| Page 3 of 3 < |
In Canada, the New Rush Is for Diamonds
As one 240-ton dump truck loaded with ore makes the 22-minute trip up the corkscrew road from the Diavik mine's open pit, others return for another load.
(By Doug Struck -- The Washington Post)
TOOLBOX
   Resize
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging  |
The Diavik mine, co-owned by a Toronto company and mining giant Rio Tinto, and the Ekati mine, run by Australian mining giant BHP Billiton, are among the richest in the world.
In 1998, the BHP mine was the first to open at the site of Canada's original 1991 discovery by geologist Charles Fipke and a partner, Stewart Blusson. Fipke spent decades pursuing diamonds around the world. Abandoned by companies and a wife who tired of his obsession, he borrowed money from friends and sold stock to neighbors, offering only hope.
Like a detective, he sleuthed out purple garnets and emerald-green chrome diopsides that might accompany diamonds, refined his hunches about where the glaciers might have picked them up, and eventually solved the mystery by drilling near the frigid shores of Lac de Gras, 200 miles northeast of Yellowknife.
Other prospectors moved in quickly after him. Small exploration companies flocked to Yellowknife, rented anything that could fly and raced into the wilderness to plant wooden stakes marking their claims. The Diavik mine, 20 miles from Fipke's find, was staked out under the waters of Lac de Gras and opened in 2003.
"It was a surprising time. We lived through the largest staking rush the world has seen," said Yellowknife Mayor Gordon Van Tighem. "There were bales of stakes around town. The local construction companies were churning them out, running out of wood. With the gold mines petering out, it came along at a very good time for us."
The diamonds lie in ancient magma, called kimberlite pipes, which burst from the earth's core through fissures in the granite 55 million years ago. Surging to the surface, a very few of them passed through even more ancient beds of diamonds formed 3 billion years ago, carrying the crystallized carbon stones to the surface.
The Diavik and BHP mines are centered over several of those conical pipes. Both operations have now strip-mined in a circle so deep they must move to underground tunneling to follow the pipes further.
Most of the diamonds produced here will be sent to London and then Belgium, the heart of the diamond trade. Some will be returned to three Yellowknife firms that cut and polish the rough stones into gems, and use lasers to engrave on them an emblem of Canadian authenticity.
A system of registering and tracking diamonds worldwide was launched in 2002 to crimp the trade in "blood diamonds" that has financed horrific violence in Africa. While activists have criticized the system's shortcomings, Canadian retailers are cashing in on the innocent reputation of their stones, marked with microscopic polar bears or maple leafs.
The mines will probably last only about 20 years. But with the optimism of a miner, Diavik's Hoefer notes that Canada has hundreds of kimberlite pipes that have not yet been fully explored.
Diamonds can dazzle -- and disappoint, Hoefer knows.
"But for right now," he said, "life's good, everybody's fat and the mines are rich."
Special correspondent Natalia Alexandrova in Toronto contributed to this report.
