Thanks to Jemini Capital for introducing me to this company. Watch for more! Note, this is not sponsored content.


Peter Bell: Hello, I'm Peter Bell and I'm here with Mr. Ian Berzins of Braveheart Resources. Hello, Ian!

Ian Berzins: Good afternoon, Peter.

Peter Bell: Nice to talk to you for the first time here today and look at an October 2020 pitch deck from the company. Thanks Jerry Huang from Jemini Capital for putting it on my radar. I'm pretty impressed by the story, Ian.

Ian Berzins: I think we've got one of the more compelling stories in the Canadian junior resource mining space.

Peter Bell: I love to hear about a mine coming out of bankruptcy. The amount of work that goes into planning and executing a deal like this quite And it seems like you have fortuitous timing maybe with this deal being public now in a bullish market.

Ian Berzins: Back in January 2019, we saw a unique opportunity to acquire the past-producing Bull River Mine, which was copper, gold, and silver. As mining guys, we look at opportunities that can have near-term production and arguably near-term cash flow. Today, our flagship project is still the Bull River Mine project, which we hope to have in production next summer.

Ian Berzins: Then, we recently announced a definitive agreement to acquire what's called the Thierry copper-nickel deposit in Pickle Lake, Ontario, Canada. As well as the primary copper that one has some nickel and PGM platinum group metals. Primarily the palladium is what excites me there. Both projects have past production, both are in close proximity to existing infrastructure and communities including roads and grid power. They are very similar projects but the Thierry deposit is about five or ten times larger than Bull River Mine one, so it's going to be a nice back up or second project once we get Bull River up and running.

Peter Bell: Amazing. Thank you, Ian. Let me skip around a little bit in the deck. There was one slide at the end that I wanted to jump to. You can see some of the the property, plant, and equipment that you have at the Bull River site. Wonderful that so much comes along with that. Here -- it was this section that jumped out at me. This information about the Thierry mine jumped out at me. I can see why you definitely want to pick this thing up. Some impressive numbers there.

Ian Berzins: Theirry was mined successfully by UMEX, which is a Belgian mining company, between 1976 and 1982 for a continuous period. They actually had two open pits and they went underground with significant developments. We have a shaft there with tunneling. We have not only a decline but also a shaft! We have yet to de-water it, but what I find interesting is that we've got about 8.8 million tonnes in the measured and indicated category with similar copper grades to what we have at Bull River and pretty significant palladium at 0.13 g/t Pd. There's also a large inferred resource of about 15 million tonnes that has similar grades. The underground, on its own, is quite interesting. And then we also have with the 54 million tonnes at a 0.38% copper, which may not sound like much grade but that's an open pittable project within a couple of kilometers of the underground. In BC, copper mines like Gibraltar or Copper Mountain are around 0.35% copper. With the other metals I mentioned at Bull River open pits, the copper equivalent grade is closer to 0.75%. We think it's a really interesting project. The metal value just in the M&I alone is about $1.3 billion. We're trying to acquire this for under $2 million Canadian.

Peter Bell: Well done. Noteworthy that it was mined in the past for questions about metallurgy. Always important.

Ian Berzins: Certainly, and we want to use some technology to our advantage. At the time in 1976-82, palladium prices were down between $50-100 fifty dollars to a hundred dollars an ounce. Now we're at $2,200-2,300 twenty-two hundred to twenty-three hundred! It changes the dynamic. UMEX struggled a bit with the recovery of nickel. They had significant nickel, but they didn't recover a lot of it. For the copper, I think they over 90% recovery. There are likely some things, metallurgically, we could do better simply because 20-30 years down the road we can try different things to optimize recovery of the elements other than just the copper. At the time UMEX was sending the product to the Horne smelter in Quebec. There are questions -- did they have good smelter agreements or not? That smelter is no longer available to us, but I think there are certainly metallurgical opportunities to improve on what they got. One of the things that I get excited about is the use of what's called ore sorting or pre-concentration. That could be applicable here. You'd actually be taking your feed grade to a higher amount, say fifty percent higher for the feed grade headed to the mill. Of course, that could impact the size of the mill that you have to build.

