To first meet Greg Romain the president and CEO of Gowest Gold is to be struck by how youthful he looks compared to other senior executives of gold mining companies operating in Timmins.
Yet he is a veteran of mining, having been involved since he graduated from Ryerson University in the 1980s.
“We are going to build Timmins’ next gold mine,” Romain told the luncheon crowd at the Dante Club attending his presentation sponsored through the Timmins Chamber of Commerce’s lunch speakers program.
“It hasn’t been easy," he acknowledged, "and we are behind schedule from where we expected to be,” he added.
“But Gowest Gold has a tremendous asset in our North Timmins Gold Project,” he said with confidence. ”And I strongly believe we will become productive and operate our gold mine.”
Romain, like Tony Makuch over at Lake Shore Gold which was recently purchased by Tahoe Resources, has an added incentive to succeed.
He is a Timmins born and raised miner and he is imbued with that mining spirit that has run through the region and through his blood since he was a young boy.
Romain wants to contribute to the remarkable 107-year gold rush that has sustained Timmins since the Porcupine Gold Rush of 1909 – the event which is responsible for the city existing today.
Romain graduated from the Ryerson Engineering Program. Prior to that he attended O’Gorman High and though he now lives in Toronto he spends a lot of his time in Timmins. Greg’s parents still live in Timmins and he visits often.
And he also visits his baby over at the Frankfield site in the Bradshaw deposit which is part of the North Timmins Gold Project.
“Gowest is a very focused company,” said Romain.
“We are interested in only one thing — gold,” he points out. “Unlike other mining companies that will explore for and mine what ever minerals are in sufficient quantities.”
His mining surveys and feasibility studies all indicate that there is a lot of gold on the NTGP which is located about two or three kilometres to the east of Glencore Kidd Creek Mine.
Gowest Gold’s NTGP property is also located a few kilometres south of Goldcorp’s Hoyle Pond
“Timmins is in pretty good shape when it comes to the gold ore quality,” Romain explained. “Though our average ore grade is not as high as it used to be we still average about 0.7 grams per tonne.”
"Which is not bad", he added l "when you consider that the grade of gold in other parts of the world where the mine gold is considerably lower.”"
“Wehave the support of Timmins and appreciate the support we got from former Mayor Tom Laughren and current Mayor Steve Black.
We also have very strong relations with our First Nations people of the Wabun Council, Romain said
Gowest started to explore the area in the between 2003 and 2008 on land that was more muskeg that the typical terrain associated with the Abitibi-Greenstone Belt which was Precambrian rock of the Canadian Shield.
As a result, many of the prospectors searching for gold in the Timmins-Porcupine camp didn’t really bother to examine the potential for gold in this particular area.
Fortune Fund from China is behind it and very supportive. Their mining experts believe the Frankfield area in the Bradshaw deposit on the North Timmins Gold Project site has great potential.
"But they are convinced the potential also lies in some other area on our property," said Romain.
For 2016 Gowest is surveying and testing gold mining possibilities at Sheridan and Roussain two contiguous sites next to Frankfield
The Timmins Chinese community really stepped up and helped accept and honour the representatives from Fortune Fund.
Gowest is respectful of its past and has named the property after people who have played a role in getting Gowest going and off the ground Bradshaw Deposit is named after Al Bradshaw, an early supporter.
Romain strikes one as a positive and upbeat individual. But if there is one sector of the mining process that he is disappointed with it’s Ontario government officials that hold in the palm of their hands the timeframe for when the Gowest gold mine opens.
“We applied for a permit for advance exploration by mid-2014,” he tells his listeners who nod in agreement. “We didn’t expect it would take this long to get the permit.
“What’s more frustrating he continued is that they won’t even give us a timeframe for when the will complete their review and issue the permit,” he adds.
“This makes it difficult for investors to develop the confidence to invest because they need certainty that their investment will bear fruit over a known period of time,” said Romain.
For more information, please click here.http://www.gowestgold.com/
