New Gold Showings Identified At James Bay Gold Project

 

MONTREAL - Midland Exploration Inc. reported results of a prospection campaign on the Lasalle property of its James Bay Gold project. The Lasalle property is located about 35 kilometers south of Hydro-Quebec's LG-3 airport and of the Trans-Taiga road. The highlight of the 2017 campaign is the discovery of three new gold showings along a gold-bearing shear zone that is several kilometers long, located at a metasediments/metavolcanics contact. The three new gold showings returned respectively 22.6 g/t Au, 7.03 g/t Au and 2.35 g/t Au.

The 2017 prospection campaign was focused in the eastern part of the Lasalle property, in an area that was not previously explored by Midland and in which gold-bearing shear zones identified to the west were interpreted as continuing. A grab sample of a silicified and foliated amphibolite containing about 1% pyrite, located in a 100 meters thick shear zone, returned 22.6 g/t Au, as well as strongly anomalous copper, bismuth and molybdenum (note that grab samples are selective by nature and values reported may not be representative of mineralized zones). Along the same shear zone, 750 meters east, another grab sample of foliated amphibolite returned 7.03 g/t Au and anomalous copper and bismuth. Finally, a further 800 meters east in the same shear zone, a grab sample of paragneiss with pyrite, galena and sphalerite stringers returned 2.35 g/t Au, 105 g/t Ag, 3.32% Pb and 5.53% Zn, along with strongly anomalous bismuth and antimony. Eighteen (18) outcrop samples collected during the 2017 campaign returned more than 0.1 g/t Au, out of a total of 132 samples.

The shear zone that hosts the new showings is located at the contact between metavolcanic and metasedimentary rocks, is about 100 meters thick and is now interpreted to be more than 8 kilometers long. Along the same structure, 8 kilometers west of the new showings, the historical Lac Sirios Sud 1 showing had returned 1.93 g/t Au in a grab sample. A parallel shear zone, also located at a metavolcanics/metasediments contact, was identified by Midland in 2009 on the Golden Idol showing. This showing is located about 3 kilometers west of the new showings and had returned up to 9.09 g/t Au in grab sampling and 2.7 g/t Au over 1.0 meter in channel sampling. The new showings confirm the strong orogenic gold potential of the Lasalle property and the presence of multiple, kilometric-scale, gold-bearing shear zones. The Au-Bi-Mo-Ag-Pb-Zn elemental association also suggests a felsic magmatic-hydrothermal component to the system, in addition to the classic, shear zone hosted orogenic mineralization. This type of setting containing a superposition of distinct gold-bearing events is typical of large gold deposits.