Peter Bell: Yes, there's so much you can do with the new technology. Whether it's visual identification or some of the xrf scanning, I don't know what they're using for the sorting but that is powerful stuff. I wonder about some of the old methods like a shaker table -- could that be useful for some pre-concentration? A simple gravity circuit may help add to the gains from the ore sorting.

Ian Berzins: We've had preliminary discussions with companies like Steiner that make such machines. We'd have to to try to pick the right type of machine for our ore types, but certainly copper ores are amenable to that technology much as gold or diamond feeds would be.

Peter Bell: And yet people don't seem to be widely aware of that. Good to have you in the ballpark here.

Ian Berzins: I think it's changing, frankly. Australia seems to be more of a leader. They're probably five years ahead of North America. The other challenge is that once your mill is built, it's somewhat more difficult to introduce that stage to the circuit. Whereas, if you're going to be designing your mill outright then you can build it in the front end of the mill and reject non-economic material before it hits the grinding circuit. And the grinding circuit is really the most significant power costs for operations.

Peter Bell: You mentioned Gibraltar and I think of how different the circuit would look if that was designed in 2020 versus 50 years ago.

Ian Berzins: Well, Thompson Creek and Mount Milligan and Gibraltar and Copper Mountain all had to introduce secondary crushing in order to come close to optimizing the capacity of the SAG mill. We'll have the opportunity to try to integrate some technology into a new mine design. The previous owner, which is currently Cadillac, were envisioning a 15,000 tonne a day operation with about 11Kt from the open pit and 4Kt from the underground. We would be more focusing on a 4Kt a day underground operation, which would reduce the capital that one would have to invest in order to get into positive cash flow.

Peter Bell: Glad to hear it. Rationalize, rationalize, rationalize. You've got to right-size these projects and bigger isn't better. Looking at multi-billion dollar capex is tough if you just sit and miss a cycle in the markets. That's an unacceptable thing, really, but we've seen it happen before so many times. If we can learn from other people's mistakes and have things that stand on their own then that's what I want to hear about, but most juniors don't have the bench strength or the people involved who you know really know much about production so those decisions are left to consultants. Glad to hear you talking about you know some adult supervision there from management side.

Ian Berzins: The other interesting thing is that operations at Bull River have about $150 million dollars in tax pools. And the Thierry mine has about a hundred. We think that those are really nice attributes to have. That's why, in both cases, we're purchasing these subsidiary companies as compared to the assets. I like the fact that to do a PEA on a project as large as the Thierry, you'd typically be spending between a quarter of a million and five hundred thousand dollars. The consultants that did the most recent one in 2012 -- we are using them again and we can produce a new PEA for Thierry in about six to eight weeks after giving the green light. And it will cost under a hundred thousand dollars. That excites me because I think, again, if we can demonstrate that we have a PEA that may lead to a pre-feasibility study then that should help us with getting some market recognition for what we've acquired.

Peter Bell: What's the rationale of the vendor here?

Ian Berzins: Cadillac, interestingly enough, was merged with a company called Richview back in 2012. By my math, they spent about $45 million in terms of a share deal to acquire the Thierry project. They had other projects going on concurrently, outside of North America as well, and I think they got spread a little bit thin. They entered into an option agreement with a company called Northern Fox, which was private in 2016, and they were going to basically retain a 30% interest in the project while Northern Fox was required to invest up to about $15 million to move it forward. For various reasons, Northern Fox wasn't able to do that. When we looked at it, we said I don't want an option -- we want to own it outright.

Ian Berzins: From their side, Cadillac will participate by getting about 13.5 million shares. They will be a large shareholder, approximately ten percent for argument's sake, and they'll participate in the success of Braveheart at Bull River as well. They'll still retain an NSR on the Thierry project and they won't have to put any money up. That'll allow them to concentrate on their tungsten project and anything else they have in the pipeline. For us, we saw a company that was beat up in the market and finding it difficult to raise money down at two cents. We felt that it could be a win-win where we get a more pure copper play and they like the fact that we have an experienced mining management team. They liked the idea that we would be seeing positive cash flow from Bull River within a year, too. It was a good combination. Hopefully it is a bit of a perfect storm for us because Cadillac was valued much higher in the market in 2000 and 2010 than than they are today.

Peter Bell: Well done finding this opportunity and making a win-win deal. It looks like a win-win deal here with Cadillac. If they have their hands full with a tungsten thing too, that can be very tough.

