Excellent question!  And you guessed it, there hasn’t been significant exploration efforts in 30 years.  A similar way people have asked me the same question is, how come the Beauce with all these prolific placer gold showings, (see that map P. 141 Fig. 1) it didn’t develop into a major gold camp like Val D’Or Quebec?  3 main seasons.  One is an unfortunate circumstance of history.   And second, the immediate economic interest in the placer deposits by mining companies overshadowed exploration spending.  And third, not enough claims held as one block to cover areas of interest.

In the late 1800’s, as mining was in full swing in St-Simon-les-Mine (Gilbert River) as well as the Des Meule and Rivere du Loup, Mining companies made agreements or land purchases with the local farmers for access to property & mineral rights.  The DeLeroy family, descendants of the old seigniorial system, spoiled the party by claiming mineral rights over most of the Beauce!  Even though Quebec's seigniorial system was abolished, the DeLeroy family claimed they never relinquished that right and sued local property owners & mining companies.  In short, the court case became a famous legal landmark that resulted in today's modern staking system whereby the provinces (the State) now holds mineral right everywhere and parcels them out as claims.  The perverse effect was that the staking of claims across the country allowed orderly exploration projects that lead to discoveries like Val D'Or or Timmins Ontario, but in the Beauce, is was status quo.  For a hundred years, property owners in the Beauce held mineral rights along with their real estate holdings.  Besides the large placer projects of 1910 & 1960's where by the land was purchased, it became next to impossible to invest in big exploration projects through-out the region.  It was only in 1985 that the Quebec government separated mineral rights and real estate in the Beauce and made the region available for Staking.  Before doing so, both the Provincial and Federal governments commission massive studies of southern Quebec to evaluate mineral potential.    The Shilts & Smith report by the Geological Survey of Canada like the one you linked to was one of many.  In fact, it was Shilts that later did rotosonic drilling on what is now our property and came to the conclusion that the gold placers were not alluvial but from a Saprolite of heavy weathered bedrock.  Hence a local source of hard rock gold.

In 1985, the newly available claims of interest in the Beauce were grabbed by Coinagas Mines.  They had first dibs because they acquired the assets of the former Beauce Placer Company that did the dredging in the 1960s.  We (Uragold), purchased the real estate from Lithium One when they did an RTO of Coniagas Mines.  Coniagas, a major exploration company back then, did a massive three year exploration program.  However, their interest was in evaluating the size of the gold placer deposit along the placer channel.  Coniagas and then Macamic did nearly 80 RC drill holes in the over burden to measure the placer deposit for a gold resource.  They did not do any diamond drilling of the bedrock.  Since then, mining companies lost interest because of falling gold prices in the eighties and nineties. 

In the 2000's there's was renewed interest by Fancamp but progress was limited because of segmented land claim holdings by Uragold and other prospectors.  It's only now that the Gilbert river valley is mostly held as single block by one company (HPQ!) to make the investment in exploration worthwhile.

Cheers!

Patrick Levasseur

President, COO
Tel: 514 846 3271
Cel.: 514 262-9239

HPQ Silicon Resources
3000, Omer-Lavallée St, Suite 306
Montréal (Québec) 
Canada H1Y 3R8

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