This article is a sponsored feature from Mining.com.au partner Olympio Metals. It is not financial advice. Talk to a registered financial expert before making investment decisions.
Olympio Metals (ASX:OLY) may be a relatively new company, but it’s building upon decades of historical work in Québec’s Cadillac Break, Canada’s ‘Elephant Country’ for gold deposits.
With a focus on Québec, Olympio is setting out to make a mark with the Bousquet Project which sits in the centre of a world-renowned structural corridor with a long history of exploration and discovery. With a government that is supportive of the mining industry, ‘magnificent’ geology, and strong infrastructure supported by major gold mining operations, Olympio’s Bousquet project is ready for development.
Managing Director Sean Delaney explains that while the company is still pretty new, it has a tight shareholder structure, and the company believes they’re in a “really good place in terms of our share price being exposed to potential upside on any significant results or discoveries”.
Val d’Or expertise – Martin Demers
Helping to lead on those discoveries is Martin Demers, an exploration geologist with over 30 years experience, Demers brings a dedication to exploration to his work. Delaney describes Demers as a “unicorn” in the industry, in the sense that Martin has been involved in the discovery of multi-million ounces of gold in the region and still retains his passion for getting out on the ground every day and exploring.
Based in Val-d’Or, Québec, Demers is working side-by-side with Olympio to build out the Bousquet Project.
With a passion for geology, Demers has always been set on developing his own practice, rather than working in a corporate setting, and currently offers his services to companies across the gold, rare earths, base metals, and lithium space. He describes his focus as wanting to explore new areas and new fields of geology.
For Demers, he was excited to begin working with Olympio on Bousquet because “this project, on the Cadillac Break, is the culmination of 30 years of repeated experience on the break and allows me to acquire new information and test new exploration ideas”.
Cadillac Break: Canada’s premier gold corridor
With the Bousquet project, Olympio is targeting a million ounce potential project. Delaney says that “the region is mature, and we know that the gold is there, so our focus is on building the deposit through drilling”.
Delaney points to this potential for one million ounces at Bousquet noting that “it has all those features that give us confidence that there’s the potential to build a deposit of that size, added with the location being 5-7km away from IAMGOLD’s (TSX:IMG) Westwood Gold Complex and 15km away from Agnico Eagle’s 15 million ounce LaRonde Complex”.
For Olympio, the focus is now on bringing technical expertise like that of Demers, to help build out the project. Demers echoes Delaney’s outlook on the property noting that “in this region, we like to say that we don’t find mines, but we build them, starting with exploration”.
“We have to understand and create the potential of the deposit – this is exactly what we’ve started with Bousquet to understand where these gold shoots are,” Demers says.
The Cadillac Break is a major structure, running approximately 200-250km long in the Abitibi Greenstone Belt of Québec. Demers notes that in this location, you have a superimposition of different mineralisation episodes over time. It’s a sign that the structure has been active over a long time, over the evolution of the Belt. Demers says that “it’s a sign that the metal accumulation can also be higher at that location. If you explore along the Belt, you’ll find hundreds of similar showings. The vein system is gold-bearing, but deposits are rare”.
What Olympio finds most interesting about Bousquet is the location of various geological disturbances and that these are not linear. Demers explains how there’s the original break, which runs east to west, but there are also a lot of geological features crosscutting this break. These types of cross-cutting features have been associated with other discoveries, including Agnico’s now-closed Lapa Mine.
The Cadillac Break is not just a single structure, but, and this is noted within the Bousquet property, it is made up of layers of stacking of various gold-bearing structures.
“We have to recognise that at the moment, we are able to identify high grade shoots above 10g/t gold, and there is a large low-grade envelope as well…”
Demers explains how “at Bousquet, we found a cross-cutting structure that is more geologically complex compared to the rest of the surrounding belt”. This structure would have been created across many generations of geological events that created this folded structure. Cross-cutting structures are the key to the development of large deposits in the region.
