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
et al
, 1991) indicates that some of the gneisses and
