Exploring Barren Lands with Chuck Fipke
The early 90s marked one of the biggest staking rushes in the Northwest Territories in northern Canada. A hundred years earlier, people had come pouring into the Canadian north looking for gold. This time around, they were looking for something else… diamonds.
At the centre of this new rush was Chuck Fipke and Dia Met Minerals, a junior explorer that had claimed to find the first diamond deposit in northern Canada – beating out giants like DeBeers. This discovery was to became the Ekati diamond mine, Canada’s first diamond mine and the start of the Canadian Diamond industry.Now the story behind the discovery of diamonds in Canada is a long and complicated one. There were a number of people involved and events to cover. Previously we have had Eira Thomas on our show, who was involved in the second major diamond discovery in Canada.
In future episodes, we will cover other aspects of this story. If you are interested in finding out more, then I would highly recommend reading Kevin Krajick’s great book called Barren Lands which provides a lot of the context behind the events leading up to the Canadian diamond discoveries. And if you wanted to know more about Chuck’s personal story, then you should read Vernon Frolick’s excellent book Fire into Ice. On this episode of Exploration Radio, lets out more about Chuck Fipke and his lifelong desire to be an explorer.
Until next time. Keep exploring.
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