The Kapuskasing Structural Zone is a Proterozoic failed rift. It is a crustal-scale feature zone more than 200 km long that bisects the Archean Superior craton between James Bay and Lake Superior, forming a complex, northeast-southwest trending structural corridor of uplifted, high grade metamorphic rocks. There is believed to be more than 20 kilometres of vertical crustal displacement along the KSZ.

The KSZ hosts numerous alkaline, ultrabasic and carbonatite intrusions, kimberlite and lamprophyre which span more than 1.7 billion years of activity, to as recently as 128 million years ago. This tectonic setting is prospective for the development of a large IOCG – IOA, and/or carbonatite-hosted hydrothermal breccia systems with critical metals, including copper and gold, and rare earth elements (REE) in carbonatite.

Hecla-Kilmer’s uniquely REE-enriched apatite mineralization in carbonatite vein breccia belongs to an iron oxide apatite (IOA) hydrothermal mineral system which forms at the higher temperature end of the IOA – IOCG spectrum of mineral deposit systems. Within this framework, our primary focus continues to be on the potential of the KSZ to host large, iron-oxide copper-gold (“IOCG”) mineral systems.

And in terms of structure, it’s about more than just one big crack in the earths crust along the KSZ. Both the Hecla-Kilmer carbonatite complex and the Northway kimberlite breccia pipe occur at the convergence of regional tectonic structures. They occur along the western margin of the KSZ where it intersects the opposing tectonic suture boundaries on either margin of the meta-volcanic Wabigoon sub-province within the Archean Archean Superior Craton, with the sediment-dominated Quetico province to the south, and the English River sub-province to the north. And for the Northway kimberlite discovery, it is also noteworthy that the gneissic crystalline basement of the English River sub-Province are believed to be the thickest part of the Archean Superior craton, period.

Location. The area is remote, and targets are covered by a regional blanket of till, yet there is strong regional infrastructure, including active rail, provincial grid power and highway access which enable cost-effective exploration, and will enhance project development going forward should a discovery be made.

Relevance. VR’s REE discovery in carbonatite vein breccia at Hecla-Kilmer, and recently sold to Neotech Metals Corp., was awarded in each year of the first four years of the Junior Exploration Grant Program for critical metal exploration in Ontario, “OJEP”, starting in 2021. The program is ongoing, and now in Year 5. Hecla-Kilmer demonstrates that the discovery of critical metals in the KSZ district is relevant to policy statements from governments across North America to support and/or spurn the urgent need for raw material supply to feed domestic, down-stream sustainable technology industries such as EV’s and wind turbines in the emerging green economy.

The KSZ properties are located in the Moose River basin in northern Ontario, Canada. The Halfway property, for example, is located just 10 km from the Ontario hydro-electric facility at Otter Rapids, which also serves as the northern terminus of Highway 634 which links the region to the towns of Cochrane and Kapuskasing situated on the northern Trans-Canada Highway located approximately 100 km to the south.

The town of Moosonee located on tidewater at James Bay is located about 125 km to the northeast of the property. The Ontario Northern railway connects Moosonee with the mainline at Cochrane along the Trans Canada Highway, and runs through the eastern part of VR’s KSZ property package.

Near-by towns with road access facilitate cost-effective exploration for the KSZ strategy.

Subdued topography is optimal for airborne geophysical surveys such as EM and magnetics. Historic drilling demonstrates that overburden thickness is in the range of 20 – 70 m, average for the region and easily penetrated by modern drilling technology. Historic drilling in the region was focused on base metals in the 1970’s, and on kimberlites and diamond exploration in the 1980’s.

