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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Exploration camp life is not the easiest way to make a living, but Roland Conrad wouldn't have it any other way.

Avalon Rare Metals Inc. camp assistant Roland Conrad moves core boxes at the junior exploration company's Nechalacho rare earths exploration site. - Thandiwe Vela/NNSL photo

The Avalon Rare Metals Inc. employee has worked at the junior exploration company's Nechalacho rare earth metals site about 100 km southeast of Yellowknife for nearly four years, but his career "out in the bush" stretches decades.

"I like it," Conrad said of his job as a core splitter with Avalon. "I like the fresh air, and it's a good tight-knit group around here. It's not like the mines where there's 900 or a thousand people, there's only 20 or 30 of us around here and everybody knows each other."

The 47-year-old Yellowknives Dene First Nation member started working at exploration camps as a summer student between Grade 10 and 11, while attending St. Patrick High School.

"Ever since I got out of high school, I've always been out in the bush," he said.

Between Grades 11 and 12, he took another summer job at an exploration camp and, as he tells it, he was going to do one more summer after Grade 12 before pursuing a post-secondary education, "and that summer never ended.

"I'm still here," Conrad said. "I enjoyed the Barrens so much I'd say 'I'll go back another year,' and 'I'll go back another year' ...

"I came back to work in the bush, and I'm still here."

While Conrad never saved up enough money to eventually go into his study of choice, power engineering, his years of experience at exploration camps, including airborne staking that helped find the Diavik Diamond Mine and exploration for the Lupin Gold Mine, have made him very good at what he does.

"We were the first ones in there," he said of the geophysics work he was involved in for the discovery of Diavik.

"The drillers came in after we did the geophysics and we told them where to drill and then they found the diamonds.

"I've worked in a lot of these mining camps opening up now."

For Roland, whose mother is from Lutsel K'e, exploration is "the perfect job" for him, because it uses his knowledge of the land.

"Working exploration camps allows for the opportunity to use a skill set they already have," said David Swisher, vice-president, operations, on how Avalon has been able to maintain a 30 to 40 per cent aboriginal workforce.

"Roland has been a very good employee, very consistent, works hard, he's very reliable and he works well with the other guys in the camp. To that end, all of our aboriginal employees and camp aids have been a pleasure to work with."

Avalon employs Northerners and aboriginals from the Nechalacho project's three aboriginal partners - the Deninu Kue First Nation, the Lutsel Ke Dene First Nation and Yellowknives Dene First Nation.

"As long as I've been here, I've seen a lot of good employment from the three communities," Conrad said. "And you know a lot of these small communities haven't got employment in them. Lutsel Ke, Fort Res, hardly any employment going on there. This is good for them.

"You gotta keep the money in the North."

Conrad admits as he splits core from Avalon's underground deposit that the experience is nothing he did not learn a long time ago, but the job supports his wife and six-month-old son Roland Ethan.

"The shift is just perfect for me at home, three weeks on, 10 days off," he said.

"Every time I come back from my time off, one month has already gone by. It goes by quick that way."

Avalon aims to bring the project into production in late 2016/2017.

Nearly 300 long term jobs associated with the project would be created in the NWT.

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