Someone over on Stockhouse asked about the Bowmore/Osisko history with Golden Hope and the Bellechasse, and I posted the following:
The links between Golden Hope and Osisko go back many years.
In 1993, a graduate student at Queen's University did his Master's Thesis on the Bellechasse gold deposits, but he'd been doing work on the project since 1988. That man, John Burzynski, is now Vice-President of Corporate Development at Osisko.
In 2003, he became VP Exploration for Osisko, just after Osisko and Golden Hope entered into a JV agreement for claims in the Timmins/Ascot zone of the Bellechasse, with the potential for Osisko to earn-in to 60%. In June 2003, Osisko published a 43-101 compliant Technical Report on the Bellechasse deposit, and proceeded with a drill program in July. Phase 1 of that program was done with HQ core, larger than the more typical NQ, to try and get a larger sample of the mineralized rock. They already knew about the nugget gold problem, and that larger samples would give them a better idea of the grades.
Early results were quite promising, with intervals from what is now Timmins 1 returning grades of up to 2.39 ounces/tonne. (Yes, ounces per tonne.)
The Phase 2 drill program (smaller NQ core) begin in February 2004, but those results were never (to my knowledge) publicly released. Something went wrong in the legal arena, because in July in 2004, Golden Hope reported that the JV had been dissolved, and all claims had fully reverted 100% back to Golden Hope. It was later in 2004 that Osisko got their opportunity to explore the Malartic project, and it's kept them rather busy in the meantime.
In July of 2009, Osisko bought into Bowmore Exploration, with the intention of making Bowmore the exploration arm of Osisko, so that all the exploration risk would accrue to the junior corporation. If you compare the Boards of Directors for the two companies, you'll see many of the same names.
Earlier this year, a staking rush took place in the Beauce/Bellechasse district of Quebec. Thousands of claims were staked, and many of those were staked by prospectors speculating that they could flip the claims for a profit. Rumour has it that Bowmore has directly staked, and is negotiating the rights to, something like 1500 or more claim blocks.....a huge territory. The Quebec mine claim registrar is swamped with all the paperwork, and clear title to those claims has been rather slow in coming about. So, until title is cleared up, nobody is talking much about what's going on. Whereas a year ago, only two companies had active programs in the region (Golden Hope and Fancamp), we're likely to see as many as 8-12 exploration programs announced some time in the relatively near future.
The bulk of Bowmore's claims are some distance to the SW of Golden Hope's, in a widening of the Etchemin Formation (generally, once a sedimentary basin), where I would speculate that Bowmore would be looking for a Carlin-type sediment-hosted low-grade high-tonnage gold deposit.
Lar
