Canada is today the world’s third producer of diamonds both in value and quantity. These are not just any diamonds, they are ice diamonds or “clean” diamonds in opposition with Africa’s “blood” diamonds that finance war, weapons and use child labor. Clean diamonds are widely appreciated on the international market for their purity as well as their ethics.
Extracting these rocks is no easy feat. By minus 50 degrees celsius and polar winds, thousands of men work in giant open-air mines of 1,5 km diameter. These holes the size of lunar craters are excavated by huge bulldozers that dig sometimes 300 meters deep into the permafrost and then into black lava rock of over 53 million years old. We are almost in a science fiction movie: the mine and machinery are ultra modern, the scenery is pristine white and the miners work in extremely secure conditions. We are very far from the 19th century coal mines. For nine months of the year, the miners are isolated from the rest of the world, as there is no other way to access the site than by the ice road.
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