"TRI recently signed an agreement with local First Nations along with its neighbours in the Beardmore-Geraldton Gold Camp in northwestern Ontario, Markinch Resources Inc. (“MRI”) and Advandtel Minerals (Canada) Ltd. (“AMCL”). The importance of this agreement is referenced in a letter from the President of MRI to its shareholders. In addition, the letter describes MRI and AMCL’s exploration plans, which will be of interest to TRI’s shareholders given the proximity of our properties and is therefore provided here for your information."

The last year or so has been a slow time for Markinch Resources. Of course, it’s been a slow year for the mining and exploration sector as a whole, not just in Canada but world-wide. Specifically, at MRI, we basically stopped work when we commenced discussions with the two neighbouring First Nations, early last year. Since then, of course, we had very little news to disseminate until now. Finally, MRI and its joint venture partner, Advandtel Minerals (Canada) Ltd. have succeeded in entering into a definitive exploration agreement with Aroland First Nation (“AFN”) and Animbiigoo Zaagi’igaan Anishinaabek (“AZA”). The agreement was signed on May 9th, 2013 after negotiations that had been ongoing since March, 2012.

During the First Nations negotiation period, no work was done on the company’s Tashota property in northwestern Ontario, and no progress was possible in our applications to various Ontario ministries for permits, which are all, to some degree, dependent on agreements with affected First Nations. Now that we are free to move ahead, we have to pick up the momentum that we lost during this long period of negotiations.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank our shareholders for their patience over this difficult time, and to reassure investors that management is actively moving forward with our long-planned exploration activities.

We now plan to start progressing on three fronts:

• Exploring for extensions of the Paulpic gold deposit;
• Exploring for new gold mineralization in the north part of the property, using the Paulpic deposit as a model for the type of gold zone that we are searching for; and
• Assessing the potential of the Wascanna gold deposit.

Paulpic Gold Deposit and Exploration Targets:

A 43-101 technical report, prepared for MRI and AMCL by Clark Exploration Consulting of Thunder Bay, contains an inferred mineral resource estimate for the Paulpic gold deposit: 68,900 ounces of contained gold with a grade of 8.24 grams of gold per tonne. Our job now is to find extensions of the Paulpic zone, as well as to explore for other mineralized zones of similar type, elsewhere on the Tashota property. The Paulpic gold zone belongs to a specific type of gold deposit that is found most commonly in Precambrian rocks, and seems to be particularly prevalent in northwest Ontario - it is hosted in a rock unit called iron formation.

Iron formations are iron-rich sedimentary rocks that were deposited on ocean floors in the vicinity of active volcanoes, and they are very common in the volcanic-rich “greenstone belts” that contain most of the mineral wealth of the Canadian Shield. The iron in these rocks has played an important role in precipitating gold from the mineralizing solutions that permeated the rocks during the major tectonic events that took place about 2.6 billion years ago. The chemistry that went on during gold mineralization is now fairly well understood.

Here is a partial list of some of the better-known iron formation-hosted gold deposits in the Canadian Shield (which does extend into some of the northern states of the USA), with their total mineral endowments (historic production plus reserves plus resources) and average grades in grams per tonne (g/t), to illustrate the ranges of size and grade of our potential exploration targets:

• Musselwhite Mine, northwest Ontario - 6,636,000 ounces of gold @ 5.88 g/t
• Pickle Crow Mine, northwest Ontario - 2,708,000 ounces of gold @ 6.55 g/t
• Central Patricia Mine, northwest Ontario - 650,000 ounces of gold @ 13.03 g/t
• Little Long Lac Mine, northwest Ontario - 605,000 ounces of gold @ 11.65 g/t
• Lupin Mine, Nunavut - 3,760,000 ounces of gold @ 9.11 g/t
• Homestake Mine, South Dakota - 43,700,000 ounces of gold @ 9.70 g/t

There are other gold deposits in the Canadian Shield where iron formations appear to have played a role in localizing the mineralization, but are not hosts to the actual zones - we might call them “iron formation-related gold deposits” as opposed to “iron formation-hosted gold deposits”. The Hardrock gold property at Geraldton, 75 kilometres southeast of Tashota, which is currently being developed by Premier Gold Mines Limited, is of this type. Of its total mineral endowment of 8.6 million ounces of gold, less than one-quarter is either in or directly associated with iron formation. The remainder of the gold is close enough to iron formations that it allows us to speculate that they probably helped to localize the gold deposition. Geologists have various theories about how this might have happened, which I won’t go into here.

