The Douay Gold Project is located in Quebec, Canada, approximately 2.5 hour drive north of Val d’Or and 1.25 hours north of Amos via Highway 109. The pre-existing facilities are accessible via gravel road less than 10 minutes from the main highway, while a new 46-person camp has been built just west of the highway.

Quebec is renowned for its mineral content and has a total area of 1.7 million km², of which only 1% is mined and only 5% is covered by mining rights. It is the second largest gold producing province in Canada and hosts some of the largest mining operations in the country, including the geologically similar Canadian Malartic mine. Canadian Malartic is jointly operated by Agnico Eagle Mines and Yamana Gold and is located 150 km south of the Douay Gold Project.

Consistently ranked amongst the top 10 mining jurisdictions in the world by the Fraser Institute’s Annual Survey of Mining Company, Quebec offers a number of competitive tax incentives created specifically for mineral exploration and development companies. For example, for every $1 in exploration spent, companies may receive up to $0.37 back in tax credits.

The Douay Gold Project covers an area of more than ~357km² along the Casa Berardi Deformation Zone (“CBDZ”) within the prolific Abitibi Greenstone Belt (“AGB”). Douay belongs to the alkaline-intrusive-associated gold class of mineral deposits, which includes Beatty (>5.6Moz Au), Holt-McDermott (>1.3Moz Au), and Canadian Malartic (>17Moz Au) in the AGB.  The area is also prospective for the more typical AGB orogenic style (structurally controlled gold-quartz veins and veinlets) of gold deposit as well as for volcanogenic massive sulphide (“VMS”) deposits.

The Douay project is underlain by a northern assemblage of mafic and felsic pyroclastic and sedimentary rocks (Taïbi Grp), a central assemblage consisting of basalts, co-genetic gabbros with lesser felsic volcanic rocks (Cartwright Hills Grp) intruded by the 6.5 x 2km Douay alkaline intrusive complex (syenite to monzonite, alkali gabbro and carbonatite) with its associated gold mineralization; and a southern assemblage consisting mostly of basalts (also Cartwright Hills Grp) with siliceous-chemical sediments and chlorite-sulphide alteration zones that may be associated with VMS style of mineralization. The volcanic stratigraphy strikes WNW to ESE whereas the major regional fault zones trend E-W or NW-SE. Existing drill data shows multiple higher-grade zones, including Douay West, within and near the Douay intrusive complex.  In addition, there are further underexplored known and possible syenitic bodies elsewhere on the property.

Fe-carbonate-albite-pyrite alteration assemblages may be associated with higher gold values, generally above 5 g/t gold. Fractured syenite containing irregular fine pyrite veinlets in addition to disseminated pyrite, encompassing altered basalt fragments and magnetite-rich zones typically yields 0.1 to 1.5 g/t gold or more over intervals from tens of metres to over 150m.

Gold mineralization appears to be associated with the following features:

• Proximity of a major fault to provide a plumbing system and structural permeability.
• Interlayering of different lithological units, especially mafic with felsic units with syenitic intrusions. These are thought to provide rheological contrasts to focus deformation, alteration and mineralization.
• The presence of chemically favourable mafic units providing iron for sulphidation of mafic minerals.
• The presence (for proximal style of mineralisation) or nearby (for more distal style) syenitic intrusions, as bodies, dyke swarms or narrow injections, interpreted to represent the source of metals and sulphur.
• Sulphides averaging 2% but varying from trace to 5%.

The Douay Gold Project has an established National Instrument 43-101 mineral resource estimate of 10.0 million tonnes grading 1.59 g/t Au for 511,000 contained ounces of gold in the Indicated category and 76.7 million tonnes grading 1.02 g/t Au for 2.53 million contained ounces of gold in the Inferred category using a cut-off grade of 0.45 g/t Au for open-pit Mineral resources and a cut-off grade of 1.15 g/t Au for underground Mineral Resources. Further information about key assumptions, parameters and methods used to estimate the mineral resources, as well as legal, political, environmental or other risks that may affect the mineral resource estimate are included in the NI 43-101 Technical Report. See table below for a detailed breakdown:

Notes: 

1. The 2022 MRE is compliant with Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum ("CIM") Definition ‎Standards (2014) incorporated by reference in National Instrument 43-101. The effective date for the Resource Estimate is March 17, 2022.
2. Pit-constrained Mineral Resources are reported above a cut-off grade of 0.45 grams ("g") per tonne ("t") of gold ("Au") and underground Mineral Resources are reported with constraining shapes which were generated using a 1.15 g/t Au cut-off value and include low grade blocks falling within the mineable shapes.
3. Pit-constrained Mineral Resources are reported within a preliminary pit shell using assumed mining costs of C$3.00/t mined (rock) and C$2.30/t mined (overburden), processing cost of C$9.10/t milled, G&A cost of C$2.70/t milled, and gold recovery of 90%.
4. The Whittle pit shell used to estimate Mineral Resources used a long-term gold price of US$1,800 per ounce and a US$/C$ exchange rate of 0.80. However, the implied gold price for the Mineral Resources reported at the applied cut-off grade of 0.45 g/t would be significantly lower.
5. Mineral Resources located outside the pit shell were reported on the basis of a potential underground mining operation at a gold cut-off grade of 1.15 g/t Au. This cut-off grade was based on mining costs of C$63/t and the same processing and G&A cost assumptions listed above.
6. A minimum mining width of 3 metres ("m") was applied to the Mineral Resource wireframes.
   
7. Bulk density was interpolated for Nika, Porphyry, and 531 zones on a block per block basis using assayed values. For all other zones, bulk density ranging between 2.72 t/m³ and 2.88 t/m³ was assigned to Mineral Resources based on the zone.
8. Numbers may not add due to rounding.