Westhaven Ventures, a British Columbia gold explorer that had a good year with the drill bit in 2018, topped the table of Canadian-listed mining equities with its standout 733% share price gain for the year.

It was the best of a long list of juniors (sub-US$100 million market cap) that made up more than 70% of this top-100 compilation.

Leaders among the bigger, mid-tier companies included Brazil vanadium producer Largo Resources which doubled in size (value) in 2018, copper takeover target Nevsun Resources, and gold-sector star Kirkland Lake Gold.

Westhaven has started new drilling on the high-grade Shovelnose epithermal discovery near Merritt in BC, in what the junior is describing as an emerging gold district on the Spences Bridge Gold Belt.

The minnow, which saw its market value climb to nearly US$80 million by the end of 2018, is among about a dozen companies on the top-100 TSX and TSXV mining equities list that will be presenting at this month's Vancouver Resource Investment Conference.

The conference, dubbed the "world's largest resource investment conference", will hear more than 16 hours of presentations by about 100 established explorers and developers, a handful of mining heavyweights, and a big cohort of unheralded microcap explorers.

Other VRIC presenters on the top-100 list below include Teranga Gold, which saw its share price gain 12% in 2018, Gran Colombia Gold (up 45%), Trilogy Metals (up 37%), Corvus Gold (66%), Atlantic Gold (20%), Silvercrest Metals (91%), Revival Gold (15.5%), and Wallbridge Mining Co (60%).

About two-thirds of the companies that posted the best gains of TSX and TSXV-listed mining equities in 2018 - on the top-100 list - are gold and silver focused, with the metals similarly represented in the portfolios of the 100 companies presenting at VRIC 2019.

Copper and battery minerals are the focus of most of the other companies presenting at the conference, and on the top-100 list.