Page 38 FENELON By Kevin V incent A small group of companies are poised to be the next big gold min ing region in Canada Backed in large part by billionaire gold inves tor Eric Sprott W allbridge Mining Company Balmoral Resources and Great Thunder Gold Corp have established the primary land posi tions in the mining friendly region of northwestern Quebec known as the Fenelon Property In early May Balmoral sharehold ers approved the company s merg er with W allbridge Mining The approval came shortly after Balmoral released a spectacular drill hole they nicknamed Reaper Balmoral said the nearsurface Reaper discovery returned 106m at 858gt gold part of a wider 297m grading 30789gt from 1009m While the onemetre section is only a fraction of what it takes to de fne a potential orebody the nearly 10ounce per ton assay turned a lot of heads especially Sprott s As you know W allbridge that owns Fenelon with Balmoral and I think what it indicates is that the whole area not just the Fenelon property the whole area seems to be setting up to be a whole new gold camp And when you start talking camps you start talking multiples of tens of millions of ounces here Sprott told his weekly podcast audience May 1st The overwhelming support of the arrangement by Balmoral security holders is a tremendous endorse ment of the strength of our tobe combined companies said Marz Kord CEO of W allbridge W e would like to thank the Balmoral securityholders for their approval of this transaction W allbridge s Man agement team is excited about the future and confdent the Company is extremely well positioned to de liver meaningful value to all W all bridge securityholders Cashfriendly W allbridge resumed a 3 millionmonth exploration pro gram for the Fenelon property in midMay after the Quebec govern ment gave the allclear in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic Balmoral sold the Fenelon property to W allbridge in 2016 In early May Balmoral also reported The broad est continuous zone of gold min eralisation of 1641 1m at 038gt gold at the nearby Ripley gold zone which it uncovered in 2019 Our team has put two more gold discoveries on the board and in doing so have provided a third clear area of focus for the soon to be combined companies within this large gold system president and CEO Darin W agner said in a news release The allstock transaction worth C1 10 million had the support of Sprott who is the largest share holder of both companies Notably midtier producer Kirkland Lake Gold also has a 10 interest in W allbridge In a May 7th web conference fo cused on the postpandemic gold market Sprott and other partici pants were asked to recommend one stock to listeners Sprott hesi tated because he is wellknown to be heavily invested in a signifcant number of companies After encouraging listeners to also invest in royalty opportunities Sprott singled out W allbridge and the Fenelon project once again W allbridge is currently develop ing its 100owned Fenelon Gold Property located proximal to the Sunday Lake Deformation Zone in an emerging gold belt in north western Quebec with ongoing 100000 to 120000 metre explo ration drill program in 2020 and a 33500tonne bulk sample and 75000 metres of drilling completed in 2019 W allbridge is also pursuing ad ditional advancedstage projects which would add to the Company s nearterm project pipeline W allbridge is also the operator of and a 165 shareholder in Lon can Canada Inc a privatelyheld company with a large portfolio of nickel copper and PGM projects in Ontario s Sudbury Basin While Sprott is in the background the company also has a number of other high profle directors includ ing mining veteran W arren Holmes Kirkland Lake Gold s T ony Makuch and former T oronto Maple Leafs star Darryl Sittler all of whom were reelected to the company s board in early June Page 38 MLEN SPRING 2020 The ne xt big g old camp