A few paragraphs from the link attached. Those guys in Hemlo faced very similar circumstances to JB, except one was gold and one is copper:

"In 1945, storekeeper Harry Ollman and native prospector Peter Mogeg discovered gold, and one year later guide Moses Figher and geologist Trevor Pages staked ground around what is known today as the Williams claim. Prospector Roy Newman and geologist Bob Schaaf came close to becoming millionaires when they found gold in the area during 1974. Even though adventurers, explorers, prospectors, and geologists staked numerous claims and mining companies worked the ground in search of the precious metal, no one was able to locate the quartz rock veins in which Canadian gold is usually embedded. The gold that was found during these attempts did not have the grade to be commercialy profitable. Not finding gold, most of the prospectors and geologists eventually gave up on Hemlo, but Don McKinnon and John Larche remained patient--and became millionaires....

..With the cost of drilling 1,500 feet into the ground for samples at a prohibitive $25 to $30 per foot, McKinnon and Larche lacked the money to work the land themselves, but they did not want to sell the claim outright either. The only alternative was to find a mining company that might be interested in funding an exploratory site. When the men began to search for an investor, they discovered that the history of geologists' reports on the Hemlo area weighed heavily against them."

http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/hemlo-gold-mines-inc-history/

Eventually someone believed in them and the rest is history