Rough Trade

In a story that is now legend, Fipke spent his last dollars to charter a helicopter to an unnamed lake about three hundred kilometres northeast of Yellowknife. He had been following a trail of glacial run-off that led to the lake’s dark, bedrock shores. The path of sediment was full of lesser gemstones such as garnets and chrome diopsides, which often indicate that diamonds are buried below in kimberlite pipes, carrot-shaped formations created by ancient volcanoes that spewed up from below the earth’s mantle millions of years ago, sometimes picking up diamonds on the way.

On a bitterly cold day in April, 1990, Fipke began frantically chipping through ice and rock in the hopes of collecting tell-tale samples. The following year, a drilling expedition in the same area yielded eighty-one tiny diamonds. The site, on the shores of Lac de Gras, became Ekati, Canada’s first diamond mine.

Fipke’s discovery sparked the largest staking rush in Canadian history, perhaps the largest in the world to that point. some fifty million acres were claimed in a manic dash over the next two years, durring which exploration crews threw wooden stakes bearing claim tags from helicopters so as not to waste time landing. According to local lore, the chief of Lutsel’ke, an isolated Dene community southeast of Yellowknife, came home to find his outhouse staked.

One of the first on the scene was Grenville Thomas, a Welshman based in Vancouver who had been prospecting in the Territories since the mid-1960s. He teamed up with the experienced South African diamond hunter Chris Jennings and, to disguise their true intentions, the two flew up to Yellowknife separately, stayed in different hotels, and avoided being seen in public together. They knew De Beers, the diamond mining behemoth, was already staking land to the northeast of the Ekati claim block, and so, in a decision that would prove fortuitous for Thomas’s company, Aber Resources, they moved to the southeast.

Three years later, in 1994, a group of geologists headed by Thomas’s daughter Eira was examining the last rock-core samples before wrapping up the season when one of the three-inch tubes of kimberlite snapped, exposing a 1.8-carat diamond. It was a phenomenal find, considering that kimberlite normally yields an average of one carat – equivalent to one-fifth of a gram – per metric tonne of rock.

Indeed, the now-famous A154S pipe is thought to be the richest in the world. It yields an average of 4.8 carats per tonne, a large proportion of which are high-quality gems, and now forms part of the Diavik mine, which began operations last year. Along with Ekati, in production since 1998, the two claim to mine three of the world’s six richest pipes. This year they will produce roughly thirteen million carats, conservatively estimated to be worth $1.2 billion (U.S.) – that’s fifteen percent of global diamond production in terms of value.

The windfall has catapulted Canada into an enviable position among the exclusive ranks of diamond-mining countries. This year it will surpass South Africa to become the world’s third-largest diamond producer in dollar value. With two more mines, one in the Northwest Territories and the other in Nunavut, both slated to begin production by 2007, Canada could rival Russia as the number-two diamond producer, behind Botswana.

Canada’s sudden preeminence has shaken up the tightly controlled diamond industry and thrust what was once a remote fur-trading outpost into the international spotlight. Its clear, white stones, among the most sought-after and expensive in the world, are luring the élite of the diamond trade to Yellowknife. The exclusive New York jeweller, Tiffany & Co., is now cutting and polishing diamonds on the outskirts of this rough-hewn city of 20,000, perhaps better known for its raunchy saloons and late-night street-fights. International diamond dealers are frequent visitors, melding into the city’s rich mix of quirky characters, adventurers, and troubled souls on the lam.

“New York is interested in our diamonds,” says Stephen Kakfwi. “So are Antwerp and London. They know what goes on here every day. It has put us on the world stage,”

As you fly into the Diavik diamond mine in the early-morning hours, an icy veil of Arctic darkness still shrouds the land. By mid-morning, an anemic sun slowly begins to rise, its pale light revealing a polar desert of snow-covered dunes. The hulking shadows of massive machines are dimly visible as they forage like mechanized dinosaurs in a futuristic ice age. In the distance, a cluster of buildings rises from the vast, treeless expanse. These are the Barren Lands, at once breathtakingly beautiful, and one of the harshest places on earth.