Québec
Under Québec
Companies that explore for minerals in Québec file reports of their work with the government, and Géologie Québec has drawn the diamond drill holes from those reports into its SIGÉOM database. Each hole records where the drill went in, which way it pointed and how deep it went.
That gives {holes} holes you can see here, most of them in the south and along James Bay, with a cluster far north in Nunavik. This tour flies you through the places and stories behind them, then hands you the controls.
1920s to today
A century of core
Watch the holes arrive year by year, by the year each was drilled. The Abitibi gold rush brings the first wave: {d1930} holes in the 1930s, {d1940} in the 1940s and {d1950} in the 1950s. The 1980s were the busiest decade of all, with {d1980} holes, and the 2010s came next with {d2010}.
The 2020s already count {d2020} holes. Another {d0} holes have no usable year, so they only show when the year filter is open.
Gold
The Abitibi greenstone belt
Colour the holes by gold and a band lights up from Rouyn-Noranda east through Malartic and Val-d'Or. This is the Abitibi greenstone belt, old volcanic rock cut by long faults where gold settled. {Au} holes in the file report a gold result. Each column's height is the number of holes in it, and its colour is a high but typical gold grade there (9 in 10 of its holes are below it).
Most of the gold sits close to the Cadillac fault, which runs along the southern edge of the belt from Ontario into Québec.
1920 to 1927
Horne and the birth of Noranda
Edmund Horne staked his first claim near Lake Osisko in the summer of 1920, after earlier trips into the area. The company that took up his claims became Noranda Mines, and the first copper was cast at its Horne smelter in December 1927. The towns of Rouyn and Noranda grew up beside the mine.
The Horne mine produced copper and gold until 1989 and the smelter still runs today. Below the satellite image are the open-file holes around the old mine. {site}
1923 to today
Val-d'Or: Sigma and Lamaque
Gold was found around Val-d'Or in 1923, and from the 1930s the Lamaque and Sigma mines turned the camp into a town. Together the two mines produced close to 10 million ounces of gold before they closed in the 1980s.
Integra Gold found new veins south of the old mines in the 2010s, and Eldorado Gold bought Integra in 2017. Its Triangle mine reached commercial production in 2019, feeding the old Sigma mill. {site}
2005 to today
Canadian Malartic: a town on top of a pit
Malartic was an underground gold camp for decades. In 2005 Osisko Mining began drilling the low-grade gold around the old workings, and in April 2011 it poured the first gold from one of Canada's largest open pits, after moving part of the town.
Agnico Eagle and Yamana Gold bought Osisko in 2014 and ran the mine together. Agnico Eagle took full ownership in March 2023 and is now mining deeper ore underground at Odyssey. This is one of the most densely drilled patches in the province. {site}
1988 to today
LaRonde: three kilometres down
Between Rouyn-Noranda and Val-d'Or, the Doyon, Bousquet and LaRonde mines follow a band of gold, copper and zinc. Agnico Eagle has mined LaRonde since 1988, and its Penna shaft drops more than three kilometres below the surface, among the deepest in the Western Hemisphere.
The deepest holes here reach down to the ore far below the shaft bottom, so the 3D view is tall. {site}
1957 to 1988
Matagami: the zinc camp
Base metals came with gold. The Mattagami Syndicate drilled into zinc and copper sulphide near Lake Matagami in 1957, and the Matagami Lake mine began production in 1963, giving the new town its reason to exist. A dozen sulphide deposits were found in the camp over the next decades.
To the east, the Chibougamau camp grew around copper and gold mines from the 1950s. Pick it in Explore to compare the two. {site}
2015 to today
Windfall: thousands of holes in a few years
Within three kilometres of its centre, Windfall, east of Lebel-sur-Quévillon, has more holes in the file than any other deposit on this tour. Eagle Hill Exploration and then Osisko Mining drilled thousands of holes into its gold veins, and Gold Fields bought Osisko Mining in October 2024 to take full ownership of the project.
The holes fan out from a few pads to reach the veins at depth, which is why they cross each other in 3D. {site}
2004 to today
Éléonore: gold far up the James Bay road
Virginia Mines began drilling a gold showing near the Opinaca reservoir in September 2004, and the grades held up from hole to hole. Goldcorp bought the property in 2006, and the Éléonore mine reached commercial production in April 2015.
Newmont took it over with Goldcorp in 2019 and sold it to Dhilmar in 2025. Nearly every hole here dates from after 2004. {site}
The Plan Nord
North of the 49th parallel
In May 2011 the Québec government launched the Plan Nord, a strategy to develop the mines, energy and forests of the territory north of the 49th parallel. Later governments revived it, and demand for battery metals soon gave it a new focus.
Colour the holes by lithium and the spodumene pegmatites of James Bay stand out. Only {Li} holes in the file report lithium, because most of the lithium drilling is recent and SIGÉOM stopped recording grades in 2020.
1955 to today
La Corne: Québec's first lithium mine
Spodumene pegmatite was found near La Corne, north of Val-d'Or, in 1942. Québec Lithium mined it from 1955, on and off until 1965, and the site was reopened by later owners from 2013. It closed again in 2019 when prices fell.
Sayona and Piedmont Lithium bought it in 2021 and restarted the concentrator in March 2023 as North American Lithium. {site}
2016 to 2024
The James Bay lithium rush
Along the Billy Diamond Highway, Galaxy Lithium drilled the James Bay pegmatites in the 2010s, and Nemaska Lithium drilled Whabouchi near the Cree community of Nemaska. Galaxy later became part of Allkem, then Arcadium Lithium, and Rio Tinto bought Arcadium in March 2025.
The lithium holes here sit on long dykes of pale pegmatite. Explore also has Whabouchi, Rose and Pivert, and Moblan. {site}
2020s
Moblan: holes without grades
Hundreds of holes were drilled at Sayona's Moblan lithium project in 2022 and 2023. They are in the file, with their collars, directions and depths, but none of them carries a grade.
Since 2020 Géologie Québec has had to enter only the collar of each new hole, and the assays stay in the company reports. So the recent rush shows up as grey holes. The coloured ones here are older. {site}
1997 to today
Ungava nickel: Raglan
Nickel was found in the Cape Smith belt of Nunavik as early as the 1930s, but the Raglan mine at Katinniq only opened in December 1997, after decades of exploration and agreements with the Inuit of Nunavik. Falconbridge built it, and Glencore runs it today.
South of Raglan, Canadian Royalties' Nunavik Nickel began production in 2013 from the Expo and Mesamax deposits. Both mines are flown in from the south, and the drill holes trace their sulphide lenses in 3D. {site}
Your turn
How to read this map
Each point is one diamond drill hole. Most were drilled by earlier explorers, and the company named is the one that filed the report. The grades are the best intercepts the companies reported above Géologie Québec's thresholds, plus drill-core samples in the geochemistry database. Québec's file does not hold full assays for every hole, so a grey hole may still have been sampled. Treat it as history, not a resource.
Use Explore to pick an element, set a minimum grade, slide through the years, search for a company or place, and dive into 20 deposits in 3D, from Niobec and Mont-Wright to Strange Lake.