The Tashota property is in an area of poor bedrock outcrop, probably because it straddles the “height of land” that divides waters draining south into the Atlantic Ocean (via the Great Lakes) and north into Hudson Bay. Lack of outcrop was an impediment to prospecting in earlier times, but is much less so now. Geophysical surveys can pick out the iron formations that are our primary targets, as well as conductive zones that may reflect concentrations of metallic minerals in the underlying rocks. Mechanical stripping can quickly and easily expose the rocks in areas where geophysical surveys hint at possible mineralized zones. We are optimistic that a systematic exploration program will lead to new discoveries of gold which we can then evaluate by diamond drilling.

Testing for extensions of the Paulpic gold zone will rely on the results of ground geophysical surveys that we carried out in 2010. There are two kilometres of distinct magnetic trends that need to be carefully tested, as well as eight separate electromagnetic conductors. Furthermore, a careful study of the Paulpic deposit for the 43-101 resource estimate, has revealed a number of possible extensions that need to be tested by diamond drilling. Also, ground magnetic and electromagnetic surveys that we carried out in 2010 clearly show that the magnetic rock unit that contains the Paulpic zone, extends to the northwest and then curves around to the southwest in a fold structure, which has never been tested by drilling. Iron formations that have been folded are particularly favourable for gold mineralization; the folding appears to have led to the development of open fractures in which gold can be deposited, and folding can increase the thickness of a zone, thereby enhancing its economic potential.

Testing for new iron formation-hosted gold occurrences will rely on the airborne geophysical data and will follow over 9 kilometres of iron formation that is clearly identifiable from the survey data, but have never been tested by drilling or excavating before. It’s my personal opinion that we are more likely to make substantial increases in our mineral resource base by finding new, discrete gold zones within the unexplored 9 kilometres of iron formation. There are many examples of successful gold mines where the gold is not restricted to one or two big zones, but is spread through multiple separate zones. This is not always evident from looking at mineral resource or mineral reserve estimates, which simply reflect total volumes of mineralization. As an example of a “multizone” gold mine, we could look at the historic Lamaque mine in Vald’Or, Québec, which operated between 1935 and 1985. Gold was mined from no less than 131 separate zones in the Lamaque No. 2 mine, which accounted for 1.6 million ounces of the total 4.5 million ounces of gold produced at Lamaque.

The Wascanna Gold Deposit

The Wascanna gold deposit was discovered in 1916 and was developed by shaft sinking and drifting on three levels at various times between 1917 and 1938, since when it has been essentially idle. Unlike the Paulpic deposit, the Wascanna deposit consists of a gold-bearing quartz vein system in Precambrian volcanic rocks without any associated iron formations.

Most of the surface expression of the Wascanna vein system is covered by an 8,000-tonne dump of broken rock from the underground workings (which itself carries an average of about 4 grams of gold per tonne and may potentially be looked at as worth processing to recover the gold). Where we were able to sample it, just north of the shaft, we got the following average assays from five sets of channel samples across the veins:

• 1.80 metres @ 11.31 g/t Au
• 1.85 metres @ 19.39 g/t Au
• 2.63 metres @ 6.10 g/t Au
• 2.61 metres @ 3.20 g/t Au
• 2.40 metres @ 4.61 g/t Au

The highest individual assay of a channel sample was 45.85 grams per tonne across 0.60 metres. This type of variability is typical of quartz veins with free gold mineralization, and getting a meaningful estimate of the overall average grade requires a bulk sample.

