The beginning of the Tibbit to Contwoyto ice road, about 60 km northeast of Yellowknife, NWT. Levon Sevunts

SOMBA K’E/YELLOWKNIFE – A late March blizzard has finished blowing over much of Canada’s Northwest Territories and Ron Near’s job just got more interesting.

A retired Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer, Near is in charge of the world’s longest ice road that connects Yellowknife, the territorial capital, to three diamond mines: Ekati, Diavik and Snap Lake.

The Tibbit to Contwoyto Winter Road – named after the first and the last lakes on the ice road – is a joint venture between BHP Billiton, which owns the Ekati Mine, the Diavik Diamond Mines Inc., which manages the Diavik mine, and DeBeers, which owns the Snap Lake Mine.

The ice road is the only overland resupply route for the mines. They depend on it to truck in a year’s worth of supplies and equipment: everything from diesel fuel and ammonium nitrate for mine explosives to earth moving machines.

And with the ice road open only eight to 10 weeks every year, resupplying the mines is a monumental logistical undertaking executed with military precision.

But on this particular day the entire Tibbit to Contwoyto winter road is snowed in and the window of opportunity to move tens of thousands of tons of materiel and supplies just got a whole lot narrower.

“We have 98 trucks at Lockhart Camp, which is about half-way up the winter road, that’s our main rest stop,” Near said pointing the location of the camp on a large map hanging on the wall of his office.

The camp has hot meal facilities, washers and dryers for the drivers, showers – anything that the drivers might get at a conventional truck stop anywhere else in North America, except this one is located right in the middle of the Arctic wilderness, almost at the edge of the treeline.

“When we see a storm starting to develop, we’ll track it,” Near said. “And once it looks like it’s going to get bad we start funnelling trucks into the different camps.”

Now he has to figure out how to get everything moving again and make up precious time the winter storm stole from them.

‘The longest school zone in the world’

The speed limit for loaded trucks is reduced to only 15 km/h on some portions of the ice road. Levon Sevunts

The ice road begins at Tibbitt Lake at the end of the narrow and winding Ingram Trail, about 60 kilometres (36 miles) east of Yellowknife. From there, it snakes up north over frozen lakes and short overland stretches, called portages. These days it goes only as far north as the Ekati mine. But up until 2008 the ice road used to go to the now closed Jericho diamond mine on Contwoyto Lake, in south-western Nunavut.

With most of it laid over lake ice, the road must be rebuilt each year, Near said. Construction usually starts shortly after Christmas each year. And it takes five to six weeks to have the road ready by the last week in January, he said.

During construction, special amphibious tracked vehicles, Hagglunds, measure the ice thickness every day, Near said. Construction crews clear the snow and drill holes in the ice to flood certain areas and build up ice thickness to a point when it can take the weight of a fully loaded freighter truck.

When the ice reaches 107 cms (42 inches) along the entire 400-kilometre road, it is thick enough for a super B tanker, hauling two tanks of fuel weighing approximately 41-42 tonnes in total, Near said.

Fully loaded trucks are allowed to travel at a maximum speed of 25 km/h and have to maintain a distance of 500 metres between each other, Near said. On some “problem” lakes, where ice is not thick enough, the speed limit is reduced to 15 km/h.

“It’s the longest school zone in the world,” Near joked.

Listening to the ice cracking

Fully loaded trucks travel at 25 km/h and have to keep a distance of 500m between each other. Levon Sevunts

The ice road has none of the drama portrayed in the popular History channel reality show “Ice Road Truckers,” which put the territory on the map for many people around the world, Near said.

Dave Cook, a driver from Nova Scotia who’s been driving on the ice road for six years said the show sensationalized a lot of the aspects of life on the road.

“They show you what could happen if you do things you’re not supposed to do, which is possible but 90 per cent of the guys all behave themselves,” Cook said. “They’re telling you guys are awake for 36 hours, and are running up and down the roads. They don’t do that.”

Cook said it takes about 15 hours to get to the Ekati Mine, about 310 kilometres northeast of Yellowknife. Drivers stop midway at the Lockhart Camp, get their required sleep and then continue to Ekati the next day, he said.

