EDITORIAL PAGE — Diamond hunt goes national

The feverish quest to find a diamond mine in Canada has spread from the Northwest Territories to cover much of the country, including northern Ontario.

The diamond rush began in the Territories, northeast of Yellowknife, about two years ago after an announcement that enticing samples had been found. But signs of diamond-bearing rock formations have since been announced or rumored in every province from British Columbia to Newfoundland and Labrador. In Ontario, explorationists have been staking land and drilling for rock samples around Kirkland Lake and Wawa, and in the James Bay Lowlands. The quest for diamonds has become the focus of Canadian mining exploration expertise. One player in the diamond rush more than willing to talk about what it is up to is the federal government. The government brings resources to the quest, including expertise and high-tech tools, that bolster the capability of individual companies.

For example, scientists at laboratories in Ottawa probe tiny mineral grains with microscopically thin electron beams, revealing the chemical makeup of samples. Exploration companies use the services of the government agency CANMET (Canada Centre for Mineral and Energy Technology) to perform microprobe examinations. There is no shortage of demand for the service. CANMET’s Mineral Sciences Laboratories receive hundreds of mineral grain specimens each month.

“A company uses the information we provide to see if it is looking in a promising area and, if it is, to determine whether it is closing in on the target,” says CANMET mineralogist Louis Cabri.

Diamonds usually are found in rock formations called kimberlites, which occur as vertical pipes or as sheets, where the pipes emerged at the earth’s surface. In geological terms, these cover a small geographic area, and so are hard to locate. However, clues leading to kimberlites are scattered far and wide.

During the various Ice Ages, glaciers ground off the tops of kimberlites and carried debris for hundreds of kilometres. Streams transported it even farther. The debris from a kimberlite is fanned out like the plume of smoke from a smokestack. It is difficult to spot a kimberlite directly, but kimberlite debris, scattered over a large area, is detectable. A microprobe examination by CANMET can yield clues as to whether a sample is debris from a potentially diamond-bearing kimberlite. The chemistry of a mineral grain and the amount of wear it has endured can indicate how close the sample lies to the originating kimberlite.

Late last year, besides the microprobe work done for exploration companies, CANMET examined 8,000 mineral grain samples for its sister research organization, the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC). (Both CANMET and the GSC are part of Natural Resources Canada.)

Microprobe analysis by CANMET helped the GSC to complete and release to the public a sweeping survey of glacial deposits across the prairies. The GSC is performing or planning more geochemical surveys and geological mapping in the Northwest Territories and across the prairie provinces. Also, the GSC is examining the characteristics of kimberlites and kimberlite debris near Kirkland Lake, Ont. This research will help explorationists decipher the geoscientific clues as they explore for diamonds in that area. The hunt for diamonds is most intense where it began, in the Northwest Territories. East of Yellowknife, mining companies are blasting two sloping tunnels to depths of about 250 metres to extract large samples. The announcement of a commercial diamond deposit in the Territories would cement Canada’s reputation as the hottest new prospect in the world for diamonds. The result, observers say, would be an even more vigorous bout of diamond-hunting fever across much of the country.

— From an article supplied by Natural Resources Canada.