Ian Berzins: Another thing that is interesting is that I like the idea of geographical diversification. This is the Braveheart model -- you want you want favorable mining jurisdictions and I love Canada. To be in BC and Ontario gives us flexibility because we're close to mining communities and infrastructure. It's a really interesting formula. Without pouring cold water on our friends up in the Golden Triangle, our projects are not infrastructurally-challenged. There's no seasonality about what we're doing here. I've worked in the North West Territories up above the tree line and we're not competing with having to fly people to work, overhaul, fuel and all the kind of challenges that you have in the north. The importance of location is often underestimated by people when they look at projects. Location is often not really considered when somebody does a PEA.

Peter Bell: You can assume a lot in a PEA, right? You can make a lot of big assumptions. Looking at this 3d image, I wonder if there was ever any underground mining? I can see the developments but did they do any production? And what kind of method were they planning here?

Ian Berzins: You can see the shaft here. It is a three-compartment shaft. Then, they have lateral developments. They were really getting into the ore bodies with the underground development most of the mining was done, originally, in the open pits. I'm of the view that a significant portion of the resource is going to be accessible. My belief is that in all likelihood we'll use some form of a combination of either mechanized-cut-and-fill or longhole stoping. When we get into the mine plans and look at how the scoping designs were done, we'll learn more. We've engaged a particular engineer that was intimately familiar with Thierry and actually did the underground developments with the contractor back in 1981. There's a lot for us to learn but the first prize really was to secure the asset.

Ian Berzins: My understanding from them is that the ground, in general terms, was pretty good. It was a relatively dry mine. Those are some of the things I look at. But, frankly, we don't know until we can get into the database and manipulate it a bit. Then I think we'll learn a lot. First, we need to acquire it.

Peter Bell: Looks like a great spot to build a mine! Classic stuff in Ontario with the local history.

Ian Berzins: The town of Pickle Lake is really the jumping off point for the the all-weather road that goes to Newmont's Musselwhite operation. There was grid power right to site, but the main transmission line comes right through the town of Pickle Lake. Apart from not having enough hotels in the area, it's going to be an area that I think is going to be quite exciting. It's up near the Ring of Fire and I think that part of northwestern Ontario is going to see a lot of attention. That should be to the benefit of towns like Dryden and some of the other towns in the area.

Peter Bell: Musselwhite is a big deal!

Ian Berzins: It's been around for a while, but my understanding is it still has some legs to it.

Peter Bell: Brownfields -- all it takes is for them to shoot a big hole off from an underground location and hit something new that nobody expected and then they're on to another decade of mine life. It takes a lot of work to show that of course, but there's room for that deposit to keep growing.

Ian Berzins: A good thing is that the government has decided to actually do a major power line extension from the town of Pickle Lake to some of the northern communities. That's essential when you've got multiple projects. We actually have a power-sharing agreement with Musselwhite going forward. Arguably, government doesn't have to advance too much in terms of infrastructure that's always better. If they are required to to support several mines, it's better to share the infrastructure. I could see the little town of Pickle Lake become a booming little community again.

Peter Bell: I love the small scale equipment that you got at Bull River, too. 750 ton per day? Yes, please! And we're in a very different location in BC, but I like this one too.

Ian Berzins: In terms of Bull River, our equipment is a little dated but what I like about that is that the previous operators invested over $60 million dollars in about 22 kilometers of tunnels. It's really built-out on seven different horizon in the ore zone.

Ian Berzins: In terms of Bull River, our equipment is a little dated but what I like about that is that the previous operators invested over $60 million dollars in about 22 kilometers of tunnels. It's really built-out on seven different horizon in the ore zone. If you go underground, then you can actually see we do have cobalt. You can see cobalt bloom on the walls. At this point, it's not high enough for us to separate but the fact that the tunnels are in place is important. Once we decide to go back mining underground, we'll have the ability to really determine under our mine plan which elevation we want to go to first. It's a bit of a miner's dream in my mind where you're not chasing the deposit top-down, but you actually get under it and then you can mine up from there. If we want to advance the decline further into the structures, then we can do that and use the material for backfill.

