Geology, Ellice Hills, Nunavut

The Committee Bay belt is a 600 km long belt of northeast-striking, Archean supracrustal rocks and granitoid plutons that form part of the Rae Province in central Nunavut (Fig. 1). The Archean supracrustal rocks of this belt belong to the Prince Albert group (PAg; Heywood, 1961), and are host to a number of gold and base metal occurrences. This map is a product of the 2000-2003 Targeted Geoscience Initiative that was instigated by the Canada - Nunavut Geoscience Office in partnership with the Geological Survey of Canada and university researchers, as a stimulus for mineral exploration of this remote area. The project involved an aeromagnetic survey, helicopter-supported, 1:100,000 scale bedrock and surficial mapping of NTS map sheets 56K, 56J (north), 56O (south) and 56P, supporting geoscience studies and a drift prospecting survey. The aeromagnetic survey covered 85,300 line km and was flown along 400 m spaced, northwest - southeast flight lines (perpendicular to strike) on a pre-calculated drape surface with a mean terrain clearance of 150 m (Kiss et al., 2002a-g). The results of the bedrock mapping and related petrological/structural studies are presented in the following: 1) Laughland Lake area (56K) - Johnstone (2002), Johnstone et al. (2002), MacHattie (2002) and Sandeman et al. (2001a-c); 2) Walker Lake and Arrowsmith River (56J (north) and 56O (south), respectively) - this map, Sanborn-Barrie et al. (2002) and Skulski et al. (2002); and 3) Ellice Hills (56P) - Sanborn-Barrie et al. (2003) and Skulski et al., 2003). Lithogeochemical prospecting results for the study area are presented in Deyell and Sherlock (2003), Hyde et al. (2002) and Sherlock and Deyell (2002; 2003), with the surficial mapping and drift prospecting results in Giangioppi et al. (2003), Little (2001), Little et al. (2002), McMartin et al. (2002; 2003), Ozyer and Hicock (2002) and Utting and Ward (2002).