SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Everything's coming up diamonds for new Yellowknifer Barb Neuman.
Last Friday, Neuman received a .55 carat diamond from Yellowknife mayor Mark Heyck for winning NWT Tourism's Diamonds in the Rough contest.
Mayor Mark Heyck presents Diamonds in the Rough grand prize winner Barb Neuman with a .55 carat diamond at city hall on Friday. - Thandiwe Vela/NNSL photo |
At the tail end of the passport-style Deh Cho Travel adventure, during which she stopped at several places along the route connecting northern Alberta, northern British Columbia and the NWT to secure the NWT diamond prize, Neuman, a records analyst formerly of Vancouver, came across an opportunity to leave her home in B.C. to work at the Ekati diamond mine out of Yellowknife.
And Neuman's birthstone? None other than diamond.
"It's so cool," she said after accepting her $5,870 diamond from Heyck at city hall March 22.
"I'm thrilled to pieces. I can't believe it. I'm in the diamond capital of North America, I'm working in a diamond mine and I got a diamond. It's pretty exciting."
When Neuman and a friend first came up to visit Yellowknife last summer, one of the things they talked about was how cool it would be to tour a diamond mine, she said.
"And now I'm working in one. I fly up there once a week and it's pretty cool," she said. "It's very cool."
NWT Tourism has organized the Diamonds in the Rough campaign from May 15 to Sept. 15 every year for the past five years.
"It's a way to promote the economy in the surrounding region and promote people not only coming and visiting one place but several places along the route and getting their passport stamped," said Heyck, who also remarked about the decision of this year's contest winner to move to the city.
"We hope that when people come to visit Yellowknife and the surrounding region that they get a sense of what our community's all about. It gives them the opportunity to dispel some myths about living in the North and to perhaps live here permanently."
The diamond prize was mined at an undisclosed diamond mine northeast of Yellowknife and polished by the HRA Group's Yellowknife-based Crossworks Manufacturing Ltd.
A new polished diamond is again up for grabs this summer for Tourism's 2013 Deh Cho Passport competition.
