Lots Of Gold Still Here

There is an area of Canada known for gold. Lots of gold! In fact this area is one of the richest areas for gold on the planet and it's where some of the biggest names in mining got their start. This area is known as the Abitibi and even though mining has been taking place since around 1900, it is still a hot bed of activty today. This is still the place that small unknown and unheard of junior mining companies can go and have a chance of becoming a success.

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The Abitibi gold belt is a region of Canada that extends from Wawa, Ontario to Val-d'Or, Quebec. This gold belt is an established gold mining district and has produced over 100 mines, and way past 170 million ounces of gold since 1901. Not just gold is mined here either. There is lots of copper, zinc, nickel and some very impressive deposits of silver. To date over 35 billion pounds of zinc, 15 billion pounds of copper, and 400 million ounces of silver have been produced from this region. The Gowganda camp for example has produced some 70 million ounces of silver and there is still more to be found.

Pretty much all the land that is located along fault lines that run throughout the belt is staked and owned by either major mining companies or mid-tier companies. However there is still property to be found that are owned by prospectors and small juniors as continued exploration moves further a field. Since metals prices have seen a rebound, gold and other minerals are being found further away from these faults and if ore values and assay grades add up, it doesn't take long for majors to come along and offer either additional funding for an earn in or if the project is advanced enough the major may just do a buy out. The latter is what most small juniors can ony hope for.

One of the major hurdles for investors is trying to find a junior that could be onto a promising play. All to often we see some small junior plouding along going un-noticed until they hit it big or turn in some good assays. Case in point was last year when Sirios Resources SOI had good results from their drilling on their Cheechoo property located in the James Bay lowlands. Their stock price went from around 30 cents to around $1.40 in a matter of days.

Another small explorer that is active in this region is Alexandria Minerals AZX. Although the company has property all across three provinces, the bulk of it's activity is focused along the 35 kilometer-long Cadillac Break Property Package in Val d'Or, Quebec, on which it has been conducting diligent and continuous exploration activities since 2007, successfully discovering resources over 2 million ounces of gold.

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There is also a third small junior that is actively drilling that we are following. That company is Aldershot Resources ALZ. This company has been turning up some pretty impressive returns from a winter drill program. Several multi gram gold values from re-sampling were assayed with the highest value of 8.49 g/t gold being returned. Just a few days ago the company released results from a third hole drilled. Those results were 11.52 m of 1.63 g/t gold. Along with these above average gold showings the company also reports a high grade cobalt showings. The property they are drilling is located directly on a fault that runs through the Abitibi.