“It’s something different, it’s unique, not everybody can do it,” Cook said about his reasons for coming back to the ice road year after year. “You see caribou out here and moose, and wolves, and wolverines.”

And Cook said he’ll never forget the first time he drove his truck on the ice.

“The first thing I did when I got on the ice, I opened my door and I listened to the ice crack, that’s all you hear,” Cook said, “and as long as you hear that, you’re good because the ice is adjusting.”

A few good men

Richard Bulley, assistant dispatch supervisor at the Tibbit to Contwoyto winter road, points to the entrance to the ice road on the map

Richard Bulley, assistant supervisor at the dispatch centre that manages the traffic on the ice road, said he too was attracted by the promise of a unique experience.

“It’s a unique job, a unique location and a really good people to work with,” said Bulley, a retired Ontario Provincial Police hostage negotiator. “When I retired, I didn’t want to do a regular security work or these Mickey Mouse jobs. I was looking for something unique to do.”

Then a meeting with David Madder, another retired police officer, changed Bulley’s retirement plans.

Madder was the dispatch supervisor for the winter road and was looking for a few good men to help him run the operation.

“I gave up two weeks vacation in Florida and a golf trip to Santee, South Carolina, came to Yellowknife,” Bulley said chuckling, “go figure!”

And he’s been doing it for five years now.

“After 30 years of dealing with all the idiots on earth, we come up here and deal with some really good people, and it’s a lot of fun,” Bulley said. “And it’s only two months a year, so it doesn’t interfere with my golf course or the cottage life in back in Ontario.”

Bulley said most of all he gets to enjoy the feeling of camaraderie the ice road creates among the people who work there.

“It’s not like the open highway,” Bulley said, “there are no stoplights, there are no barriers out there, no guidelines other than rules and regulations. These guys really learn to work with each other and take care of each other.”

Yellowknife dispatch supervisor David Madder is an 11-year veteran of the ice road. Levon Sevunts

Madder said he has been coming to Yellowknife to work on the ice road dispatch for eleven years.

“You form a very close bond with the guys if you work around them for three months,” he said. “You become almost like a bartender: people share their darkest secrets with you and you become pretty close. Plus you have a lot of laughs, share stories.”

Madder said he comes up in mid-December to set up the control centre and the dispatch office for the ice road. Many of the same people come back year after year.

“When the ice road started, you probably had 95 per cent of the drivers coming back, that’s when the ice road used to go all the way to the Lupin Mine, which was 600 kilometres of ice road,” Madder said. “As the years progressed, the salaries now don’t differentiate very much between provinces, so it’s not that big of a draw for people moneywise to come here.”

Some drivers now prefer to stay at home rather than be away for weeks because the money they get paid on the ice road is the same they’ll get hauling staff in southern Canada, Madder said.

Still many drivers are drawn to the ice road because of the unique experience it provides.

Madder said he’ll never forget a conversation he had with one of the ice road truckers.

“He had stopped his truck and I was standing beside him and he just looked at me and he says, ‘I scoff at anybody who doesn’t believe there is a God when they look up and see these skies.’ It’s a very valid statement,” Madder said. “I’m not really that religious of a man, but when he said that, I kind of had a feeling in my heart that he was possibly right.”

Web links:

http://www.jvtcwinterroad.ca

QUICK FACTS:

First year constructed – 1982
Original purpose – supply the Lupin Gold Mine at Contwoyto Lake, Nunavut Territory
Length – 600 kilometres (360 miles) to Lupin with route being 87% over lake ice
Width – 50 metres (160 feet) on lakes , narrower on portages (12-15 metres) 25-45 feet
Ice thickness – Engineer proven to support light vehicle loads at 70 cms (27-28 inches) increasing to full highway truck loads as the ice thickens, often exceeding 107 cms (42 inches)
Speed limits on ice: Loaded trucks – 25 km/hr (15 mph) with some areas 10 km/hr; empty trucks – 60 – 70 km/hr (35 mph) on “Express Lanes” – which are return (southbound lanes) built on larger lakes
Speed limits on land (portages): – Mandatory portage speed is 30 km/hr, with trucks having to slow to 10 km/hr on and off portage
Number of Portages – 64 portages are located along the route
Maintenance Camps – Three camps that can accommodate 49 personnel in each are located at Dome Lake, Lockhart Lake and Lac de Gras
Manager – Joint Venture Management Committee (JVMC) comprised of BHP Billiton Diamonds Inc., Diavik Diamond Mines Inc. and DeBeers Canada Inc.
Road Constructor – Nuna Logistics Ltd (main route), RTL Robinson Enterprises Ltd. (secondary route) are contracted by the JVMC
Engineering – EBA Engineering Consultants Ltd.
Security – Deton Cho /Scarlet Security Services, historically SECURECheck (2000 – 2009)

