Richard Nemis has been on the scene of every big Canadian area play in the past few decades.

He was staking ground in the Hemlo region when gold was discovered in Ontario in the early 1980s. He staked more than 500,000 acres in the North after diamonds were discovered in the early 1990s. And, of course, he was all over Labrador amid the Voisey's Bay insanity of the mid-1990s.

But as far as he is concerned, the current madness in McFauld's Lake tops everything. "This is the most exciting thing ever," the chief executive of Noront Resources Ltd. said with genuine enthusiasm.

He should be excited, because he was the one that got the whole thing going.

Noront's ultra-high-grade nickel-copper find at Mc-Fauld's Lake in the James Bay Lowlands has created an excitement in Canada's junior mining community that hasn't been seen since the wild days of Voisey's Bay.

According to Mr. Nemis, about $60-million in exploration will be spent there this year alone by a small army of juniors. He expects more than $250-million to be spent over the next two or three years before a major comes and consolidates the region that Noront nicknamed the "Ring of Fire." The moniker stuck.

Perhaps more important, he figures the excitement around the discovery is bringing investors back to the junior mining world and to small exploration companies like his own.

It's been so long since a significant discovery like the Ring of Fire happened in Canada that many of Canada's top exploration people left to places like South America, Africa and China in search of the next big find.

"They went all over the world thinking that everything in Canada that could be found has been found," Mr. Nemis said. "We've just shown you that everything that can be found has not been found. People are taking note of what's happening and the fact that there are major discoveries yet to be made."

The other company that hammered that point home recently is Diamonds North Resources Ltd. Last month, the Vancouver-based junior found 550 diamonds in a drill sample of just 81.75 kilograms at its Amaruk property in Nunavut.

It is the biggest discovery in the North in years, and has many investors thinking Amaruk could eventually become the next Ekati or Diavik.

That is especially good news for the diamond-exploration sector, which has been quiet in recent years.

The number of diamond-exploration juniors has dropped from a few hundred to about a dozen, according to Mark Kolebaba, chief executive of Diamonds North.

There has been a dearth of major discoveries, plus the collapse of Tahera Diamond Corp.

But he believes this discovery will bring attention back to the sector.

"You can see there were people sitting on the sidelines prepared to invest in the diamond market," he said. "You saw that because after our announcement, within three days of trading, we had traded more than we traded all of last year. There was a huge reaction to it."

The other thing that bodes well for the juniors is they have the talent to make new Canadian discoveries.

Even some heavily explored regions are turning up significant new discoveries. Peter McBride, manager of communications for the Ontario Mining Association, points to interesting work in the Sudbury Basin, where companies such as Ursa Major Minerals Inc. and FNX Mining Company Inc. continue to find new resources and push projects toward production.

"In Sudbury, we're looking at 120-plus years that there's been mining going on. And people would think there's no place left to drill holes to discover new deposits. But it's kind of never-ending," he said.

As Mr. Nemis sees it, the best thing that happened for the juniors in the past 10 years was that the major companies slashed their exploration budgets in Canada. As a result, many of the most talented exploration people entered the junior market, and they are the ones leading the way.

"The majors were foolish in cutting their budgets on exploration, but that's what happened," he says. "It's crazy, because they'll have to pay an arm and a leg [to consolidate discovery plays]."

But it's great news for the Noronts of the world. Thanks to flow-through share financing, stubbornly high commodity prices and a massive discovery like the Ring of Fire, the juniors are raising plenty of capital and already talking up the next big score at a mining conference near you.

"The promoters are back!" Mr. Nemis says.

Indeed. And they have him to thank.

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