Today we get to connect with Blue Star’s Senior Geologist, Jaida Lamming, who was leading our teams’ technical and exploration efforts at the project this season.
Jaida, tell us about your history in the field of geology and how you started working with Blue Star?
I finished my B.Sc. in Geology from the University of Saskatchewan in 2013. At that time geology jobs were hard to come by, so I went back to school and started my M.Sc. degree at the University of British Columbia Okanagan. I was lucky enough to visit the Himalayas in Nepal as part of my M.Sc. program, and to also work for the Saskatchewan Geological Survey in Northern Saskatchewan for several years as a senior geological assistant. This was a really unique and formative experience for me. It was my first time mapping Precambrian rock similar in age to what is present in Nunavut at Blue Star’s projects. Following my M.Sc., I worked for SSR Mining as an exploration geologist on an amphibolite-grade orogenic gold exploration project in Saskatchewan for several years. Just before joining Blue Star, I worked briefly on a skarn project in southern BC, in young, brittle-deformed rocks very different to anything I had worked on in my previous experience.
In 2021, I was lucky to join Blue Star Gold as their Senior Geologist and return to rocks and mineralisation styles more familiar to me, in an environment I had always wanted to visit, work and explore in.
You joined Blue Star in 2021 and now have contributed to three exploration programs at the Company’s projects in Nunavut. How have your experiences been working in the far north?
I absolutely love working in Nunavut. The project area is located in what is known as the ‘barren lands’ in the Kitikmeot region about 100 km inland, and the land, animals and plants are so unique. I have also been very privileged to visit several communities in the region and meet some amazing people there. When working up here you can get a good sense of how big this land is, and partially for that reason, it is a very interesting jurisdiction for mineral exploration. Nunavut is a very large and underexplored region, and as such there is a high potential for the discovery of mineral deposits.
Blue Star has been working to gain mineral exploration rights within as much prospective ground in the High Lake greenstone belt as possible. We have four project areas – Ulu, Hood River, Roma and Auma – with most of our exploration work focused on Ulu and Hood River in recent years. I really value the approach towards exploration the company has taken, with a focus on high quality science and other work, including environmental, reclamation and camp projects and infrastructure at the site. I think this steady approach has shown itself to support our goal of expanding known and discovering new mineralisation.
The 2023 program led to the identification of several new outcropping mineralised zones that we call ‘showings’. In particular, we discovered the Mikigon Zone which returned up to 47.1 g/t gold at surface. This is a brand new find – it has never been prospected by any other company, which is unusual for the project area which has seen intermittent exploration since the 1950s. Mikigon is hosted in metasedimentary rock, which isn’t the usual host rock type for mineralisation in this area, and we found it because we were mapping bedding in the metasedimentary rocks.
In 2023, we focused all of our attention on bedrock mapping and prospecting, with the goal of better understanding the geology of the project areas and all of the mineralised showings. We integrated whole rock geochemistry into our mapping, which has been incredibly informative in characterizing distinct basalt layers which are not easily distinguishable visually. As we continue to explore our very large landholdings with the same approach, I am confident that we will not only parse out the geological history of the area, but also do the very best work necessary to determine where other deposits exist within the project areas.
What are the goals for the project over the next 2-3 years?
In the next few years Blue Star plans to build off the successful progress made in 2022-2023 with a robust drilling program focused on discovery – we have many high-potential drill-ready targets and are excited to see what lays below the surface. As always, we are focused on improving our understanding of the Flood Zone and will be looking at adding gold ounces to our existing resource base with careful drilling.
What are the strengths of Blue Star and how do they support your goals and accomplishments with the Company so far?
Everyone that I have worked with at Blue Star is full of compliments about how much they enjoy working and living at the camp, and appreciate the culture of the site, which is very inclusive, safety conscious, and respectful. This has been guided by our CEO, Grant Ewing, and VP Exploration, Darren Lindsay, who have put all of the necessary pieces together over the years and is guided at the site level by the camp management team, which is phenomenal. Having the work environment be a well-functioning, respectful and nice place to be inspires everyone else in the course of their work to do their best and bring their best to the table, and this is something that stems from the top down.
At site Blue Star also has a very strong focus on reclamation and continual improvements and remediations to the footprint of the site. This attitude towards leaving the environment better than it was before we were there is something I personally find inspiring, and which resonates with many of the employees at site. Finally, the technical geology team we have is strong and always looking to improve. We are focused on doing best practices, working with the best scientists, seeking guidance from experts where needed and really trying to be diligent and patient in our work to make sure we don’t miss anything which could lead us to a discovery along the way.