When 10s of thousands of prospectors made their method to Dawson City to discover their fortunes, the last Northern gold rush happened in the late-19th century in the Yukon. Ever since, miners and oil employees have actually continued to look for wealth in the North. In the previous years, history has actually duplicated itself with the discovery of diamonds in Canada’s North.
With the discovery of diamonds in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut in 1991, Canada has actually increased to end up being one of the leading 3 diamond manufacturers in the world in terms of worth, behind Botswana and Russia. According to Statistics Canada, 13.8 million carats of diamonds worth around $2.8 billion have actually been mined in Canada in between 1998 and 2002. It is hoped that the diamond mines will offer earnings for years to come.
Quickly after the preliminary discover, 2 diamond mines were opened in this area, the Ekati and Diavik mines. A 4th diamond mine, Snap Lake-4 in the Northwest Territories, need to start production in 2007.
The Jericho-3 mine is situated near the north end of Contwoyto Lake in West Kitikmeot, Nunavut Territory (NT). It is run by the Tahera Diamond Corporation, which has actually been checking out for diamonds in Nunavut for the previous 7 years.
The Ekati Diamond Mine is the only diamond mine owned by BHP Billiton and produces almost 4 per cent of existing world diamond production by weight and 6 per cent by worth. The mine is anticipated to be feasible for 20 years.
The Diavik mine, situated about 300 km (180 miles) north of Yellowknife, is owned by Britain’s Rio Tinto PLC (60 per cent) and Toronto-based Aber Diamond Corp. (40 per cent). It offers roughly 5% of world diamond production.
The Snap Lake mine, owned by DeBeers and run by DeBeers and AMEC specialists, is beginning this year and is anticipated to stay in production for 20 more years. This mine lies under a lake and will be the very first completely underground diamond mine in Canada. DeBeers likewise owns the Victor mine, an open-pit diamond mine in a remote location in the James Bay Lowlands of Northern Ontario, around 90 km west of the seaside neighborhood of Attawapiskat.
In current years, there have actually been ethical issues with African diamonds, which can stem in unsteady nations such as Sierra Leone and Angola where diamond sales fund terrorism, war and weapons sales. Canadian diamonds are traceable, as each one is engraved on the girdle with a serial number as well as a tiny Canadian logo design such as a maple leaf or a polar bear as a hallmark.
Canadian diamonds, particularly those from the Ekati mine, are high quality and incredibly white. They’re likewise stylish, which was shown when the Canadian teenager vocalist Avril Lavigne went to the 2003 MTV Awards in New York using Canadian diamonds worth $50,000.
The mines supply high-income tasks with a typical wage of $63,000, a number of them irreversible, not simply the short-term make-work tasks for which the Aboriginal neighborhoods of the Canadian north are popular. Practically 40% of the tasks are done by aboriginals. One diamond-cutting operation in the Northwest Territories is majority-owned by the Yellowknife Dene First Nation.
Some of the more specific tasks, such as diamond cutting, are done by experts from Armenia, Israel, China and Vietnam who make wages of more than $100,000. In between 1998 and 2001, work in the diamond mining market in the North increased from 90 to 700 employees, with price quotes of more than 2,000 tasks presently. Diamond mining produces more than simply diamond sales.
Diamond fever in Canada’s north reveals no indications of easing off, and a short article in the Toronto Globe and Mail in February 2004 reported that prospecting business have actually claimed more than 70 million acres in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. The paper stated the most significant boost in diamond prospecting remains in Nunavut, where the variety of prospecting authorizations grew to 1,518 in 2004 from simply 190 in 2003.
There is a charge of 10 cents an acre to sign up a claim, $1.50 to $2 an acre to stake a claim. With 70 million acres included, the expense of these claims is anticipated to create up to $140,000,000 in federal government earnings even before the mines open.
A financial boom is taking place in the north as tradespersons move into the location to fill tasks in the mines. This has actually raised the expense of living in the north, which was high to start with due to the expense of carrying food and other requirements to separated northern neighborhoods. In such locations as Yellowknife, a basement apartment or condo can lease for as high as $1,500 a month.
In 1998, Yellowknife Mayor Dave Lowell stated that the diamond rush may have conserved his town from financial decrease. “Quite merely, it is our future,” Lowell stated. “We ‘d be entering into rather an economic crisis if it wasn’t for the diamond mine.”
With the discovery of diamonds in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut in 1991, Canada has actually increased to end up being one of the leading 3 diamond manufacturers in the world in terms of worth, behind Botswana and Russia. It is run by the Tahera Diamond Corporation, which has actually been checking out for diamonds in Nunavut for the previous 7 years. The Ekati Diamond Mine is the only diamond mine owned by BHP Billiton and produces almost 4 per cent of existing world diamond production by weight and 6 per cent by worth. In current years, there have actually been ethical issues with African diamonds, which can come from in unsteady nations such as Sierra Leone and Angola where diamond sales fund terrorism, war and weapons sales. Diamond mining produces more than simply diamond sales.