Hi All,

Back after a nice Christmas break. I want to apologize to the board as a whole as it seemed like my last post grew wings and flew off into a different direction than what I originally intended. In my previous post I wanted to bring awareness to the fact that different organizations located in other countries are allocating large numbers of dollars towards influencing public opinion when it comes to the production of natural resources in Canada.

The fact that these financially leveraged groups are aligning with both environmental groups and First Nations leaders in Canada is something that should be of interest to all Noront shareholders as the environmental issue discussions and First Nations interests have been major topics for ROF companies in 2011.

What I did not intend for this post to become was fuel for a debate on why the ice caps are melting and whether or not Al Gore is correct or incorrect. I have had enough debate within my own extended family on similar issues the last two weeks and do not wish bring similar banter into this great forum. That said, I did have the last laugh when I asked my brother where he thought the plastic for his iPOD, iPAD, iPhone and iMac came from. "With no petroleum there would be no plastic and thus no Apple products to satisfy his delusion of being green through his love of all things related to Steve Jobs.")

The same thing could be said for copper, nickel, chrome and precious metals used to produce many of the technologies that allow these devices to talk with one another. Without these metals we would not have the battery operated cars, green buses, copper communication lines, wireless towers, and even private jets for concerned Hollywood directors and former movie stars.

A few may wonder why I take breaks from posting on the board and after some thought I can say that I believe that sometimes less is more. No posting has allowed me to maintain what I believe to be a more objective view of this company than when I was posting on a daily basis a few years ago. When a person's focus becomes very intense on a particular company or stock, one can lose perspective on what I call the game within the game. Like watching a hockey game from the first row of the stands, you get to see some of the action with incredible clarity, but this closeness to the play comes at a cost of perspective of the overall game.

Having read the postings of the past few weeks, there is one theme that continually appears. This is:

'Wes promised that 2011 was to be Noront's "year" and this has not happened based on the latest drill results, news releases or share price performance'.

Based on what I have seen from Noront in 2011 I believe that in terms of the past five years I have been a shareholder, this year could be rated average at best if nothing else outside of Noront was being considered. But is this Wes' or Noront Management’s fault?

When I look back to 2011, I see that the commodity prices of what Noront will eventually be producing have been slowly declining the past six months. This has an impact on share price as the value of what is in the ground is less than it was a year ago. It does not matter what the potential price in the future will be, the market assigns value based on today's commodity futures. When gold goes up so do the share prices of companies producing Gold. Likewise, when Nickel was at $20+ a pound during the glory years of 2007-2008 NOT was trading above $7 a share at times. Nickel is now priced at just over $8 according to Kitco and has been on a downward trend.

Overall I believe Noront did well in 2011 given that the world went through tremendous upheaval throughout the entire year. By well I mean it survived. The market relies on economic and political stability in order to remain stable. Any volatility in the market is usually a result of investor fear. Fear leads to investors selling off their assets in the market which means supply for shares exceeds demand for shares and share prices naturally drop. When the fear becomes too great as it did a few years back, the entire market crashes wiping tremendous wealth off of the books.

In 2011 I saw many companies with markets caps less than their cash holdings. This tells me that investors were holding money so tight they would not even invest in companies where there was literally zero risk. Forget about the value of the non-cash assets. The cash equaled more than the value of all of the shares combined. Close down the company, burn all of the non-cash assets and divide up the cash after debt and the shareholders would have been ahead. But rather than that most investor money is still on the sidelines earning 2% based on the advice from TV guy with the accent from ING.

And who can blame most people. In 2011 we saw a major correction in the market once again whereby any small gains in 2010 were wiped out. We also saw the following:

- Instability in the Middle East. Egypt, Tunisia, and other Arab oil producing countries overthrowing their leadership with unknown power brokers to fill the political vacuums left behind.

- A full on war between NATO (oops, I mean the local freedom fighters on the ground) and Gadhafi in Libya resulting in his removal from power after decades of rule.

- An economic meltdown of Europe based on the bad debt of Greece and later Italy. This rippled through the world as major banks across all countries felt the sting.

- A tsunami hits Japan leaving nuclear damage and fears about the long-term repercussions about using this form of "clean" energy.

- Massive flooding in Thailand wipes out major high tech industries that use precious metals. For instance, 50% of all worldwide hard drive production is instantly crippled leaving a gap that could not be instantly filled. No hard drives no on-line brokerages.

- The US Government is nearly shut down due to insolvency. Their credit rating in world markets is lowered. They were just days away from shutting down most government agencies due to an inability to pay salaries and their vendors. The resultant partisan fighting between the Republicans and Democrats in Washington leaves this country in dire risk of insolvency in the future despite Band-Aids being put in place one month at a time. There appears to be no long term solution and no middle ground between the two groups which increases risk and fear in the markets.

- 1000s of protesters take to the streets all across the USA to denounce the corruption and greed on Wall Street in their various "occupy movements". Regardless of which side you agree with, the cracks are beginning to show as the consolidation of wealth into fewer hands results in a decreased lower class. Cracks = fear = volatility.

- Rioters in Vancouver burn police cars, loot and pillage their shopping district and trash their own city as their fans cannot accept the fact that they were beaten by a better team this year (Okay, that really has nothing to do with the markets but I could not help but throw it in there and laugh at the thought of people trashing their own city while the world watched in amazement.)

When you step back and see that the world went through literal hell in 2011, can we really blame Wes for the fact that it was not the "Year of Noront?"

To expect anything different in light of all that was going on outside of McFaulds Lake in 2011 would is unrealistic in my humble opinion. We can wish for different results and for all of the bad things to go away but it is what it is.

Today the share price closed at .79 cents which is still 50% higher than it was a few months back. Not every company out there can say the same. Will it go higher in the future? We all hope and expect it will.

Here's to a good year for Canadian Juniors everywhere!

M1.