Ian Berzins: In our previous press releases in Q1, we actually intersected the same structures that we have at Bull River 115 meters below the bottom working. The bottom workings are 350 meters below surface. We know that we have an ore body or mineralized material below that and there's no reason that those structures can't go further to depth. While we only show about a six and a half year project now, depending on the mining rates, I think it's very reasonable that that Bull River could be a 20-year mine project.

Peter Bell: It's all about sizing. Looking at all this exposure of ore zones across the deposit here vertically and horizontally is important. There's a lot of exposure as you say. If you're running a mill that's not really hungry then you can make a plan to pick and choose where you get ore from, subject to the mine-ability of the different areas. You can focus on the high-grade. If you get high-grade from here and high-grade from there, you can sequence that in a more creative way than if you did not have all those underground workings. Make sure you're putting higher grade material or higher margin material through the system first!

Ian Berzins: To that point, in British Columbia there's a finite number of milling facilities that could accept the toll feed. I would say that there's a number of miners that are going after smaller higher-grade deposits, but they have nowhere to truck their ore to. We see ourselves as potentially playing an important role on a regional scale. Depending on what other products are out there, a permitted mill with capacity can become highly sought after. We're planning to use what's called dry stack tailings or filter tailings, which is considered in BC now to be one of the best available technologies. Government will be receptive to that strategy as compared to building one of the old conventional tailings ponds with the large earth structures with effluent and material inside. We're trying again to use technologies that are proven and suited to what we're trying to do. Dry stack wouldn't necessarily work at a 50,000 or 10,000 tonne per day operation but if you're mining in a couple thousand tonnes then we can afford to integrate that into our operating costs.

Peter Bell: And maybe in a toll mining situation, too! Is that in the cards for you maybe?

Ian Berzins: One of the things we had when I first joined the company two and a half years ago was that we had an option to acquire a high-grade gold project near Nelson, BC. I actually first went to visit Bull River in anticipation of looking for a mill. As it turned out I found a property that was significantly developed -- way beyond my understanding. At that time we talked about pre-concentration at the Alpine Mine where we would then truck a high-grade gold ore to a mill. We would install a gravity circuit in front of the ball mill and we could use that to batch process material with gold that will come out in a gravity circuit. That's still available to us.

Ian Berzins: The initial surface stockpile has about $23 million dollar metal value. We can access that. We may want to supplement our own feeds going forward with a higher grade feed from another project if it can support economic trucking.

Peter Bell: Brilliant. All the details that come in with production for people who are going to do their homework and talk to you more -- I'm sure there's some interest especially with rising copper prices here and everything.

Ian Berzins: Yesterday I think we saw USD $3.15 per pound. I believe it fell back a bit today but certainly the copper price is improving and we benefit. When we purchased the Bull River Mine, I think we had gold prices closer to $1,200 and silver at about $14 an ounce. Although they only represent 22%, they've had a significant increase for us.

Peter Bell: And we're looking at these numbers here with your paybacks versus your mine life -- pretty impressive stuff. And those are probably not top-ticked to current metals prices, either. There's probably some room for those numbers to go up.

Ian Berzins: Yes, I would agree. Some people have been critical saying, "that's a small project -- what are you going to do next?" When we bought Bull River, it was a step-change from what we had before. On its own, I think Bull River is a company-maker. Like any mine, we would be under pressure to replace the ore we mine on an annual basis. But then we can bring the Thierry mine onstream as well, which gives us that much more momentum.

Peter Bell: Well done. Great plan all around. I've asked some people on the street about the stock and they say "The capital structure!" I see there's a debenture here. What's the deal?

Ian Berzins: We've currently got 8.6 million dollars of debt. We have five million from Matlock Farms. Aaron Matlock is an officer and director of Braveheart. He's also a senior secured creditor. Aaron lent us the money to basically unscramble the mess that Purcell Basin Minerals was in. We had to remove some problematic shareholders and basically restructure it through a plan of arrangement. Aaron's interest is accruing. It's relatively expensive at 14.8 percent and we are looking for ways to either replace that or reduce it. He's quite interested to have his loan replaced or paid off.

