Rampart netting prime uranium near Nipigon.

• Author: Larmour, Adelle
• Position: SPECIAL REPORT: MINING

For the "Fabulous Baker Boys," as colleagues call them, the desire to prospect runs almost as deep as the uranium veins they are today working to find. Several members of the Baker family run Rampart Ventures Ltd., a Vancouver-based junior mining exploration company.

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Focused on the exploration and discovery of uranium and IOCG (iron, oxide, copper, gold) deposits, the company has family history and geological expertise on its side. The firm operates under the direction of Nelson Baker, a geological engineer with over 40 years experience in mineral exploration, Cem (CJ) Baker, former senior geologist for WMC International and vice-president for Goldcorp, and corporate development officer Brad Baker.

Brad Baker, grandson of one of Canada's top prospectors, Walter Baker, says the company will start drilling for uranium in the Sibley Basin in northwestern Ontario soon.

Walter is known for discovering both the Lac des Iles platinum-palladium and Hemlo gold deposits.

Within the last six months, the company has been prospecting areas in northern Saskatchewan and northwestern Ontario, which has led to further exploration of potential uranium deposits in the Athabasca Basin (Sask.) and the Sibley Basin in the Lake Nipigon region.

Although the Athabasca Basin has been mined extensively, Baker says there have been new discoveries that have developed new models of how these high-grade, "unconformity-type" uranium deposits uranium are formed.

According to Baker, most uranium mines grade well under one per cent [U.sub.3][0.sub.8] (that's the chemical description of unprocessed uranium ore, prior to the yellowcake stage). But the McArthur deposit in the Athabasca Basin hosts some deposits that grade in excess of 25 per cent [U.sub.3][0.sub.8].

"We were very fortunate that the property we have has not been worked," Baker says, comparing it to the surrounding area that has been mined since the 1960s.

Rampart discovered the Sibley Basin/Nipigon region shares characteristics similar to those in Athabasca while exploring.

The Sibley Basin is the least explored for unconformity uranium deposits in Canada, mostly due to a lack of the necessary...