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Paulatuk booming

Dave Sullivan
Northern News Services

Paulatuk (Jun 18/01) - The economy in Paulatuk has never been better, with an plenty of jobs opening up in the hamlet of 370.

Last year 44 residents were employed in exploration jobs, a number estimated to be close to the community's entire available workforce. This year 20 have jobs in the field so far.

Most of the work has been on drilling rigs and helping with survey work.

A junior mining company has spent $16 million over the last five years, hoping to zero in on what they believe could be one of the world's richest metal deposits.

Since last August the focus has changed to diamonds, due to the discovery of kimberlite indicators in the same area and a half-million-dollar investment by De Beers, the world's largest diamond company.

A total of $3 million of the $16 million spent so far by Darnley Bay Resources has been directed toward a diamond search.

Now the company is trying to raise up to $10 million more to continue exploration work around Paulatuk for diamonds and base metals.

Toronto-based Darnley Bay holds the area's mineral rights. The small public company has gone through dizzying stock price highs and lows in recent months. Eighteen months ago the price of a share peaked at $2.96 before dropping to 42 cents in December. The current price is 45 cents.

Company directors and officers hold 12.4 per cent of the shares, with 8.2 per cent owned by the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation. Falconbridge, the world's second-largest nickel producer, also has a stake in the property.

Before the new diamond focus, Darnley Bay hit a roadblock after drilling a 1.8-kilometre hole last spring in its search for nickel and other important metals almost always found with it.

"We had planned on going down to 7,500 feet (2.5 kilometres) but we ran into technical problems," said Darnley Bay's 75-year-old president Leon LaPrairie.

The company thinks the main metals vein could start three kilometres down.

LaPrairie and 81-year-old Hank Vuori spent much of their lives prospecting the North. In early 1969 Vuori jumped on a gravity anomaly discovered by federal government surveyors. The next year a private helicopter survey picked up unusual magnetic readings over the same area.

Surveys show that Paulatuk residents are sitting above something heavy deep down.

LaPrairie says the data indicate metal concentrations four times stronger than Ontario's Sudbury Basin, which generates $2.2 billion worth of minerals yearly, and has been mined since 1883.

"We have not intersected the base metals yet but from all evidence, the anomaly is caused by nickel, copper, platinum, palladium, gold and silver," he said. "We're just getting started."