News from our businesses and markets

High school students from schools close to Victor Mine received a first-hand introduction to the variety of career opportunities offered in the mining industry during a recent trip to the mine.

Organized by the mine’s Aboriginal Affairs team, the trip included more than 20 students and chaperones from Vezina Secondary School (Attawapiskat), Peetabeck Academy (Fort Albany), Francine J. Wesley Secondary School (Kashechewan), and Delores D. Echum Composite School (Moose Factory).

“Career opportunities come to life for the students during the tour,” explained Sherri Earle-Lapointe, Superintendent of Aboriginal Affairs & Sustainability. “They can experience the sights and sounds of the operation and meet people who work at Victor, many of them family. It’s a great learning opportunity that we hope will help these young women and men make important decisions around careers and training.”

The mine tour is an annual event, designed to showcase what many of their family members do along with employment opportunities at the mine. During the trip, the students toured the process plant where diamonds are recovered, visited the equipment repair shop and were taken into the pit where the mining team extracts the ore and hauls the diamond-bearing rock to the process plant using 50-tonne and 100-tonne trucks. During the tour, the students met welders working in the mobile equipment shop and had a chance to try welding first hand and chat with other De Beers employees. Students were also able to explore some of the heavy equipment used at the mine to get a sense of what it would be like to be an operator.

The tour ended with the students seeing the fruits of the labour as the Process Plant put together a display with samples of the rough diamonds mined at Victor.