Diamonds in the Backyard

photographs by John Ulan

It could be a lot worse. They could be working out of a wind-blown tent near the Arctic Circle, in near perpetual darkness and bone-chilling cold, a thousand miles from the nearest road. But this is Alberta. And here, almost anywhere is accessible.

This crew has had a good night’s sleep. They’ve been nourished by a home-made breakfast. And they expect to get back to their motel rooms not too long after sunset. It’s not living high on the hog, but by most mining exploration standards it’s not roughing it either.

They’re here in the woods of northern Alberta to check out what they call a geophysical anomaly. A few weeks ago, at a cost of about $200,000, a specially outfitted, twin-engine Piper Navajo flew slow and low over the treetops surveying about 2,000 square kilometres of mining property. The flight identified this spot as one of several good prospects for more detailed groundwork.

They’ve driven in by road as close as they can get, this small team of geologists, and they come the rest of the way through the woods by all-terrain vehicle. And now they’re walking a carefully plotted grid, instruments called magnometers collecting data on the subterranean lay of the land.

If the results are favourable, they’ll come back again before the spring thaw, this time with a truck-mounted drill. And if the first core looks good, at a cost of $50,000 to $100,000 a hole, they might drill one or two more.

What are they looking for? Why, diamonds of course.

Experts suggest that the geology of Alberta is ripe for finding the precious gems, for one thing because there’s evidence in the province of volcanic activity 65 million to 99 million years ago, the kind that produces diamond-bearing formations called kimberlites.

Billions of years ago, diamonds formed from common carbon deep within the earth under unique conditions of high heat and pressure. Billions more years may have passed by until, in the relative blink of an eye, a burst of magma carried the gems up toward the surface, some making it all the way, bursting through into the ancient air. Then, yet ano­ther eternity passed before the stones came to adorn the crowned heads of royalty, to grace the fingers of betrothed lovers around the world, to fire the passions and imaginations of treasure hunters and geo­logists everywhere.

Aside from their relative rarity, it is the near primordial provenance, the inexorable bond they have with Mother Earth, and the unimaginable age of natural diamonds that explain their allure, power their symbolism, and command their value. Synthetics, which can now be grown in the lab in three days, will likely never match up and, though useful in industrial applications, will usually be given on bended knee only as the pretence of an unsuitable groom.

Unlike synthetics, though, a natural diamond must first be found, a daunting challenge. For one thing, landscapes erode. Traces of past events fade away and kimberlites are often buried deep under water or glacial till. Then, too, these vertical deposits are fairly small, often less a mile across at the top. And even worse, not every kimberlite contains di­amonds. In fact, of the 6,000 or so ­kimberlites discovered worldwide, only about 1% are sufficiently diamondiferous to justify a mine, odds roughly the same as drawing a flush in a game of poker.

“Any discovery in the mining business requires a certain amount of luck,” acknowledges Mike Dufresne, president of Edmonton-based Apex Geosciences, which will be leading this winter’s hunt on behalf of its client, Grizzly Diamonds Ltd. No doubt. But luck can be managed and the odds improved with hard work and knowledge. Dufresne knows, for example, the story of Canada’s first diamond mine, Ekati – specifically how fellow geologists Chuck Fipke and Stew Blusson doggedly followed the signs and indicators for years before finally hitting pay dirt in late 1991. “Their claim to fame as far as I’m concerned,” says Dufresne, “is that they had belief, they had persistence, and they were smart. That actually led them to the right place to get lucky.”

The right place was Lac de Gras, a remote spot above the treeline in the barren lands about 300 kilometres northeast of Yellow­knife. Ekati and Diavik, the country’s second and only other operating mine, both in the Northwest Territories, now produce well over a billion dollars worth of diamonds between them each year. By value, Canada is ranked as the world’s third largest diamond producer, and we’re not likely to be overtaken any time soon. Two more projects, Snap Lake south of Lac de Gras and Jericho in Nunavut, are expected to be up and running within the next two or three years, and advanced exploration projects are underway in Quebec, Ontario, and Saskatchewan.

In Alberta, Dufresne says that De Beers found a kimberlite in the Peace River area about two years before all the hullabaloo up north started. Since then a total of 48 kimberlite pipes have been found in three separate regions of the province’s north. Although none have yet been deemed mineable, more than half contain diamonds.

Roy Eccles, senior geologist with the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board’s Alberta Geological Survey, admits it’s hard to predict whether an economic deposit will be found any time soon. “However,” he says, “the potential is high that Alberta will yield a diamond mine given enough exploration expenditures, geological mapping, and time.” Along those lines, he notes that about 4.5 million acres were staked last summer by both junior and major diamond companies, driven in part by the steady rise in diamond prices as traditional African sources become depleted. “Another cycle of expenditure appears to be starting,” he says.

It won’t be the first wave Brian Testo, Grizzly’s president and CEO, has caught. Although he gave up hunting wild game almost 30 years ago when he shot and killed a grizzly bear, now at 53 he’s been prospecting the minerals of the earth, diamonds especi­ally, for almost as long as he can remember.
His junior exploration company is not named in honour of his long ago unfortunate prey. It’s the nickname his friends gave him for his own burly size and spirited manner. “Everything I do is bears,” he says. “I’m a grizzly and I like being out in the bush. I’d sooner deal with animals than I would humans most of the time. But you gotta deal with humans, right?” He speaks, too, of flying economy on long corporate jaunts, content to walk the aisles rather than try to burrow into one of the thin seats if it means putting more investors’ money into the company or, as he says, into the ground.

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