One day, on his own with a bush pilot, Fipke flew over Lac de Gras, source of the Coppermine River. Spotting an esker, a winding ridge of gravel and sand left by meltwater from a retreating glacier, he ordered the pilot to land on a peninsula called Pointe de Misère.

The esker protected a small lake with a sandy shore containing a dark striation. There he collected sample bag G71, the last in his mammoth, decade-long exploration.

Pointe de Misère was at the Glacial Divide. From where Fipke stood, ice had flowed east to Hudson Bay, north to the northern islands, south into central Canada, and west into the Mackenzie River and Blackwater Lake. He’d sampled the entire expanse stretching west, over two hundred thousand square miles.

Back in the lab, Fipke tried to make sense of the pattern that his samples were producing. Sample by sample, using large, detailed maps, he plotted the results. With scanning electron microscopy, he examined bag after bag.

His conclusion: the indicator trail began at Blackwater Lake, spread east, and two hundred miles northeast of Yellowknife, stopped near Lac de Gras.

He checked the contents of sample bag G71. It contained over 1,500 chrome diopsides and 6,000 pyrope garnets.

Fipke had found his pipe. Or pipes.

He began staking like mad.

More sampling. More analysis. Confirmation.

Fipke named the site Point Lake, partly for geography, partly to confuse the competition. There was another Point Lake northwest of his find.

Next step was to pinpoint the exact location of the diamonds. And that cost money.

With the existence of kimberlite pipes confirmed, Fipke and Blusson were at last able to obtain big-money backers. In 1990 Dia Met, a company founded by Fipke in 1984, and BHP, an Australian mining conglomerate, signed a joint-venture agreement for the Northwest Territories Diamond Project. For 51 percent ownership, BHP would finance exploration in exchange for shares in any future property. Dia Met would hold 29 percent. Fipke and Blusson would retain 10 percent each.

In 1991 Dia Met and BHP announced the discovery of diamonds at Fipke’s Point Lake site. The news sparked the NWT diamond rush, the biggest staking frenzy since Klondike.

Lac de Gras in French. Ekati in the language of the local Dene people. Fat Lake in both.

In 1998 Ekati became Canada’s first diamond mine. The following year she produced one million carats. Today she does $400 million annually and coughs up 4 percent of the world’s rocks.

Fat Lake, indeed.

In 2003 the Diavik mine, owned by a joint-venture partnership between Harry Winston Diamond Corporation and Diavik Diamond Mines, Inc., a subsidiary of the Rio Tinto Group, began operation. The mine, Canada’s second largest, lies 186 miles north of Yellowknife. It consists of three kimberlite pipes on 7.7 square miles on a tiny chunk of real estate in Lac de Gras, locally called East Island. Diavik is a major supplier of the “Jeweler to the Stars.”