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Junior miner rebrands to pay tribute to McKinnon family

Canadian Orebodies rebranding and gearing up for "aggressive field season" in 2020
Canadian Orebodies aerial
(Canadian Orebodies photo)

A Toronto junior miner exploring for gold on the north shore of Lake Superior is rebranding to pay tribute to the vision of its late president.

Canadian Orebodies is changing its name to Hemlo Explorers, effective at the start of trading on the TSX Venture Exchange May 20.

“In changing our name to Hemlo Explorers Inc., we pay homage to the late Gordon McKinnon, the company’s founding president and CEO, and his father Don McKinnon, the company’s inaugural Chairman and co-discoverer of Hemlo," said Fraser Laschinger, the company's chief financial officer, in a May 15 statement.

"Under this new banner, we will continue to push forward with Gordon’s dream of exploration success in the Hemlo region. We are planning to have our most aggressive field season in recent years and will provide more details in the coming weeks.”

Canadian Orebodies is the largest claims holder in the Hemlo area around Marathon, especially after a recent acquisition this spring.

In April, the company picked up an additional 6,833 hectares of ground in the area, signing a definitive agreement with O3 Mining to acquire two properties, the West Hemlo and the North Hemlo, in an all-share deal.

This brings Canadian Orebodies' total claims holdings in the Hemlo district to nearly 38,000 hectares.

As part of the transaction, O3 owns 15.4 per cent of Canadian Orebodies.

The West Hemlo is five kilometres south of the company’s main Pic Project, while North Hemlo is next to Canadian Orebodies' North Limb Project.

The company said its Pic Project contains a large gold system with numerous newly discovered high-grade showings.

The property sits 40 kilometres northwest of Barrick's Williams Mine. Gold was first discovered there in 1986 but the property had been largely devoid of any exploration for 20 years until 2017.