| Hoidas Lake | |
|---|---|
| Location | Saskatchewan |
| Basin countries | Canada |
Hoidas Lake is a remote northern Canadian lake which lies approximately 50 kilometers north of Uranium City, Saskatchewan. Named in honor of Irvin Frank Hoidas, a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot officer killed in action during the Second World War when his Stirling W-7520 crashed near the Belgian town of Saint-Truiden,[1][2][3] it is the site of Canada's most advanced rare earth element (REE) mining project.[4]
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Hoidas Lake lies in the Northern Rae Geological Province, in the general vicinity of many of Saskatchewan's large uranium mines.[4]
The mineralogy of the Hoidas Lake rare earth deposit differs from most other such deposits in that it is hosted in veins of apatite and allanite.[5] The deposit also contains a number of heavy REEs, such as dysprosium.[4] This is important, as dysprosium is used in the manufacture of hybrid car components[6] and some are suggesting an impending shortage of the metal.[7] Mineralization is presumably hydrothermal, from an alkali or carbonatitic source at depth.[8]
Ongoing work at Hoidas Lake has delineated a vein system (known as the JAK zone), which extends for at least a kilometer along strike.[8] The limits of the system have not been established along strike nor along dip,[8] and the zone's total extension is therefore unknown. Estimates of the resource given current delineations and assuming a 1.5% total rare earth cutoff, have established a presence of at least 286,000 tonnes of rare earth ore,[9] which is enough to supply more than 10% of the North American market for the foreseeable future.
The Hoidas Lake claims are owned by Great Western Minerals Group, based in Saskatoon.[4]