• VR has completed the compilation, synthesis and interpretation of all available federal and provincial government regional data, and archived provincial mineral exploration assessment data in the KSZ district.
• Ground-based gravity and state-of-the-art soil gas surveys were completed at the Ranoke property in 2019.
• The Company completed the first-ever airborne EM survey ever over the H-K complex in June, 2020, using the state-of-the-art VTEM+ system of Geotech Ltd. The Company also had an independent, 3-D inversion of both magnetic and EM data completed for improved modeling for a potential magnetite-fluorite hydrothermal breccia body within the multiphase carbonatite complex. The Company also utilized a pre-existing, high-resolution, fixed wing airborne magnetic survey completed in 1993 by High Sense Ltd. as part of a regional diamond exploration program to improve the magnetic modeling.
• A detailed, ground-based gravity geophysical survey was completed at H-K in March, 2021. It covers an area of approximately 1.5 x 3.5 km, with 597 stations completed in total; 573 on an equant grid station spacing of 100 metres, and 24 done on a 50 m infill pattern covering the main anomaly after it had been outlined by completion of the main grid. A modern inversion of integrated gravity and magnetic data sets was completed to evaluate structural controls, and refine drill targets.
• An ultra – high resolution, state-of-the-art drone magnetic survey was flown in the fall of 2021, and expanded in March of 2022, when the Northway property was also flown. The objective of these surveys is to: 1. clearly define the external boundaries of the overall complex, and; 2. identify internal magnetic contacts and gradients that are discordant to the magnetic zonation related to the primary igneous emplacement history of the multiphase complex, and are therefore potential targets for secondary hydrothermal veins and breccia with critical metals.
• Reconnaissance drilling was commenced at the Ranoke property in 2020 (3 holes). Some 23 holes were completed in five successive drill programs at Hecla-Kilmer, upon the discovery of REE-enriched apatite in carbonatite vein breccia within the multi-phase alkaline complex, which in turn led to the discovery of the Northway kimberlite breccia pipe located some km to the north, where 3 reconnaissance holes are complete, and all with diamond fragments (see Northway Project Page on this website).
• Real-time, on-site XRF scanning of drill core was utilized at Hecla-Kilmer; laser ablation ICP-MS was completed on select drill core samples by SGS Laboratories for detailed REE mineralogy, and; REE distribution at the mineralogy scale was analyzed using a scanning electron microprobe (EMPA) equipped with an Energy Dispersive Spectrometer (EDS) on select samples of carbonatite vein breccia.

The project area is at the southeastern margin of the mid-Paleozoic Hudson shelf, a shallow marine carbonate shelf success from Ordovician to Devonian age, with local sandstone and evaporate facies. The shelf formed directly on crystalline basement rock. The Moose River sub-basin developed on the southeastern-most margin of the shelf where Devonian strata. It is a small successor basin less than 50 kilometres across and preserved as finely laminated and poorly indurated mudstone and siltstone which formed in the area of the present day Moose River, immediately to the north of Hecla-Kilmer. These Devonian and Cretaceous strata in the Moose River area were deposited on a gneissic crystalline basement of metamorphosed sedimentary assemblages and lesser volcano-plutonic complexes of the Archean English River domain in what is believed to be the thickest part of the Superior craton in northern Canada.

As such, sedimentary cover increases to the north of Hecla-Kilmer, thus covering basement rocks and targets at the Northway and Ranoke properties. Conversely, to the south of Hecla-Kilmer at Halfway, not only is there no sedimentary cover above basement, glacial till is only twenty metres thick, substantively half what it is at H-K.

The opportunity for VR is to be the first company to apply modern IOCG - IOA, carbonatite and kimberlite mineral deposit models to the northern KSZ district, and be the first to utilize modern exploration technologies to improve the exploration for REE’s, critical metals, copper and gold in a region covered by a blanket of glacial till.

Historic exploration in the Moose River Basin region has been hindered by limited access, and a complete lack of outcrop in the lowland terrain that is covered by a regional blanket of glacial till. Archean VMS and Proterozoic orogenic gold deposits occur in the surrounding sub-provinces of the Superior craton, but there are no historic or currently active base metal or precious metal mines in the Moose River Basin.

The Moose River region has a long and varied, if not sporadic checkerboard history of mineral exploration during the past 100 years.

Overall, Cretaceous coal seams were the focus at the turn of the previous century, the basement unconformity at the base of the Paleozoic shelf was the focus for base metal exploration in the 1970’s, and there was active diamond exploration through the 1980’s and 90’s, extending and eventually focusing in the region west of James Bay at Attawapiskat located some 350 km to the north of Hecla-Kilmer, off the western shores of Hudson Bay.

There are lignite occurrences exposed in the banks of the Abitibi River north of Coral Rapids. The coal seams were first studied in detail by the Geological Survey between 1871 and 1912. They extend westward from the Abitibi River within the confines the Cretaceous Moose River Basin. More than one hundred shallow drill holes were completed by the Ontario Department of Mines between 1926 and 1930 to evaluate the resource, leading ultimately to the completion of two shafts and some 389 metres of interconnecting drifts. Drilling resumed in the early 1950’s with the completion of an additional 182 holes. In 1981, the Ontario Energy Corporation re-visited the potential of the coal and evaluated lignite stratigraphy farther to the west. Hundreds of shallow drill holes were completed on a lease which exceeded 1 million acres.