Historical Winter Road Statistics (2000-2011)

* Road shut down early due to thin ice conditions – approx 1200 loads had to be flown into the mines in the summer/fall of 2006

** Due to warmer temperatures, the joint venture was forced to adopt night time only hauling from March 3 to 16

Matevos Harutyunyan of Yellowknife examines a diamond he’s been polishing at Melisende Diamonds Ltd. in Montreal as his friend Vardan Sukiasan looks on. Levon Sevunts

Matevos Harutyunyan has to fly across Canada from Yellowknife, the capital of Northwest Territories, to Montreal to do what he loves the most.

Harutyunyan is an expert diamond cutter and polisher but ever since the Arslanian Cutting Works factory in Yellowknife shut its doors two years ago, the only chance he gets to practice his beloved craft is during short visits to Montreal.

That’s where his friends and former colleagues Gevorg Mkhitaryan, Gagik Tamrazyan and Vardan Sukiasyan have set up Melisende Diamonds Ltd. a small diamond polishing operation that opened in 2010 in downtown Montreal with big dreams of becoming a major player in Canada’s emerging diamond processing industry.

“I miss this,” Harutyunyan said pressing to a polishing wheel a diamond set in a special grip,. “It’s become part of me, I’ve been doing this for 15 years.”

Harutyunyan and his friends were part of a group of about 60 Armenian diamond cutters and polishers who were brought to the Northwest Territories to work in Yellowknife’s nascent diamond processing industry.

Under Soviet rule, Armenia was one of the USSR’s main diamond processing centres and developed world-class expertise in diamond cutting and polishing. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the quake-ravaged and worn-torn Armenia fell on hard economic times.

With their skills in high demand everywhere from Botswana to Canada, Armenian diamond cutters joined the mass exodus of skilled workers from Armenia, as almost one-third of the country’s population emigrated in search of better living conditions.

Harutyunyan, 41, who now drives a taxi in Yellowknife, said the Armenian diamond cutters where a tight-knit community. Most had grown up together and had worked together at the diamond plant in their native Nor Hachn, in Armenia.

“When we moved to Canada, it wasn’t just individual workers, it was like a big extended family picked up and moved to Yellowknife,” Harutyunyan said. “We took care of each other, we watched each other’s backs. We exchanged news of Armenia and our families. I really miss that.”

Canada – a diamond mining superpower?

Canada is a relative newcomer to diamond mining. De Beers, the world’s leading diamond company, had been prospecting for diamonds in Canada since the early 1960s. In 1987, a second year geology student Brad Wood who was working for De Beers stumbled upon kimberlite rocks, volcanic rocks that sometime contain diamonds, while fishing on Attawapiskat River, in the James Bay lowlands of Northern Ontario. The site would eventually become today’s Victor Mine.

But it wasn’t until 1991, when two enterprising geologists, Stewart Blusson and Chuck Fipke, discovered large diamond deposits in the Lac de Gras region of the Northwest Territories that the word learned of Canada’s Arctic diamonds.

Diamond production at the Anglo-Australian mining giant BHP Billiton’s EKATI Mine in the Lac de Gras region, about 300 kilometres northeast of Yellowknife, started in 1998 (Fipke and Blusson, each hold a 10 per cent share in the EKATI Mine). In 2003, Rio Tinto, another giant British-Australian mining and metals company, opened its Diavik Mine not far from EKATI. And in 2008, De Beers opened its first Canadian mine at Snap Lake about 220 kilometres northeast of Yellowknife.

