GOLD IN CANADA

Evening Star, Issue 21711, 4 May 1934, Page 6

GOLD IN CANADA

SEARCH GOES DEEPER In every likely goldfield across Canada prospectors are awaiting the coining of spring to take up where they Jett off last fall the search for gold. Meanwhile producing mines are steadily going deeper into the earth as the high price of gold makes profitable expensive drilling at great depths and the exploration of low-grade ore bodies. In fact two Canadian gold mines already are more than a mile deep the Kirkland Lake, at 5,450 ft, and the Teak-Hughes at 5,400 ft. Both of these arc in Northern Ontario, they are rai from record depth, however, > ylage Deep, in South Africa, is down more than 7,600 ft, and the St. John Key mine, in v Brazil, which has been in operation more than a century, is almost as deep. , . . , Canadian engineers and geologists hold that Canadian mines eventually will be the deepest in the world, and they say at least two producers plan to drill down 10,000 ft if the ore holds out. They point out that underground rock temperatures in Canada are about 20deg lower than in the Rand, m India, or South America, making working conditions proportionately less uncomfortable. . The great mineral area ot Canada is the so-called Pre-Cambrian Shield, a huge area of some two million square miles around Hudson Bay, and its rock formation is believed to be the oldest in the world. Geologists believe that in the dim past the central part of Canada was crossed from east to west by a great mountain range they call the Killarney. Eventually this range was worn down by erosion, and by the action of glaciers, leaving a'level plain with the older rocks exposed. It is this Pre-Cambrian Shield which .is the source of most ot the dominion’s mineral wealth..