The Joanna property (formerly the Hosco-Heva) is situated in Joannes Township in the south central portion of the Abitibi Greenstone Belt, within the Superior structural province of the Canadian Shield. All rocks are Archean in age except for the late crosscutting Proterozoic diabase dykes.

The gold deposit at Joanna may be described as a sediments hosted orogenic gold deposit related to the structural control of the Cadillac fault. Mineralization is mainly developed in the form of finely disseminated sulfides envelopes (pseudo lenses) with minor quartz veining in Cadillac Group sediments in contact with mafic layers corresponding possibly to sill. The main brittleductile deformation comprising the Cadillac Fault is concentrated in these metasedimentary layers. The genetics of the deposit has not been studied in detail. Historically, previous exploration was focused on quartz veins within the deformation and mineralization corridor where gold was present in higher grades.

Gold appears to be mainly associated with finely crystallized sulfides in a biotite rich schist with minor deformed millimetric to pluri-centimetric quartz veins. Mineral assemblage also includes variable concentrations of white mica, carbonate, albite, garnet, and possible other aluminosilicates. Amphibole and tourmaline rich replacement zones have been locally identified.

Mining Hosco ore will follow the standard practice of an open-pit operation with conventional drill and blast, load and haul cycle using drill/truck/shovel mining fleet. The overburden and waste rock material will be hauled to the overburden and waste disposal areas near the pit. The run-of-mine ore will be drilled, blasted and loaded by hydraulic shovels and delivered by trucks to the primary crusher or stockpiles near the crusher.

The following is a summary of major processing steps and design criteria:

- Ore is crushed using a single jaw crusher. Crushed ore is stored in a concrete silo from which it is reclaimed with vibrating feeders onto a belt conveyor, which then feeds the SAG mill.

- The grinding circuit comprises a single pinion SAG mill with a variable speed drive operated in an open circuit, which feeds a ball mill with a fixed speed drive. The ball mill is operated in a closed circuit with a hydrocyclone cluster. The product of the ball mill circuit is then fed to a flotation circuit to be concentrated.

- A portion of the ball mill discharge is fed to a pair of gravity concentrating units operated in parallel, which recover gravity recoverable gold. The gravity circuit tailings are returned to the ball mill feed. The concentrate from the gravity circuit is upgraded using a shaking table (as a batch operation). The shaking table concentrate is directed to the melting ........