Ontario joined Canada’s diamond club in 2008, when De Beers started commercial diamond production at its Victor mine, about 90 kilometres west of the First Nations community of Attawapiskat, in northern Ontario.

In less than a decade, Canada was propelled to the diamond mining major leagues, becoming the world’s third-largest producer, by value, of rough stones, behind Botswana and Russia.

Diamonds are Yellowknife’s best friend

But Canada has had a much harder time creating a viable diamond processing industry.

NWT Premier Bob McLeod hopes to foster a viable diamond processing industry in Yellowknife. Levon Sevunts

Speaking at his spacious office at the Northwest Territories Legislative Assembly in Yellowknife, Premier Bob McLeod said that from the very beginning, the territorial government pushed diamond mines to set aside about 10 per cent of their output for processing in Yellowknife.

“The value added sector, the secondary diamond industry was something that we really wanted to establish because as a territory most of the benefits [of mining] go outside to the federal government because they collect the royalties,” McLeod said.

The idea seemed simple enough. With all the attention that conflict or so called “blood” diamonds were getting in the international media and even in Hollywood – with films like Blood Diamond starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Connelly – Canadian authorities saw a marketing opportunity in offering “ethical” Canadian diamonds.

Experts reckoned that some customers were ready to pay up to 10 or 15 per cent more for Canadian produced diamonds, knowing that no blood was spilled and that no child labour was used in their production. The government of Northwest Territories even came up with a clever marketing gimmick, a tiny laser-etched polar bear on diamonds produced in Yellowknife.

Armenian diamond know-how

From left to right) Armenian diamond cutters Matevos Harutyunyan,Seyran Hayrapetyan, Zakar Hovhannisyan and Galust Khachatryan still regularly get together. Levon Sevunts

With no indigenous diamond processing workforce, authorities brought in experienced foreign cutters and polishers to staff the newly opened diamond cutting and polishing factories.

Zakar Hovhannisyan was among the first Armenian diamond cutters to come to Yellowknife in October of 2000.

A graduate of the prestigious Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, the Soviet equivalent of MIT, Hovhannisyan started out as an astrophysicist at the high-altitude Byurakan Observatory in Armenia.

But following the collapse of the Soviet Union in December of 1991, research money dried up and Hovhannisyan went back to his native town of Nor Hachn.

In the 1970s, Nor Hachn, a small town 20 km north of the capital, Yerevan, had become the centre of Armenia’s diamond processing industry. A combination of a highly skilled work force, the nature of diamond processing itself and investment by Diaspora Armenian entrepreneurs meant that in the early 1990s the diamond industry became one of the few industries that made a successful transition to the market economy.

Hovhannisyan was hired as a programmer by the Lori diamond processing factory in Nor Hachn owned by Belgium-based Armenian diamond entrepreneur Chahé Arslanian. Hovhannisyan helped to create diamond inventory control software for the factory.

But once the software was successfully completed, Hovhannisyan found himself looking for another job.

“The only other jobs available were those of diamond cutters,” Hovhannisyan said, “so I convinced the manager to hire me as a diamond cutter.”

Then in 2000, hoping to take advantage of Canada’s diamond mining boom, Arslanian opened Arslanian Cutting Works in Yellowknife.

And Hovhannisyan was recruited to help set up the operation of the plant and install its diamond inventory software.

At their peak, from 2003 to 2006, the four factories that set had up shop in Yellowknife’s Diamond Row district – Sirius, Arslanian Cutting Works, Laurelton and Canada Dene Diamonds – employed about 200 people.

Hard market realities

Hovhannisyan said the diamond cutting factories in Yellowknife had a hard time competing with factories in India and Thailand that operated at a fraction of the cost. The high turnover of staff at the diamond factories was another huge challenge, he said.

“It’s an issue that affects all northern businesses,” said Hovhannisyan who left the diamond processing industry to learn accounting and now works as a controller at the Det’on Cho Corporation, the business arm of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation. “People were just not ready for the kind of commitment learning diamond polishing required, and many found the job too taxing.”

