Fool's gold: reality series to follow gold exploration exploits.

• Author: Kelly, Lindsay
• Position: NEWS

When it comes to reality TV series, the fishing show Deadliest Catch has orange gold, forestry's Ax Men has green gold, and the oil industry is encapsulated in the show Black Gold. Now, hard-rock gold mining has its own version.

Fool's Gold, which premiered on May 13 on the Discovery Channel, follows Todd Ryznar and seven friends as they try their hand at grassroots gold exploration at the former Straw Lake Beach Mine, located about a 90-minute drive from Fort Francis in northwestern Ontario.

"This is hard-rock mining; all the other shows on TV are about placer gold (mining gold from loose sediment), and that's something totally different from what we're dealing with," said Ryznar, founder of Shotgun Exploration. "It's something you've never seen on TV before, so it'll be very interesting."

A former lakefront property realtor, Ryznar purchased the Straw Lake Beach Mine property in 2005, and, five years later, with inspiration from reality television shows like Deadliest Catch, started filming work being done on the property.

After gaining accolades for a 45-minute, documentary-type short film he submitted to the 2012 Banff World Media Festival, he caught the eye of Discovery and struck a deal for the first season of Fool's Gold. The eight-part series was filmed last fall and follows Ryznar's crew of family and friends as they clear the property, build equipment out of lawnmower parts, and bicker their way through exploration.

Though Discovery plays up the comedic angle of the "ragtag gang of would-be miners"--neither Ryznar nor any of his crew has any experience in the industry--there really could be something on the property.

Gold was discovered there in 1933, and shaft-sinking and infrastructure construction began the following year. By the time the mine suspended operations in 1941, at the onset of the Second World War, it had produced more than 11,000 ounces of gold, worth about $15 million in today's market.

Allen Raoul, a geologist who worked out of the Kenora office of the Ontario Geological Society and...