The Wanipigow River Plutonic Complex, which forms the northern boundary of the Rice Lake

greenstone belt, is composed predominantly of hornblende and biotite-bearing quartz dioritic,

granodioritic and locally quartz monzonitic intrusions and gneisses. Several large masses of

gabbro are also present in the region. Historically this area has been considered to be basically

devoid of significant areas of volcanic terrain, however, the Wallace Lake - Siderock Lake area

(Theyer, 1985 and Sasseville, 1999) are definitely underlain by Garner Lake Assemblage

volcanic rocks. Howe’s site visit (2000) to the adjacent Wildcat’s Poundmaker property also

indicates that the gold-bearing quartz vein is hosted within carbonate altered mafic volcanic

rocks rather than quartz diorite and fine grained mafic dykes as suggested by previous data

(Richardson and Ostry 1996 citing Weber 1971). Age dating in the eastern extension of the

Wanipigow Complex in Ontario (Thurston

, 1991) indicates that some of the gneisses and..

The Manigotagen Gneissic Belt, which lies immediately south of the Rice Lake greenstone belt,

represents a lithologic gradation from the low-grade metavolcanic and metasedimentary rocks

through paragneiss and migmatite to quartz dioritic and granodioritic gneiss.

There are at least three and possibly four major periods of deformation in the Rice Lake area

(Sasseville, 1999). The resulting fold pattern is complex with overturned, doubly plunging folds

common in the Rice Lake Group rocks. The late Archean San Antonio Formation sedimentary

rocks may have only been affected by the last major period of deformation.

There are a number of major regional fault structures in the Rice Lake area. The major structures

that trend in a generally east-west direction are the most prominent and movement along these

structures has developed conjugate shear zones that splay off to the north and south. In addition

there has probably been thrust faulting in the early stages of the deformation of the area,

however, these structures are difficult to identify.

All of the major gold occurrences in the Rice Lake area occur as quartz veins or quartz vein

systems related to structural deformation (folding and faulting) of the host rocks. See Section

4.2 for a discussion of deposit types/models and Section 4.3 for descriptions of the geology and

mineralization on the Bissett Mine property.

The Uchi Subprovince has significant gold production from the Rice Lake, Manitoba area in the

west through the Red Lake, Birch-Uchi Lake, to Pickle Lake-Dona Lake areas of Ontario. Gold

production from the area is summarized in Table 4.3.