The Canusa shaft is located about 900 metres south of the summit of Barkerville Mountain and approximately 2 kilometres west of Barkerville.
The Canusa showing lies within the Barkerville Terrane of the Omineca Belt. The Barkerville Terrane is in thrust contact with Triassic Quesnel Terrane rocks to the west and Hadrynian to Lower Paleozoic Cariboo Terrane rocks to the east. The Barkerville Terrane in this region is underlain by the dominantly metasedimentary rocks of the Hadrynian to Lower Paleozoic Snowshoe Group. In this area, the Snowshoe Group comprises limestone, phyllite and quartzite. These rocks have been regionally metamorphosed to greenschist facies.
The occurrence consists of several small surface showings and the larger Canusa vein which has only been exposed in underground workings. The area is underlain mainly by quartzite and schist, both of which are often argillaceous. Surface veins are up to 40 centimetres in width, are well mineralized with pyrite and have had values up to 4.8 grams per tonne of gold reported. Thin bands of pyritic replacement in quartzite also occur near the veins. The pyritic material has values up to 24.0 grams per tonne of gold (Bulletin 38, page 73). The Canusa vein has a width of 2.9 to 3.4 metres, strikes 300 degrees and dips 65 degrees north. It is mineralized sparingly with pyrite and also contains galena, some sphalerite, cosalite and occasionally some visible gold.
In 1955, Canusa Mines Ltd. (name changed from Canusa Cariboo Gold Mines Ltd. in August, 1956) held two Crown-granted claims and 24 recorded claims and fractions stretching up Cow Mountain from Lowhee Creek and Stouts Gulch. The property is adjacent to the southern end of the Cariboo Gold Quartz property (093H 140). The mine buildings and shaft are at the head of Stouts Gulch and about 609 metres south of the B.C. shaft (093H 139) of the Cariboo Gold Quartz mine. The underground workings consist of a 91 metre, two-compartment vertical shaft, from which extends a 106 metre crosscut and 183 metres of drift. The Canusa vein is not exposed at surface, and most of the smaller veins were deeply covered by overburden until hydraulic mining exposed them in the 1930s. The ground was located as the Blue Jay group in the 1930s and a moderate amount of prospecting done, including the driving of a short adit by Cariboo Central Gold Mines Ltd. south of the Black Bull vein (093H 078), but no extensive work was done until Canusa Mines Ltd. was formed. In 1946, the shaft was sunk; the Canusa vein was discovered in 1947 and explored the following year. The mine was shut down and allowed to flood at the end of August, 1948.
In 2002, International Wayside Gold Mines Ltd. made the final payment required for it to obtain a 100 per cent right, title and interest in both the surface and undersurface rights to Crown grant Lot 2F (New Black Bull), known as Blackbull and situated at Lowhee Creek (093H 118), and Crown grant Lot 42F (Waoming), known as Canusa, situated at Stout Gulch.
