Summary:
The Novador Project, previously known as the Val D’Or East Project, encompasses three areas Pascalis, Courvan and Monique. The Val-d’Or mining camp is well known for its lode gold deposits and copper, zinc, silver, and gold volcanogenic (VMS) deposits. On September 3, 2024, Probe announced drill results from Beaufor property, now part of Novador project.
Gold mineralization from the Val-d'Or mining camp has been classified as greenstone-hosted quartz-carbonate vein deposits or mesothermal or late-orogenic lode gold deposits associated with shear zones or extensional fractures.
Pascalis Gold Trend
The Pascalis Gold Trend hosts the New Béliveau, North Zone and Highway deposits. The New Béliveau and North Zone deposits are centred on a series of NNW-trending subvertical intermediate dykes, forming a swarm over 3 km long, 1 km wide and 1 km deep. The dyke swarm played an important role in the setting of gold mineralization for both deposits, consisting of structurally controlled quartz-tourmaline-carbonate-pyrite veins hosted in fine-grained intermediate dykes, basalts and intermediate to mafic volcanoclastic rocks. The mineralization in the Highway deposit is similar but is hosted in a distinct magnetic gabbro intrusion. Intermediate dykes and the gabbro intrusion are younger and intersect the volcanic units.
The New Béliveau deposit, which encompasses the past-producing L.C. Béliveau mine, is hosted within a subvertical microdiorite dyke oriented N345° and perpendicular to the trend of volcanic formations. It is located about 2 km east of the Bourlamaque Batholith margin. At the former L.C. Béliveau mine, three parallel dykes (West, Main and East) constitute the main swarm of diorite dykes. The thickness of individual dykes varies from 5 to 15 m individually but may reach 30 m combined. At the mine, 90% of the veins and gold mineralization is hosted within the Main dyke. With an average thickness of 10 m, the mineralized zones were originally traced to a vertical depth of 580 m and over a strike length of 300 m. A ductile-brittle fault zone cuts and ends the mine to the north. Although its displacement is unknown, it exhibits oblique striations plunging to the west, suggesting a possible sinistral movement with uplift of the south block relative to the north block, suggesting an extension at depth towards the west.
Courvan Gold Trend
The Courvan Gold Trend (CGT) extends 2.5 km along the eastern margin of the Bourlamaque Batholith and up to 2 km inside the southern part of the intrusion. The trend contains the Bussières, Creek, Bordure, Southwest, and Southeast deposits. The latter is open to the west, north, south and at depth. Gold mineralization is structurally controlled by several major shear zones and faults, striking 250-260° and dipping 75° to the north to subvertical, dividing the CGT into structural blocks.
The mineralized zones consist of envelopes containing 5% to 30% centimetric to metric quartz-tourmaline-carbonates pyrite ± chalcopyrite veins, mainly in extension, with a subhorizontal to moderate dip to the north or the south in the case of the Southeast deposit. Gold-bearing veins are primarily hosted in a granodiorite phase of the Bourlamaque Batholith and, to a lesser extent, in metre-scale E-W oriented sheared diorite dykes that cut across the granodiorite intrusion. Typical mineralization is composed of 1% to 10% pyrite and rare chalcopyrite contained within veins and the altered wallrocks (silica, sericite, carbonates ± K-feldspar-albite) over a thickness of a few centimetres to a few metres. High grades are often associated with the presence of coarse pyrite clusters and/or locally native gold, like the Beaufor mine.
Monique Gold Trend
The Monique Gold Trend hosts 17 major gold zones, including the G Zone from the former Monique open pit mine and numerous other gold occurrences intersected by drilling. Inside the trend, gold-bearing zones are related to mesothermal lode gold deposits and are found principally along two main WNW-trending subparallel deformation corridors in the Jacola Formation. The corridors are ~150 to 200 m wide and extend 2.5 km along strike. The G-J-P deformation corridor is in the central part of the project and roughly follows the contact between an ultramafic unit to the north and basalts to the south. This corridor contains the former Monique open pit.
The second, the A-B-I-M corridor, passes approximately 150 m to the south, encompassing the upper portion of the southern volcanic domain composed of mafic to andesitic-basalt flows, volcaniclastics and hyaloclastites. Both corridors are injected by multiple feldspar (± quartz) porphyritic intermediate dykes, metre-scale in thickness, and centimetre- to metre-scale (2-3 m wide) lamprophyres, often containing gold mineralization. The interpreted mineralized zones have general orientations of N270-290° with dips of 70° to 82 ° to the north.
The mineralized zones of the Monique Gold Trend consist of extensional veins, shear veins and/or a stockwork of quartz-carbonate-albite ± tourmaline veins carrying disseminated to coarse pyrite. The gold-bearing zones are commonly associated with shear zones, faults and extensional fractures. Mineralization is concentrated around veins and in adjacent lithologies, which are strongly altered due to related hydrothermal alteration. The mineralized zones are found mainly in massive volcanic units and close to intrusions exhibiting carbonate, albite, sericite-fuchsite and silica alteration. The quartz vein systems are mainly subparallel to the strata, dyke/sills and deformation zones. Gold is generally associated with 1% to 5% finely disseminated pyrite, and visible gold is common in the quartz and carbonate veins and veinlets. The zones generally vary in thickness between 2 to 10 m and reach up to 30 m. Mineralized zones can extend more than 900 m laterally, and they have been traced by drilling to a vertical depth of up to 600 m.
Senore Zones
The Senore gold zones are located in the northwestern part of the project, within the Bourlamaque Batholith, near the contact with volcanic rocks. Several shear zones host the vein-type mineralization, with orientations of 125°/55° south or 070°/90°. The mineralized zones range from 1 m up to 20 m thick and are intersected to maximum vertical depths of 220 m. Gold mineralization is associated with centimetric to decimetric blebs of pyrite in quartz-carbonate tourmaline veins. Diorite dykes are locally present in the shear zones. Mineralization consists of less than 3% pyrite, pyrrhotite, and disseminated chalcopyrite.
Beaufor Mine Area
Gold mineralization occurs in quartz-tourmaline fault-fill veins associated with extension fractures in shear zones, which dip moderately south. Gold-bearing veins show a close association with the mafic dikes that intrude the granodiorite. The dikes are interpreted to have influenced the structural control of the gold-bearing veins. The sulphide content within the veins is generally less than 10%, and the principal mineral is pyrite with some minor chalcopyrite and pyrrhotite. Locally, native gold is seen to have infilled voids inside pyrite crystals (Pelletier and Langton, 2020).
Veins strike at N115° and dip moderately to the south from 30° to 65° (Thelland and Manda Mbomba, 2016). The thickness of the veins varies from 5 cm to 5 m, but generally, the thickness of the quartz veining system is 30 cm to 120 cm. All the gold-bearing veins are contained in a strongly altered granodiorite in the form of chlorite-silica forming anastomosing corridors 5 m to 30 m thick. The veins at the Beaufor Mine sometimes form extended panels (Pelletier and Langton, 2020).