A plan of channel sample assays taken in 1936 from the 100-foot level of the Wascanna mine indicates the same sort of variability, with the highest individual sample shown as 173.7 grams of gold per tonne (just over 5 ounces per ton) across a width of 3 feet. The plan indicates a shoot (this is a term used to refer to a better mineralized section of a larger structure) that is 110 feet long with an average width of 9.1 feet. The weighted average of all the channel assays shown within the shoot is just over 11 grams of gold per tonne, but it is important to note that we know very little about who took the samples, how they were taken, where they were assayed, and so on. We cannot put too much weight on these results without doing something to verify them.

Plans for the Wascanna Shaft: First, we need to rehabilitate the shaft by pouring a proper concrete collar so that we can engineer and prepare a proper cap to safely close the shaft when work is finished. To do this, we need to dewater the shaft, and to do that we will need to repair the shaft timbering (generally, timbers below the water level in old mine shafts are well preserved, but nails, bolts and other iron work will have rusted out and need replacing, while the 5 or 10 metres of timbering above the water level will have rotted and need replacing).

Rehabilitating the shaft down to the 100-ft level will probably allow us to examine and check some of the 1936 sample sites and verify the presence of gold. We also plan to drill several shallow holes to test the Wascanna vein system between the surface and the 100-ft level, to complete a threedimensional picture of the vein system. We may also drill holes below the 100-ft level to see how far the mineralization extends below that level; there is essentially no surviving information about the lower mine levels at 200 and 300 feet. In addition, we may move some of the broken rock from the low-grade dump, so as to expose and examine the full length of the vein system on surface, and this will allow us to properly sample the dump and assess its average gold content.

Once this work is complete, we will be able to plan a bulk sample to determine the average grade of the Wascanna vein system. If we do it carefully, we may be able to recover sufficient gold to offset some of our costs to date.

Permits Required

This is a list of the applications that we have in progress with three provincial ministries: the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines (MNDM), Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) and Ministry of the Environment (MoE) - not necessarily in order:

• Application to put a bridge over Tashota Creek (MNR), which will allow us eliminate a 38- kilometre roundabout route to the Paulpic area (which includes a very rough 13-kilometre trail that takes over an hour to negotiate in 4WD trucks);
• Application for an Exploration Permit to explore by drilling and excavating (MNDM);
• Application for an Advanced Exploration Permit (MNDM), which will allow underground work at Wascanna and stripping (of larger areas) in the Paulpic area exploration program;
• Application to survey the Wascanna claim and bring it to lease (MNDM);
• Application for a permit to take water from the Wascanna shaft (MoE) - at present we are allowed to take up to 50,000 litres of water a day from the shaft, which will not be sufficient for an underground bulk sampling program;
• Application to operate an aggregate pit (MNR), which will supply gravel to upgrade our access roads - we want to take a small quantity of gravel from a large, abandoned gravel pit that was formerly used as ballast for the railbed of the CNR main line (which crosses the property) when it was built in 1915;
• Application for Certificate of Approval for an “industrial sewage plant” (MoE and MNR), which is essentially a settling pond and filtration bed to remove suspended solids from water that will be pumped from the Wascanna Shaft;

All these applications (except the Exploration Permit and the survey-lease permit) were dependent on reaching an accord with the affected First Nations, and were put on hold while discussions and negotiations were under way. The applications are now being re-activated, and permits are expected to start coming in, allowing our exploration activities to start ramping up through the coming summer.

Looking to the Future

Now that we have reached an accord with our First Nations neighbours, it looks as though the tide is starting to turn in our favour at MRI. Rick Rule, chairman of Sprott USA and one of the better-known writers about mining-related investments, has said repeatedly that the tide is starting to turn in favour of the mining and exploration industry as a whole, and the gold mining sector in particular. If he is right, we could be in for a productive and exciting year. We will keep you informed of developments.

On behalf of the Board,
Colin Bowdidge, Ph.D., P.Geo.
Beardmore, Ontario
May 21st 2013