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