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Port Renfrew Today |
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“It used to be headlights and books,” said prospector Michael Mulberry, “Now its computers.” Mulberry is on the job with others who have dozens of years of experience in the field. The men come from Cuba, France, Russia and places in between. Ben Vallee, is the camp manager and has more than a dozen years of experience. Another man commutes from Thailand to work shifts that are six weeks long with one week off. Some newbies get “bushed” real fast but those that do this type of work love it. In this particular camp they’re fortunate because Sooke is not too far away. In other camps they are helicoptered in and there’s no chance for any kind of break during their shifts. Last year with the economic slowdown many miners were glad to get a few weeks work here and there. But with the gold and oil prices up and India and China competing for our resources, mining is stepping up. They are lucky in another aspect, there is no snow. Historically the whole area would still be covered in four to five feet of snow. For the past month 11 men have been camped out close to Jordan River, 20 km from Port Renfrew, up the North Main. They are working on the DS Project for New Shoshoni Ventures Ltd., a company with portfolios of copper, gold and diamond properties in Canada. The area cover 588.9 hectares. The company is looking at copper and gold deposits. The pit they are looking at was found by accident during road work. The team has been on site since January 3 and they plan on sticking around for at least another month. They are conducting geophysics in the ground running electrical current through the earth. The electrical current energizes the metal in the rock and readings are obtained by how much current is absorbed by the rocks and at what depth. Some metals are more conductive than others, this allows the geologists to pinpoint areas for drilling. They don’t really know what it is that is absorbing the current, it, at times, has been a large seam of graphite. “It can be a very expensive pencil mine,” said Mulberry. Mining in the Port Renfrew, Jordan River area is not new. Copper Mine Road in East Sooke is named after a mine which operated there 100 years ago. Jordan River had the Sunlock copper mine, Sombrio had gold miners in the 1890s and coal was mined at Kirby Creek. |
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