Not everyone can say they knew from a young age what they’d be doing as a career, but for Caroline Daoust, the Exploration Manager at New Gold’s Rainy River Mine, her path has always been clear.
“I was 12 years when I realized that you could work with rocks as a career,” said Caroline. “I got my bachelor’s degree and my master’s degree and then completed my PhD thinking of going into teaching and research, but I fell in love with exploration and mining.”
Caroline joined New Gold in 2021 and has since built out the team dedicated to extending Rainy River’s mine life as the company continues to expand its exploration activities across both operations—Rainy River Mine in Ontario and the New Afton Mine in British Columbia. She and her team study core samples gathered during drilling conducted both above and underground to understand mineralization patterns and refine their understanding of the ore body.
“There’s one diamond drill on site currently that is active, and we’ll be bringing two more in April,” added Caroline. “When drilling within the mine footprint, our target is to expand the resources to extend the life of mine, and we do see lot of mine expansion opportunities at the Rainy River Mine.”
While the majority of exploration activity is focused on near-mine targets, or those within Rainy River’s existing footprint, regional exploration planning is also underway.
“We are continuing to build out the team and to work on generating targets” added Caroline. “We might be looking at drilling elsewhere on the property but there is always prospecting, soil sampling and more exploration activities involved in discovering a new deposit.”
It’s all the steps involved in the planning and exploration process that Caroline says is important in understanding the big picture from exploration to production, and is something she hopes to instill in all members of her team. “I try to integrate everyone on my team into the entire process so they are not limited to one aspect of exploration,” she added. “They are the ones seeing the core most closely and frequently, and it’s important and inspiring to know that what we study and learn from the samples we collect has the ability to impact both current mine planning and to extend the future of the great work we’re doing here at Rainy River”.
