circuit and the remaining underflow stream gravitating to the ball mill. The cyclone produces a fine ground overflow product of P80 150 µm which is sampled, and then gravitates to the vibrating trash screen. Oversize debris are removed and falls to a trash bin at ground level. The minus 0.8 mm trash screen underflow flows by gravity to the CIL circuit

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.

Carbon-in-Leach
The trash screen underflow enters the pre-leach feedwell after mixing with metered flocculant. The feed box slurry gravitates to the leach tank and optionally can feed directly to CIL Tank 1.

The circuit is a hybrid CIL type and consist of one leach tank and six adsorption tanks in series, each having a live volume of 1,169 m3. The design allows for a 250 t/h solids feed rate at 50% solids for an av ........