TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – The Ontario government on Sunday celebrated the 125th anniversary of the Ontario Geological Survey (OGS), celebrating the agency’s accomplishments that had helped document the geology of the province and provide modern, independent and credible geoscience data and knowledge to the public.

"For 125 years, the OGS has played a vital role in the success and growth of Ontario’s mineral development sector, and there are countless examples of how OGS studies, data and maps have provided guidance leading to major mining investments in our province. This milestone anniversary is about celebrating the OGS’s past success, while looking forward to what the future has in store for this valuable organisation,” said Ontario Minister of Northern Development and Mines Michael Gravelle on Sunday.

Since its establishment, the Ontario Geological Survey had contributed significantly to fostering investment in Ontario, protecting public health and safety, informing environmental and land-use planning decisions.

In fact, so successful are the agency’s surveying programmes, that several mining projects currently being moved up the value curve originated from data gathered and disseminated free of charge by the public organisation.

Examples of how the OGS benefited the local economy included mapping in the Werner Lake area that led to an C$11-million investment in cobalt exploration; OGS data was part of early groundwork that attracted claimstaking near Fort Frances and led to the discovery of New Gold's Rainy River project (expected to start production in 2017); further, OGS airborne geophysical survey data published in April 2015 triggered claimstaking of a nickel/copper/platinum group metals target in the Thunder Bay area by project generator Transition Metals.

"Our new ‘Saturday Night’ exploration target would not have been identified without the airborne geophysical survey data collected and published by the OGS, and its strong commitment to encouraging exploration for nickel, copper and platinum-group metals in the Thunder Bay area,” noted Transition’s award-winning president and CEO, Scott McLean.

Since the first airborne geophysical survey was flown for the OGS in 1975, the agency had made 2.1-million line kilometres of high-resolution airborne geophysical data available to the public. In 2015, it undertook its largest (in line kilometres) continuous airborne geophysical survey, logging 179 377 line kilometres of magnetic and spectrometer plotting in the Hearst and Smooth Rock Falls survey.

Since it was established as the Ontario Bureau of Mines on May 4, 1891, the OGS had published nearly 14 000 geoscience products, including some 10 000 geoscience maps. The OGS Geoscience Laboratories were established in 1898, and gold was the first element analysed by the lab. Some 85 830 analyses were performed in the OGS Geoscience Labs in 2014/15 alone.

Among the provincial agency’s accomplishments were its establishment of a world-class geochronology facility in Toronto; the three-dimensional mapping of groundwater aquifers in southern Ontario; mapping and till sampling data that led to the discovery of gold deposits near Fort Frances; the preparation of National Aeronautics and Space Administration astronauts for a lunar mission; and the provision of geoscience training to thousands of university students.