Ian Berzins: The debenture is interesting as it was one of the key components to purchase the mine. The debenture was held by what's called a debtor in possession or a DIP lender. Under the previous restructuring of Purcell Basin Minerals in 2010 to 2014, the DIP lender advanced $10 million dollars that accrued interest and they were owed about $17 million. when it went to court, which was the proof of claim. We offered $7 million with $1 million in the form of shares of Braveheart, which we issued previously, and $6 million as a debenture. The debt accrues interest originally at zero, one, and two percent over the first three years. We recently added a fourth and fifth year at five percent on each year. I think it was a really a credit to the noteholders themselves and the company that we were able to approach the noteholders to allow them to convert $2.4 million of the debenture debt into equity at 20 cents per share. At that time two months ago, we were trading at 12.5 cents and they were interested to convert! Some of the shareholders have been around that story since the 1970s and 1980s. They wanted an opportunity to have at least a bit of an exit strategy. We thought this was a win-win. Now, we have about we have $5 million remaining with Mr. Matlock and $3.6 million with the debt holders. The debenture is accruing interest this year at one percent and next year at two, so if we can get our share price moving up between 20 and 30 cents then there will be room for the debenture holders to do the full conversion and eliminate that in its entirety.

Peter Bell: The interest payments that accrue are being added on, they're not being settled in shares or anything?

Ian Berzins: They're being added on or accrued on an annual basis. This year, it's one percent. Next year it's two and then it's five and five. I'm quite convinced that in two years' time the Bull River Mine will be running and there'll be enough proceeds from the milling of the stockpile alone that we might elect to pay the debenture back. We'll certainly be able to remove any of the debt that is accruing expensive interest.

Peter Bell: OK. Bull River -- what about the financing plan and economic studies?

Ian Berzins: Right now I have not begun a PEA or a pre-feasibility on Bull River. It was our belief that we'd acquired an asset that had $35 million dollars of surface infrastructure, primarily in the mill, and $60 million of underground infrastructure. The advantage to do a PEA for a quarter of a million dollars to satisfy the market when we need five million to get it up and running -- we thought that the best use of our money is to make sure that we do everything we can to expedite the permitting process. Once we have a permit, we aren't going to need a PEA or pre-feas to bring monies in to move forward.

Peter Bell: No, not in 2020!

Ian Berzins: Right now we're sitting here with four key projects that we have to complete. We own the transformer that needs to be moved to site. We need to reinstall the flotation, install filtration, and then complete the dry stack footprint. That's where we're heading. I'm not saying we'll never do a PEA or pre-feas on Bull River, but if you're milling the surface stockpile then I would say that'll be proof of concept. We know tonnage, we have a good idea of grade, and we know what recovery should be -- those numbers will speak for themselves. How does that compare with the value of a PEA, which is plus or minus 30 percent? I don't know who I would be trying to convince at that point in time with a PEA.

Ian Berzins: We know that we need to secure another five million just to finish off the build, so we'll be looking at that. We do have some warrants -- 25 million warrants at 15 cents that expire in January. That's one access to capital. That would be dilutive but that that could work for us. It'll be a balance, but this not the kind of project that you have to demonstrate de-risking. Somebody else in their wisdom already drifted on seven different horizons in the ore zone. We're going to leverage that where we look mainly at operating costs and a little bit of sustaining capital.

Peter Bell: Amazing. Thank you very much. And it's important that you bought the company that owns Bull River rather than optioning the property.

Ian Berzins: Yes. We bought it through a plan of arrangement and typically what that means is that you take care of the secured lenders, unsecured lenders, and even the underlying shareholders. We own 100% now. There are no royalties at Bull River. We bought the actual shares of the subsidiary company, which was called Purcell Basin Minerals, and the reason we did that was we wanted to secure $152 million dollars in tax pool losses. At Bull River, we will not pay tax for the foreseeable future. We will certainly not pay beyond the current life of the current resource.

Peter Bell: Wow. That's valuable to you, but it might be even more valuable to a high-income partner. Right? Somebody who has some tailwind profits from rising copper prices and all of a sudden they're looking for tax shelters?

Ian Berzins: We've entertained that. The challenge is in the nature of the specifics of the tax credits, whether they are CEE or CDE -- some of them are specific to the property itself. We have tried to look at monetizing tax pools, but we were just of the view that there's no point trying to give them away at a penny on the dollar if in fact, they're worth quite a bit more to us.

Peter Bell: Or whoever might come in as a partner with you on Bull River down the line! There may be some issues with transfering them to someone else's balance sheet, but if you find someone to participate in Bull River itself then they could still benefit by Bull River having low taxes to start.

