I believe that several of you have seen the article on page 32 of this week's Barron's, which predicts the decline of the Canadian dollar to the 85 to 90 cents U.S. level during the coming year. This will surely be beneficial to Sangold's operating margins. Even without further increase in gold's price above current U.S dollar quotes, the lower Canadian dollar will reduce Sangold's operating costs proportionately.

With the new geological model being adopted for the origin of the Rice Lake mine ore bodies, I wonder if the company will speed up rehabilitation of the C Shaft levels in order to exploit the up dip portions of the 93, 98 and newly discovered veins on the footwall side of the host unit?

Some of the upper projections of the new veins should be readily accessible from the easterly ends of the 23 and 24 levels off of C shaft. This would allow mining of the upper projections of the new veins from those tracked levels. It would reduce the near term dependence on trackless haulage in the D shaft area, and might postpone the need for deepening D shaft in the near future.

Diesel trackless equipment has its own efficiency advantages, but has its drawbacks in a very deep and difficultly accessible mine like the Rice Lake. Furnishing 4 cu meters per sec. of ventilation air per 100 KW of diesel engine power can be hard to achieve as mine openings become deeper and more remote.

plumb bob