CANADIAN GOLD MINES

Taranaki Daily News, 2 April 1934, Page 6

CANADIAN GOLD MINES

SEARCH FOR GOLD. PRE-CAMBRIAN SHIELD. Toronto, Feb. 10. In every likely goldfield across Canada prospectors are awaiting the coming of spring to take up where they left 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 5450 feet, and the Teck-Hughes at 5400. Both of these are in Northern Ontario. ‘ They are far from record depth, however. Village. Deep, in South Africa, is down more than 7600 feet, and the St. John Rey mine, in 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 feet if the. ore holds out. They point out that underground rock temperatures in Canada are . about 20 degrees lower, than in the Rand, in India or South America, making working conditions proportionately . less uncomfortable.

The ’ great mineral area of Canada is the so-called Pre-Cambrian Shield, a huge area of some 2,000,000 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 Killamey. Eventually this range was worn down by eropion, 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 of the Dominion’s mineral wealth.