Ian Berzins: Those are things that we have wrestled with a little bit. The opportunity is still there. And consider that we have no royalties on that project. We have had some conversations with potential partners. There are a number of royalty companies springing up that are now looking more at base metals than just the typical gold and silver deals.

Peter Bell: They've got money to put to work and some may even be talking about syndicates among them where a few of them come together to help provide financing that one of them might not want to take down on their own.

Ian Berzins: The other thing about royalty companies is that if I was running a royalty company, I'd want to make sure that I had near-term production. I'd want to actually offer a dividend to my shareholders.

Peter Bell: And if it's tax-light production at Bull River then that just lowers the hurdles for the economics. Sometimes the tax bite comes on pretty quick. To have that holiday for $150 million helps. And the royalties are taking off the top line. Two percent doesn't sound like a lot, but it's two percent off the top line! It's a big take and it can be make-or-break for some mines.

Ian Berzins: I've run a number of gold mines and I'm always leery to lay royalties on top of an ore body because sometimes that is the margin. Although our grade at Bull River is 2.26% copper equivalent, it's not a 4% copper mine. You really want to make sure that that if there was going to be a royalty that it was nominal.

Peter Bell: Otherwise you're waiting for four dollar copper like everybody else! That's not going to solve the problem with the debentures you have in the micro. And then there's all this talk about the shortfall on the supply side for copper looking forward. To have a story that's near-term production potential is very important now. Amazing to find the seven levels of workings at Bull River. And there was no significant underground production?

Ian Berzins: Well, they did some -- that's where the hundred and sixty-five thousand tonnes on surface came from. Those seven tunnels. I get asked why did they not mill that surface stockpile. All we can understand is the previous company was private and management raised a lot of money in Western Canada -- my sense is that they delayed trying to do the actual milling partly because they would have then had to probably pay back shareholders with dividends or something.

Peter Bell: I've never seen anything where you could bring this not-low-grade ore this "run of mine material" that is completely representative of what's in the current resource and say it's over $23 million dollars of metal in 164,000 tonnes at 1.7% copper.

Ian Berzins: I've seen the drifting and the quality of the mining was pretty good. The ore body sits at about 70 degrees, so it's steep. Gravity works for you. My sense is that dilution in that ceiling exercise was 10 maybe 15%. The resource equates nicely with the sampling that we've done of the pile itself.

Peter Bell: Impressive. will you do more of that sampling?

Ian Berzins: My feeling is the best way to get a sense of the surface pile would be to start crushing it. I but I don't want to pre-crush it to assay it because then there's an added re-handle cost. The pile was formed from drifting on seven different horizons over a distance of about 300 meters, so it's like a large bulk sample. It would take some pretty big drill holes to get the same amount of rock.

Peter Bell: Would you go at that pile with an auger drill or something to try and get some sense of the buried material?

Ian Berzins: We've been asked if would we do it because we have some people that are looking to help us pre-fund the pile. You can get carried away with assaying. When the last technical report was done, the engineering firm that worked along with Snowden took 400 channel samples from the underground drifting. Just the ability to do that is significant, but the results are significant too because they make me very comfortable that we shouldn't see any great surprises. Of course, it's been sitting on deck and there's no mining cost so you've eliminated maybe $45 a tonne that you would have to pay to get it there -- now you're really looking at milling costs, transportation costs, and smelting costs.

Peter Bell: We talked at the outset the new technology with ore sorting and old technology with the shaker tables -- I wonder if there's some kind of a creative solution here. Maybe you have to incur some re-handling costs along the way, but if can upgrade at site before you move it to the mill then that helps.

Ian Berzins: I think my strategy right now would be that the 165,000 tonnes represents eight months. I think we'd probably mill that as proof of concept to get some firm numbers. We know that was a diluted pile. Then, when we go underground we might look at new methods to do some sort of pre-concentration work underground. We would kind of separate it either at the portal or underground and then just feed the the higher grade feed to the same size mill. Again, I think there are opportunities to optimize what we have here once we've actually got positive cash flow.

Peter Bell: New things at old places, Ian.

