Wolfden leads the pack: Ewan Downie sees firm as takeover target.

A colourful display of paintings depicting the artistic merits of a first-grader welcome clients to Ewan Downie's office. No golden name plates scripted with the words president and CEO outline this door.

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At first glance, one would not guess one is entering into the office of the man at the helm of one of the hottest junior mining companies in Canada - Wolfden Resources Inc.

Wolfden, still considered to be in its infancy by small-business startup standards, is one of only about five junior mining companies in Canada that have made the transition from TSX Venture to TSX in a 12-month period.

The colourful decor continues in his office, where Downie, seated among a myriad of papers on his desk, finalizes plans to catch a flight to Toronto to meet with corporate clients.

Wolfden is somewhat in a league of its own, being the only junior mining company on the TSE with headquarters in Thunder Bay, as opposed to the financial strip in Toronto or Vancouver.

Being located on Bay Street in Toronto has its advantages since most of the company's finances come from New York, he says. But there is an upside to being located in the North, and corporate write-ups on the company, noting "Wolfden achieves from Thunder Bay what four Toronto companies do," are an indication that location is not always everything, he says.

Besides, there is a culture that coincides with life in the big city. Company big-wigs meet at the bar after work and promote each other, and lunch hours drag on for nearly three hours, he adds.

Downie, with his hands-on work attitude, believes in the North one can simply get more work done.

Taking into account Wolfden's current market capital and its core assets, Downie surmises in the not so distant future the company will be eyed as a potential takeover target.

"Wolfden's being looked at, in the junior sector, as one of the upper tier junior companies," Downie says. "All of the companies will refer to us when they talk about building their company, because we are one of the more successful in share price."

In an era when many juniors are cash-strapped and "struggling to raise money," Wolfden's position in the market is only strengthening, bolstered by its most recent acquisitions.

With core assets in the prolific Red Lake gold mining district and in the High Lake property in Nunavut, and between $32 million and $33 million cash in the bank, Wolfden is poised to advance its current position.

By the third quarter of 2003, the company had already raised $30 million, and at present holds a market capital of nearly $200 million.

Downie attributes Wolfden's good fortune to both a gold discovery made in Red Lake and to its High Lake property.

The company shifted its priorities from northwestern Ontario earlier this year when a significant volcanogenic mass discovery was made. The polymetalic deposit at High Lake is a copper-zinc deposit with very high precious metal content, he explains.

While there are a number of similar deposits internationally, "High Lake, if it were in production, would be the highest grade of its type in the world," he says.

"We acquired the mill and are starting the environmental process, and are hoping to move to prefeasibility by the second quarter of 2004," Downie says. "On our schedule right now we're hoping High Lake will be in production by 2007."

Downie, 36, who was born in Timmins and raised in the North's mining towns, gained his geological knowledge during stints of summer student employment, living in bush camps working for his father, who is a P. Eng. in geology, and working side by side with a prospector in Red Lake. Falling a year short of completing a business degree at Lakehead University, he started his first business venture, a service exploration company, at the age of 21 after acquiring a government-funded student loan for young entrepreneurs.

"(The prospector and I) spent a lot of time together in the bush," Downie says. "He told me what rock type was which, and what we should be looking for, and that got me interested in looking for myself, rather than looking for other people."

Downie was approached in the late 90s to start up a junior company - a proposition he now believes may have been a bit of a jest.

"I didn't know how to run a junior company; didn't know much about public companies. I just did service contracts for them," Downie says. "One of the companies I worked for, the gentleman who runs it asked me if I wanted to start one and that's how we started Wolfden. On that end, I think when he asked me he may have been semi joking, and I went and started it; the company got rolling."

Its co-founders are prospector and professional mining engineer John Pollock, and Downie's father, Iain.

They started Wolfden as an initial public offering, going public in 1999 on the Toronto over-the-counter exchange, and then ended up as a tier 3, the lowest tier of the TSX Venture Exchange. In July of this year they were approved for trading on the TSX.

The rising price of gold has created a buoyant climate for juniors, and the dot.com crash has shifted focus to mining stocks, making mining companies one of the best received markets at present, he says.

"It's made it easier to raise money so we can be more aggressive in both acquisitions and our exploration," Downie says.

He estimates approximately $6 million to $7.5 million will be spent on exploration in northwestern Ontario between Wolfden and its joint-venture partners in the coming year.

A self-confessed deal maker, Downie has strategically aligned the company with Placer Dome in the Red Lake camp, and Kinross Gold earning in on one of its properties in Red Lake and Teck Cominco Ltd. earning in on three of their properties.

"I'm very hands-on. I like to know everything that's going on; I may be a little anal, but I want to be involved in every step of what the company does.

"I like making deals. I enjoy the deal making as possibly my forte - finding a good opportunity and actually being able to negotiate a fairly soft deal, as I call it."

Wolfden's first real rise in share prices occurred this past winter following their discovery of a significant deposit in Red Lake. The company has targeted the green altered zone of its East Bay property, located about 10 kilometres from Campbell and Red Lake gold mines, and is pursuing an aggressive exploration program to further define gold intersections.

The company also has interests in numerous other properties, including Pickle Crow, Nova-Co, Newman-Heyson, the Argosy gold mine and its most recent acquisition is a Quebec-based past producing gold mine, which they hope to de-water in the first quarter of 2004.

www.wolfdenresources.com