Bousquet has had historical drilling, across several generations, but all historical drilling was shallow – conducted above 200m in vertical depth with irregular spacing. The first step of Olympio now is to expand and connect some of these historical intervals within a broader picture of the overall project.
Demers notes that the company has begun drilling, though all work has been quite shallow at the moment, though the assumption is that there will be vertical continuity across certain areas.
Drilling to date has returned some high-grade results. Demers explains that “we have to recognise that at the moment, we are able to identify high grade shoots above 10g/t gold, and there is a large low-grade envelope as well spread over a kilometre of strike length as well, which are key ingredients for a gold deposit in the Abitibi.”
Maiden drilling sparks bigger ambitions
Olympio completed a maiden drill program at Bousquet in late 2025, the results of which highlighted three main structural trends. An analysis of the 32 hole drill program delivered over 100 significant gold intercepts across three prospects and three targets, as previously reported by Mining.com.au.
These results helped the company link the Pacquin and Amadee prospects, indicating an east-west trending system over 1.3km of strike. Demers notes that these results have enabled the company to confirm this lateral continuity, which is one of the two geometric criteria needed. The other is a strong vertical continuity, which the company is now targeting.
Delaney explains again that they have “only drilled shallow depths so far, and the results have been very close to the surface. So, there’s a lot more drilling to do to extend the strike at depth and join the prospects like Amadee and Paquin together”.
The results from the late 2025 drilling have given Demers high hopes across the Pacquin, Amadee, and Decoeur Prospects. Most notably, the results from hole BO-25–40 returned a significant intersection of 14.50m @ 1.96 grams per tonne gold from 355.5m, which indicate that Decoeur holds significant gold mineralisation.
Demers says that the Decoeur Prospect occurs on a structure that is associated with ultramafic rocks and can possibly correlate to Piché Structural Complex greenstones. The gold mineralisation within the Cadillac Break is also strongly associated with these Piché Structural Complex greenstones, and so the area around Decoeur might represent an unrecognised replicate of the Cadillac Break
“At this moment, we don’t know if we’re exploring a branch of the Break, or a new Break, but the point is the mineralisation is quite different. We’re not dealing with veins, but a dissemination in a tall carbonate schist,” Demers says.
Bousquet’s stacked potential
Olympio is excited about the potential for Bousquet and is ramping up investigation and exploration work, even through the Québec winter.
The company knows that the property sits within this favourable location, but a lot more work needs to be done now to really uncover that potential.
Demers notes that there’s no consistent geochemistry coverage of the site, so this is an area that they will begin work on now, combined with geophysical methods to uncover that information. He explains how soil geochemistry is extremely useful in uncovering targets, but in northern areas like the Cadillac Break, it requires local expertise to interpret.
“The soil is very young – just a few thousand years old – so there’s not a lot of oxidation, time, or potential for metals to circulate within,” Demers says.
“Instead, we need to sample the sand and granules in the soil and deal with the ‘nuggety’ distribution of microscopic gold grains which can be less consistent and not always reliable.
“However, this is one of the key tools that we have at our disposal, in combination with geophysics.”
The regional knowledge that Demers brings to the project provides Olympio’s team with confidence, despite the challenges.
Demers explains the reason that there hasn’t been much historical work done at Bousquet.
“A lot of the region around the Abitibi Belt is flat and it’s been covered by glacial sediments, so most of the deposits are covered by soil and surface deposits. It’s a challenge, but at the same time, it hides good opportunities,” Demers adds.
Ramping up exploration in 2026
Delaney notes that in the near-term, the aim is to ramp up exploration. He wants to get his team back out in the field, follow up on recent results, and also on some of the very old drilling as well.
The Bousquet project is “beautifully positioned in the #1 address in the world for exploration,” Delaney says and so now Olympio is working to prove the project.
Demers concurs given the accumulation of past discoveries and good geology in the region, “there’s too much smoke in the area – something has to happen here”.
Write to Amy Rotman at Mining.com.au
Images: Olympio Metals & Mining.com.au
