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Become a Gemologist

Eira Thomas was a newly graduated geologist when she started at Aber. Her Dad had been involved in staking 50,000 aces of land, much of it South of BHP's huge claims in the NWT, and also most of it was below water in Lac de Gras.

Ms. Thomas started work on the waterfront in Vancouver

When spring explorations teams were sent into the field in 1992, Eira Thomas was on the team for Aber. Her luggage included her sled dog, Thor, part wolf.

On her first assignment she was dropped twenty miles from camp on the northern shores of Lac de Sauvage. She began immediately the process of sampling. There seldom was enough time to gather samples in the short summer of the north.

There are many Thor stories, but none better tells the tale of the competitive nature of a diamond frenzy than the day Thor got spooked and ran sixty miles before ending up in the Fipke camp. When they finally found out whose dog it was - and only a five minute helicopter ride away, they refused and took Thor to Yellowknife, four hundred miles away, to avoid giving any secrets away to the Aber camp.

By 1993, Eira Thomas was appointed chief geologist for Aber. She returned north in March of 1994 to drill on Lac de Sauvage - perhaps the last target her Dad's company would be able to drill on its own. There were larger companies with lots of equipment all around them who would be more than willing to take the claims over for stock.

There were frantic trips out onto the ice as the temperatures were rising and the ice was melting. They got core samples and sent them off to Ontario by plane for separation of the heavy minerals and analysis. The results would tell them if they should continue to drill.

Larger companies swirled around them. The waiting felt like forever, but when the results arrived it was encouraging. The rock should contain diamonds.

Ms. Thomas ordered a heavier drill brought in and the lighter one moved. Drilling was to go ahead full bore in the face of melting ice. The first drill went between two pipes and hit granite. They had to start over. Pools of water grew at the drill site and the ice was sagging. Another site was selected and the drillers set out to do the increasingly dangerous work of boring a hole through melting ice.

The drill bored thorough the ice, slipped easily down through the water, cleared the surface gravels and hit boulders. The casing bent and had to be lifted, replaced, and sent down again.

With everyone knowing the end was near, Eira Thomas persevered and insisted that they keep drilling. Then, one evening, as they were examining the drill cores, it was apparent that the indicator minerals were present in heavy concentrations. Excitement began to grow - and became pure chaos when Hpokins found the impression of a diamond crystal at the end of one of the pipes. Where was the matching core sample.

They searched frantically and found the matching core - a diamond crystal intact. The two sections of the pipe fit together perfectly.

Eira Thomas insisted on taking the core to Vancouver to show her Dad. When he saw it, his first words were, "No!" Ms. Thomas replied - "Yes!" If you knew how rare it is to pull up a diamond in a core, you would only begin to understand how they felt.

It is nice to know that family can still be an important value in the midst of all the hype and greed. Hats off to Eira Thomas for her perseverance and love of her Dad.

Eira Thomas has gone on to found Navigator Exploration Corp. and is s successful exploraer and geologist.

putting together a picture from the field work of other geologists.

In the meantime there was a flurry of acquisitions and wild card claims staked in the NWT hoping for the market to catch on to the diamonds and bring forth funding for further exploration.