After decades of growth driven by diamond mining, Canada’s Northwest Territories are facing the closure of three major mines and wondering: What’s next?
Canada’s Northwest Territories got lucky twice.
At the turn of the 20th century, an epic gold rush established the capital, Yellowknife, and brought development to the vast, sparsely populated region dominated by boreal forests and Arctic tundra.
Then a hundred years later, just as underground gold reserves in the ground were depleting, prospectors found diamonds.
The Territories, with a surface area more than three times that of California, became the world’s third-largest exporter of diamonds.
Now that era is coming to a messy end.