Ian Berzins: I've worked at three very complex, deep, underground gold mines in Canada and I still believe you've got as high or higher chance to find ore in proximity of the mine. We have one of the attributes here. And we have about a 10,500-hectare land package. We do have some other outcrops that had limited mining 100 years ago. Right now, we want to focus at Bull River but we've got a beautiful land package as well. It'll take some work but we'll continue to do exploration. I think right now the best place for us to spend money at Bull River will actually be deeper drilling. For argument's sake, if we could get some structures that might be slightly higher grade then that would be a win. We were targeting an area that had had previously seen 4% copper and that could change the economics of when you go deeper.

Peter Bell: Beautiful. Yes, that stuff is a priority. And with all the old data from these channel samples on the old walls and the drilling -- if you compile that and start doing some data science work then you might find some surprises before you even have to drill a hole. Just reworking the old data could show things have been overlooked. And because it was in a private company for those years, it's information the market doesn't have yet. That can be a big deal for the stock.

Ian Berzins: When we did the five drill holes this spring, they all intersected similar true widths and similar grades to what's in our current resource. That means that we've effectively deepened the known ore body from 350 meters deep to almost 465m. There's no reason that this can't go down deeper. If we can get good drill angles from underground then I'm not against trying to do some deeper holes, much the same way they did with Goldcorp at the Red Lake Mine. You just don't know what's below you and you sure hate to walk away from something if in fact the grade improves at depth!

Peter Bell: I can't imagine what they felt like leaving those seven levels and not having mined them out. And leaving the stockpile at surface mining? Leaving that must have been a hard time for some of the people involved in that.

Ian Berzins: I don't want to profess what management strategy was, but I I can tell you it was painful for the 2,900 shareholders.

Peter Bell: Kudos to you for trying to make a win out of it. Are those shareholders involved now -- do they have any equity at this point or were they settled out in cash?

Ian Berzins: What we did, and this was more gratuitous than anything, was to renegotiate things. There were two senior secured creditors and we bought one out completely for $2.5 million cash. For the other, we set up the debenture with the unsecured creditors and paid them 30% of what they were owed -- but we paid them in shares of Braveheart to settle their issues. We offered all 2,900 shareholders of Purcell five Braveheart shares for every one share they had. There were approximately 3 million shares held between 2,900 individuals. As it turned out, we said we're going to give you a five for one but you have to spend a thousand dollars on an admin fee for us to do the transaction regardless of what your holdings are -- for people who held over 2,000 shares, it made sense to convert because essentially they were breaking even if they converted. In the end, it made economic sense for 118 individuals or families from the 2,900 to convert. The others had lost so much that it didn't make sense to do so. They'd be better to buy shares of Braveheart in the market if they believed in it. Again, there's always going to be winners and losers if you will. Unfortunately, a number of our shareholders or former shareholders of Purcell were elderly and had invested significant savings into a prospective junior miner. I've talked to many of them and it's disheartening. At the end of the day, we saw value in the actual assets and we felt that we could create some value for those who wanted to stay with it.

Peter Bell: Well done. The history of some of these projects is just heartbreaking, but then the opportunity that's created in the wreckage can be big! If you get the timing right in the cycles then the wind is at your back and all of a sudden things can move really quickly.

Ian Berzins: I agree. There have been numerous mines that have been shuttered, reopened, and shuttered again. Sometimes if you're in the right position that you actually find the presence of economic or very favorable mineralized material, then it's about being in the right place. What I like about this is that we don't have to miss a cycle here. A lot of projects that we compete against in northern BC have seasonal drilling. When they talk about how different studies will be done three years out, it reminds me how different we are in southern BC.

Peter Bell: And this a brownfield operation! I expect it's not a question of if we get a permit, but when?

Ian Berzins: I'd like to believe that we'll be one of, if not the next new mines in the province of BC. I think there are certainly some forces afoot that would say that that's a good thing.

Peter Bell: I like to say "Lead from the front", right? This copper is going to get mined somewhere in the world -- let's do it in Canada with Canadian companies at the best global standards that we can in all aspects.

Ian Berzins: I agree 100%.

Peter Bell: Ian, what a treat to meet you! Thank you. Nice to talk to you.

Ian Berzins: You're welcome, Peter. Thanks for connecting with us on short notice. If you have some follow-up questions at some point, then please feel free to reach out.

Peter Bell: Thank you very much. I'll do a recording of this for public release and send it over fo you to have a look at. Thanks again. Goodbye.