New Polaris drills high-grade gold and a bonanza antimony hit

Canagold just pulled a double-barrelled result out of its New Polaris project in northwest British Columbia. The headline hole, NP26-01, cut 13.2 metres averaging 19.38 grams of gold per tonne — rich rock — and 3.83% antimony, a metal the West is short of. Inside that run sat a 1.21-metre sliver grading 30.46% antimony and 49.10 grams per tonne gold. That is bonanza-grade for both metals in the same piece of core. These holes sit between approximately 451 and 494 metres downhole.

Antimony is the twist. It is a critical mineral — used in flame retardants, ammunition and batteries — with few mines outside China, so a gold project that also carries multi-metre antimony grades has two stories at once. And this wasn’t one lucky hole: three of the five reported holes carried consistent multi-metre antimony, with NP26-02 running 6.06 metres at 3.90% antimony and NP26-03 hitting 3.91 metres at 3.30%. The project already has an NI 43-101 resource and a feasibility study, so this is infill drilling at an advanced asset, not a greenfield gamble. The operating pedigree helps: President and COO Garry Biles, who signs off as the technical Qualified Person, ran Barrick’s Eskay Creek mine from 1994 to 2002. The market has noticed — the stock climbed 32% over three months while the base-metals peer index barely moved, a staircase of steady accumulation rather than one news spike.

Now the honest part. The company reports these as core lengths, not true widths, because the orientation of the veins isn’t modelled yet — real zone thickness could be materially narrower, maybe much narrower. No cut-off grade or compositing method was stated for the intervals. And four of the five reported holes share a single collar: this is a tight fan of steep holes showing local continuity near 450 to 490 metres down, not a step-out along strike. The release does not state how far the zone was extended. Note too that Biles is the in-house QP, not an independent one. What to watch: assays from nine more holes of the 14-hole program are still pending, an antimony economic study is underway with no stated date, and the BC environmental assessment filed March 31, 2026 is in review. One more flag for minority holders — Sun Valley Investments AG now owns roughly 49.75% of shares, and its beneficial owners aren’t publicly known.

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