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Fri Jun 16, 2023 KW Excerpt: Kaiser Watch June 16, 2023: Brunswick Exploration Inc (BRW-V) Publisher: Kaiser Research Online Author: Copyright 2023 John A. Kaiser
(0:17:02): How significant is this week's news from Brunswick about its Mirage project?
Brunswick Exploration Inc announced on June 14, 2023 that during the 2 days it had boots on the ground at the Mirage project the team managed to identify 20 spodumene bearing boulders within a 1.7 km band aligned with the ice direction. A bedrock source has not been established, but the company did point out that the property stretches 18 km up ice from the boulder field. The largest boulder was 6 m by 5 m. Light grey spodumene crystals up to 50 cm representing 5% to 50% of the pegmatite were observed. The boulders vary from sub-angular to sub-rounded. As a rule the more angular a boulder the more local the source. When rocks end up in river beds they quickly become rounded. But they also become rounded when they get stuck in the base of an ice sheet and dragged along bedrock. This boulder field was first noticed by a prospector 25 years ago but nobody was interested. Bob Wares remembered the episode and tracked down the area. Part of it was staked by Jack Stoch's Globex Mining Enterprises Inc as the Lac Escale project for its precious metals potential. Brunswick staked the open ground it felt was relevant for LCT-pegmatite potential and then optioned Lac Escale on January 24, 2023 100% for $500,000 and $1 million exploration over 3 years.
This development is significant because such a large number of boulders with a distinct rock type within a constrained area aligned with the ice direction suggests an up ice source possibly oriented in the same direction as the ice sheet's movement. Large boulders can travel enormous distance from their source and are called "glacial erratics" because they have no relationship to nearby geology. Until Brunswick finds the bedrock source there will be questions about how far this field of boulders traveled, especially given the sub-rounded appearance of some of them. However, in climates where there are dramatic seasonal changes granitic rocks undergo exfoliation which gives then a rounded look despite being stationary.
I saw this first hand when I visited the Strange Lake site in September 2009. The original Strange Lake deposit had been found decades earlier by the Iron Ore Company on the Labrador side. The speculation with Quest Rare Minerals was that perhaps half of the Main Zone sat on the Quebec side of the boundary which is defined by the watershed divide. By the time we got there a survey had established that only 15% of the known deposit was on the Quebec side where Quest had staked claims (the Labrador side had been withdrawn into a provincial mineral reserve). But then management took us for a walk and showed us a field of boulders which were assaying up to 1.5% TREO with 45% represented by heavy rare earths. It turned out that these boulders emerged from their source through frost-heaving. By April 2010 Quest had delineated a resource of 114 million tones of 1% TREO for what became know as the BZone. Within the BZone a 20 million tonne enriched zone grading 1.44% TREO became the focus for economic studies. The problem with the Rare Earth Mania of 2009-2012 was that the rare earth market was dominated by China which has since managed to grow its supply 200% to keep pace with EV related demand growth. Lithium demand has a much bigger demand growth trajectory and no country has a near monopoly of supply as China does with rare earths. With the fire restrictions now lifted in the James Bay region the Brunswick teams top priority is to get those boots back on the ground, figure out the bedrock source, and establish enough understanding of its orientation to support permit applications for a drill program in the fall.
