SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Students going through the Mine Training Society in Yellowknife have a new place to call home while learning skills that could get them a job at one of Yellowknife's three diamond mines.

Joseph O'Reilly, a 25-year-old student of the Mine Training Society who hails from Fort Resolution, shows his side of a shared room at the mine training facility where students undergoing training enjoy their nightly respite. - Guy Quenneville/NNSL photo

The society, together with administrator Aurora College and Yellowknives Dene-owned Deton Cho Corp., has renovated the Somba K'e Healing Lodge, a former addictions treatment centre located on the road to Dettah, and re-opened it as a mine training facility, where students undergoing underground mine training can stay after a day's work at the college.

Deton Cho put up the money for a three-year lease with the NWT Housing Corp., which owns the building, "and we're making sure we're getting it back from the college," said Roy Erasmus Jr., the corporation's chief executive officer.

The 19,000-square-foot facility, graced with lots of natural light thanks to a bounty of windows lining the walls and ceiling, opened on June 2 and currently houses 22 students from all over the NWT.

"Right now it's more of a lodging facility," said Erasmus. "But we've assessed that people from some communities need some additional training in some areas. There is a classroom that will be set up in there, and they will be doing some of their training on site."

The centre boasts 14 rooms, each with two beds, as well as two single-unit cabins, with three meals provided every day, plus a recreation room with foosball, weights, a punching bag and a ping pong table.

But while the accommodations sound plush, this is no hotel, according to Hilary Jones, the society's general manager.

"It's exactly like a camp - a zero tolerance area. And those rules are enforced," she said.

Residents are free to roam Yellowknife from 5 p.m. Friday to 11 p.m. Sunday, but if they're late returning to the facility on Sunday, "they're no longer in the program," said Jones.

"Having the students mimic camp life for five days a week is getting them into the right mindset so they understand the discipline behind that lifestyle."

So far the rules haven't been a problem; it's being away from their families that's hard on some of the residents, she said.

Joseph O'Reilly, a 25-year-old from Fort Resolution who previously worked four months a year as a firefighter for the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, left his wife and two children back home to take the 12-week course.

"They're just babies, too," he said of his kids. "One's two and a half months the and other's 19 months old.

"It's hard, but I talk to them everyday. I just think of it as my kids' future. That's why I'm doing this, for my kids. And to better my life."

O'Reilly said Diavik Diamond Mines - whose underground mining phase is expected to begin next year - is offering nine positions at the close of the course.

"I'm working hard to get one of those positions," he said.