Diavik says goodbye to production, hello to closure phase

After nearly 23 years of commercial operations, a truck made the last ore delivery at Diavik on Tuesday.

It was an emotional final day for many workers at the diamond mine, which is located roughly 300km northeast of Yellowknife.

Since it began production in July 2003, Rio Tinto, which owns and operates Diavik, says the mine has produced 150 million carats of rough diamonds.

Joe Blandford, superintendent of surface operations at the mine began working at Diavik 26 years ago.

“It has become a full circle for me,” he told Cabin Radio during a live broadcast from the mine site on Wednesday morning.

“It’s a great milestone for me when it comes to an end … It’s happy to see but it’s sad to see it go away.”

More than two decades ago, Blandford said he moved north from a small community in Newfoundland and Labrador as the NWT’s mining sector was transitioning from gold to diamonds. He said a family member that worked with a drilling company in Yellowknife introduced him to the team contracted with constructing dikes at Diavik.

“I drove up on the ice road. Never been on the ice before in my life,” he said.

“I got to site and, yes, everything you see here today wasn’t here.”

Now, Blandford said, Diavik is family for him.

While production at the mine has ended, he’s excited for the new opportunities and faces that will come with closure and reclamation.

He said he’s committed to staying at Diavik until the end, noting not many people can say they have worked at a mine from start to finish.

“I’d like to turn off the lights when I leave here so I can say I started this mine site and finished the mine site right to the end.”

Once his work at Diavik is done, Blandford said he hopes to share the knowledge and experience he has gained elsewhere before he retires.

Angela LaFleur-Nowell, superintendent of personal logistics and camp services, is a born and raised Yellowknifer who has been working at Diavik since 2017.

She said she’s the fourth generation of her family to work in mining.

“I feel immense pride in being a part of this journey,” she said of her work at Diavik.

“I feel that this is something that we can achieve and leave a lasting legacy within the North and for other mine closures in the North or throughout Canada.”

LaFleur-Nowell is also a part of Diavik’s emergency response team, which is trained to respond to emergencies at the mine site. She has competed with the team at the Northern Mine Rescue Competition in Yellowknife.

“It helped me build relationships, helped build confidence,” she said.

“I’ve learned so much that has helped here but I think, in the future, that I’ll be able to share with others.”

Like Blandford, LaFleur-Nowell said workers at the mine are like family.

“We all work together here very heavily,” she said. “When something needs to get done, no matter what challenge is a part of that, we do it together.

“There’s a lot of care that exists in these walls.”

LaFleur-Nowell said the friendships she has made will continue after the mine closes. She also met her fiancé at Diavik and they are planning to get married in October.

Norman “Tim: Beland, business services manager at Diavik, has worked at the mine for the past 10 years.

He described a spirit of camaraderie, courtesy and pride at the mine.

“It’s just really kind of a sense of, and I don’t want to be cliché or anything, but a sense of family,” he said. “I think it’s a little bit because of the isolation.”

Dylan Coumont, started at Diavik at 2016 and works in the truck shop.

He highlighted some of the benefits of the unique fly-in fly-out work schedule at Diavik, which sees people rotate between working two weeks at the mine then having two weeks off.

“I couldn’t go back to a nine-to-five because you get so much more time at home with family,” he said.

“I’ve got two kids now so you get actual time during the day for two weeks straight, which is amazing.”

Coumont said not everyone is leaving the mine all at once. Over the past year, he said he has seen several people take early severance, and his work at the mine is set to continue.

“Every couple sets you’ll have two or three buddies leave,” he said. “It’s not all hitting you at once.”

Mike Lowing is a principal advisor for health, safety and environment systems at Diavik.

He said, as 47 percent of the workforce at the mine is from the North, he has made friends from all across Canada. He likened the close environment at Diavik to the unique community in the North.

“The North is always a place of, it doesn’t [matter] what title you have, what rank you have, it’s how you treat people,” he said.

“Of course we have our structure here, but how you treat people is how you make your friends and it’s your legacy.”

Lowing said while the closure of a mine can be a negative time, it has been largely positive at Diavik.

He said many workers leaving the mine are “being snapped up by industry all over” which he described as a compliment to Diavik’s leadership team.

“There are a lot of people I was saying goodbye to but they’re happy, they’re positive, he said. “They’re going to new opportunities. If something’s not lined up, they’re still very positive.”

As the mine closes, Matt Breen, chief operating officer of Diavik, said he wanted to ensure that workers felt their contributions to the mine were valued.

“It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster of emotions but really appreciate all the efforts from our people to finish strong and finish safe.”

Some of the bigger diamonds that have been unearthed at Diavik over the years include a 158.20-carat rough yellow diamond, discovered in 2025, and a 552-carat yellow diamond, which was found in 2018.

Now that production at the mine has come to an end, closure work is set to begin.

Mining has a complex history in the North.

While it has driven economic development, built infrastructure and provided jobs among other benefits, some mines have caused environmental damage and negative social and cultural impacts.

Leaders at Diavik say they want to close the mine responsibly and successfully, setting an example for other mining companies.

“The history, the legacy of mining in the North is not great,” acknowledged Sean Sinclair, closure manager at the mine.

“One of our goals is to help change that narrative … provide a real, tangible example of a responsible operator.”

Regulators approved a final closure and reclamation plan for Diavik earlier this year. Rio Tinto has also signed closure agreements for the mine with the Tłı̨chǫ Government and North Slave Métis Alliance.

Planning and preparation to close the mine has been ongoing for several years.

Sinclair said today, about 80 percent of earth works, or moving of rock, is complete at the site.

“It was that decision to actually be the ones to close Diavik responsibly and successfully, that was essentially made a decade ago, that drove us to sort-of where we’re at today,” he said.

Upcoming work to close the mine will include demolition of the structures on site, which Sinclair said is expected to take place over two years.

The mine will also need to be flooded. Sinclair said workers will be transferring the equivalent of one Olympic sized swimming pool of water per hour and, once that works begins, the mine should be filled within six months to a year.

After the mine is closed, Sinclair said it won’t “look like nothing ever happened” at the site, but the plan is to “bring it back as close as reasonable to those original conditions.”

“Our goal is to create a safe and stable site that doesn’t require a permanent site presence,” he said.

Active closure work is expected to take until roughly 2029, followed by monitoring that could last into the 2040s, after which Rio Tinto is expected to relinquish the site.

Scott Letkeman and AJ Goodwin contributed reporting.