The Aquitane Company of Canada Ltd. completed airborne and ground geophysics between 1972 and 1974 to evaluate the hydro-carbon potential of Paleozoic strata, and twelve diamond drill holes to test for base metals at the basement unconformity, and MVT-style mineralization in the overlying limestone. In 1978, Kerr-Addison Mines complete a series of reverse circulation drill holes near Coral Rapids to test exposed basal sandstone at the eastern edge of the Hudson Platform for uranium. These targets were re-visited and re-tested in 2006.

Six diamond drill holes were completed at Hecla-Kilmer by Ashland Oil and Elgin Petroleum in 1970, as part of a regional base metal exploration program. One hole was abandoned, and a scant 854 m were completed in five other holes, all on magnetic highs in the outer zones of the H-K complex. Importantly, this historic drilling showed that the H-K carbonatite complex comes to bedrock surface at the base of till, typically around 40m depth, with no intervening Paleozoic or Cretaceous sedimentary strata.

Diamonds were the focus of modern mineral exploration in the James Bay region. Exploration started in the 1960’s by DeBeers (Monoprose Canada), focused initially in the Attawapiskat River region well to the north of the Moose River Basin, and built on the pioneering regional aeromagnetic program of the Geological Survey of Canada. Ongoing and extensive regional till and alluvium heavy mineral sampling and high-resolution magnetic surveys through the late 1980’s eventually led to the discovery of numerous kimberlite pipes, including Victor.

Selection Trust (later named Selco Exploration Company) began alluvial sampling in the KSZ region in 1962, and were joined by Esso Minerals in 1979. The first composite kimerlite – lamprophyry dyke was drilled in 1967, followed by drilling of the Valentine carbonatite complex in 1969. Between 1979 and 1983, the Selco – Esso partnership completed regional heavy mineral sampling of till and alluvium over an area exceeding 100,000 hectares, and an aeromagnetic program launched in 1980 led to the identification of numerous post-Paleozoic, pipe-like anomalies, of which 45 were drill-tested; most were non- copper-bearing, ultra-basic and alkaline intrusions, and four were kimberlite-facies diatremes.

Selco completed two drill holes on magnetic highs peripheral to Hecla-Kilmer during their regional kimberlite exploration program. The two holes intersected altered, variably magnetic, dark green and dark red breccia with pervasive secondary chlorite and biotite respectively, disseminated sulfide, and mottled pink granitoid clasts with alteration rims. The mafic breccia is pervaded by a chaotic network of carbonate veins and carbonate-lined fractures in both holes.

Regional-scale exploration in the KSZ - Moose River Basin region waned after 1983. Various small-scale airborne magnetic surveys and ground-based EM surveys, and local alluvium sampling programs were completed at the property-scale between 1983 and 2006, with the focus mostly on previously known, ultra-basic and alkaline intrusions and diatremes exposed at surface in and around Coral rapids, but also on limestone for industrial mineral applications.

A regional-scale but high-resolution airborne magnetic survey was flown for diamond exploration in 1993, extending southwest from James Bay. The survey shows clearly that Hecla-Kilmer is a concentrically zoned, high contrast magnetic anomaly 4 – 6 km across. Easterly and northwesterly trending structures disrupt magnetic and gravity patterns within the complex.

The historic drilling at H-K in 1970 was done before the high-resolution magnetic survey was flown for diamond exploration in the early 1990’s, and before the development of IOCG-IOA mineral deposit models. This helps to explain why all five holes at H-K in 1970 were located in the outer concentric zones of the complex, why they were terminated at very shallow depth, and why there is no record of geochemical sampling or geochemical data in hydrothermal breccia with fluorite and sulfide which are documented in the drill logs.

Some 40 years later, VR has taken the opportunity to be the first company to apply new exploration technologies and modern mineral deposit models to explore the region for large footprint mineral systems in the presence of both tectonic suture boundaries related to the amalgamation of the Archean Superior craton, and the Kapuskasing Structural Zone, a Proterozoic failed rift and host to a myriad of intrusions and hydrothermal and volcanic breccia bodies which span some 1.6 billion years of earth history.