SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Lorne Bellamy found himself standing between a field of 21 holes filled with explosives and a gaggle of strange creatures.

The veteran blasting instructor eyed the journalists and politicians crowding him with cameras and microphones, obviously more comfortable teaching his 14 students patience and meticulous attention to detail.

"You guys are privileged to be seeing this," he told the flock moments before a rock face exploded in the distance, sending granite skyward.

While explosions are usually bad news, this one was a celebration.

A celebration of the Yellowknives Dene and the Northwest Territories creating its own capacity to harvest its resources and clean up old mining sites. In that future there will be plenty of explosions and the Det'on Cho Training and Conference Centre's job is to make sure they're the good kind.

"We're teaching how to add science to the art of blasting," said Bellamy, surrounded by students in the Det'on Cho's drilling and blasting program.

The school's other program, camp cook, has 14 students who also live on site during their 12-week program.

The training centre is breathing new life into buildings that had been a story of frustration.

Originally built to be a rehabilitation centre near Dettah, after funding ran out the facility sat empty for six years.

Then one day Roy Erasmus got a phone call - the Aurora College was looking for a site to house students for its underground miner program. The Det'on Cho Corporation president along with other members of the NWT Mine Training Society, which include the Tlicho government, North Slave Metis Alliance, Lutsel K'e Dene First Nation, territorial government and diamond mines, went to work.

"We got the lease signed with the territorial government with just two weeks left to turn this mothballed facility into a place of learning," remembered Erasmus. "But it has turned into an institution we can all be proud of. For us this is about creating a sustainable economic future."

Half the $8.4 million centre's funding came from the federal Contaminates Remediation Training Fund, with the remaining money raised by the training centre from industry and local governments.

Director Vince Halushka is responsible for the 28 students taking the centre's two programs.

Those students live and learn on site with room, board and tuition covered. Instructors come from the Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Science and Technology and Ontario's Flemming College.

All of them receive training for work on contaminated sites as the Northwest Territories has some 600 sites slated to be cleaned up over the next decade.

"We're training now so that as tenders come out for that clean-up we will have a Northern workforce ready," said Halushka. "It's about creating Northern capacity."

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