By value, Canadian diamond production currently accounts for close to 20% of the whole wold’s diamond production, making it, along with Russia and Botswana, one of the “big three” diamond producers; but it’s not been easy. As I write this, there is light, drifting snow falling on the Ekati diamond mine in Canada’s Northwest Territories and the temperature is about 0º Fahrenheit. I’m told the hip young crowd speaks of diamonds as “ice”; but as I am neither hip nor young, I’ll have to take that on faith. The locution, however, is particularly appropriate when speaking of Canadian diamonds. If you’ve seen “Ice Road Truckers” on the History Channel you already know that all of the mines, four of them within 200 miles of the Arctic Circle and the fifth in northern Ontario (chillingly close to Hudson’s Bay) strain common notions of what constitutes “accessibility”. The roads, literally across frozen tundra, frozen marshes and frozen lakes, are in service for no more than six months of the year; this is when heavy equipment is brought in along with other, less weighty, cargo.Throughout the rest of the year the mines are resupplied by Boeing 737s landing on gravel airstrips. Ekati, the first of Canada’s diamond mines, was a huge gamble for Australian mining company “Broken Hill Properties” (now BHP Billiton) when it came on line in 1998 at a cost of more than $700 million. Estimates of the mine’s future productivity were educated guesses. Now, 10 years later, the mine runs 24/7 and produces about $2 million in rough diamonds each day. Of course, that’s not without operating costs. Ekati is an open pit mine and one of the risks in a deep open pit mine operating in a cold climate is an atmospheric inversion. That is, when some act of nature (there are several possibilities) causes the temperature of the air over the mine to increase with altitude cold, heavy, surface air is trapped in the pit. In itself this isn’t hazardous, but the diesel engined earth moving equipment used in the mine quickly renders the air within the pit so polluted that miners not only have to be bundled up against the cold, but issued oxygen as well. Inversions and cold weather aside, Canadian diamond mining is extremely hard on the miner’s equipment. The host rock that carried Ekati’s diamonds to the surface broke its way through granite; and the miners have to work through that granite to extract their precious gems. Drill bits valued at close to $2000, each, wear out in an average of two hours and bulldozer blades wear out in less than two weeks; but the color and clarity of the run of the mine is so good, more rare than that of most African and Russian mines, that the costs are justified – hence the remaining four diamond mines. In 2003, Diavik began production (also in the Northwest Territories), followed in 2006 by the Jericho mine in Nunavut, Canada’s largest and least populated province. Incorporated in 1999, it wraps round much of the Arctic and is mostly inhabited by Inuits (Nunavut means ‘our land’ in the Inuits’ language); and for them the mine spells opportunity. While all of Canada’s diamond mines employ considerable numbers of these chronically under-employed natives of Canada’s frozen north, they make up about 80% of the labor force at Jericho. Of course that savvy old South African miner, DeBeers, is far from out of the picture. This last summer it opened two diamond mines of its own in Canada – Snap Lake and the Victor project. The first, in the Northwest Territories, is Canada’s first under ground diamond mine; while the Victor project, in Ontario, is a quite large open pit. Between them, their anticipated annual diamond production is about 2.1 million carats – and the party’s far from over. As DeBeers works on its third diamond mine (in partnership with a pair of Canadian billionaires and scheduled to come into production in the next year or two), thousands of those who want to get rich quick without working are trudging through Canada’s frozen north prospecting for diamonds and working on frostbite.

If you think about it for a moment, we value diamonds for their beauty and rarity. We give them as tokens of love and affection because they carry the same message carried by a dozen perfect roses, “I love you.” The difference between diamonds and roses, however, is obvious. In time, the roses will wilt and die; while the diamond can last forever – a wonderful promise, but also a pitfall. If you give her a homely diamond, it will be homely forever. Doesn’t it just make sense, then, to give the world’s most perfectly cut diamond, the Hearts On Fire, this Christmas? It’s beauty is incomparable; so it says, “I love you,” so loudly and clearly that the message cannot be misunderstood. After all, that perfect message is the value you really seek in a diamond. Check out our Hearts On Fire collection on line at hurstsberwynjewelers.com; then phone us at 708.788.0880 for an appointment to select the perfect gift. We’re Hursts’ Berwyn Jewelers and our job is realizing your dreams.