Bob Bies, a former manager at the Arslanian Cutting Works, said the factory owners simply didn’t have deep enough pockets to operate in the cutthroat diamond business. Diamond processing companies had to pay up mining companies millions in advance to purchase the rough stones while it took them up to six months to be paid by their customers who bought the polished diamonds, Bies said.

McLeod said diamond processing plants complained that despite the 10 per cent quota, they weren’t getting enough large stones from the mining companies.

Vahe Agopian, owner of the Vancouver-based diamond retailer Lugaro Jewellers, said the cooperation of the mining companies in granting Canadian diamond cutters privileged access to larger and better quality stones is critical to any future success of the diamond processing industry not only in the Northwest Territories, but also in the rest of Canada.

Agopian, who’s been in the diamond business for over 25 years, said it comes down to simple mathematics. The most important components of diamond pricing are the cost of the rough diamonds and the cost of labour. Canadian producers simply stand no chance of competing against producers in India, who pay their labourers almost a hundred times less than what Canadian diamond cutters get, Agopian said. Because of its low labour costs and the enormous workforce – it’s a $23-billion industry, and diamond polishing and processing factories in Gujarat and Maharashtra employ about three million workers – India dominates the production of smaller diamonds. But the relative share of labour costs declines dramatically in larger and better quality stones, making Canadian producers more competitive.

However, the diamond mines in the Northwest Territories already have long-established clients in Europe who get their best rough diamonds, leaving Canadian producers with fewer larger gems to work with.

Compounding the problem for the Canadian producers was a lack of branding, Agopian said. While he praised the government of the Northwest Territories for its distinctive polar bear diamond brand, he said not enough was done to support and grow it.

“People are not ready to pay extra money for a diamond just because it’s Canadian,” Agopian said.

Canadian diamond makers needed a little “je ne sais quoi” to sell their gems, the same way French liquor producers can charge an extra for their brandy because Cognac is not just a place but a world renown brand, Agopian said.

Faced with these problems, one by one, the diamond processing plants in Yellowknife shut down, leaving dozens of highly qualified diamond cutters without jobs.

The last one standing

Today, only one facility operated by Crossworks Manufacturing of Vancouver, B.C., with barely a dozen diamond cutters brought from Vietnam, continues cutting and polishing diamonds in Yellowknife.

Crossworks has a much bigger facility in Sudbury where it processes rough diamonds from the Victor Mine.

Thanks to an agreement negotiated between the Ontario government, De Beers Canada and the Diamond Trading Company, the marketing and distribution arm of De Beers, Crossworks receives up to 10 per cent of the Victor Mine rough diamond output.

Diamond dreams in Montreal

Diamond cutter Gevorg Mkhitaryan polishes a diamond at Melisende Diamonds Ltd. in downtown Montreal, Canada. Levon Sevunts

And that’s the model Harry Ohanessian, president of Melisende Diamonds, wants the government of Quebec to replicate when the Renard Mine in north-central Quebec becomes operational in 2015.

“The idea is to get rough diamonds from our Quebec mine and to have them cut here in Quebec, as they have done it in the Northwest Territories and Ontario,” Ohanessian said.

Renard is owned by the Vancouver-based Stornoway Diamond Corp. and the province, which holds a 37-per-cent stake in the mine. The mine is a key part of Premier Jean Charest’s Plan Nord project for the development of northern Quebec. The province is also planning to spend $330 million to extend Route 167 to allow all-season access to the mine via communities of Chibougamau and Mistissini.

Nicola Begin, a spokesperson for the provincial Natural Resources Department, said as part of its mineral strategy the province, too, wants to see 10 per cent of rough diamonds produced by Renard set aside for processing in Quebec.

However, when contacted to comment on this issue, Matt Manson, the president and CEO of Stornoway Diamond Corp., declined to commit to any numbers.

“We are focused on the financing and development of the mine itself, which for us comes first,” Manson wrote in a terse email.

Ohanessian, 40, said he believes there is still a lot of demand for Canadian diamonds and he intends to hire the best diamond cutters in Canada to not only work at the Montreal facility but also to train a new generation of diamond cutters.

“At this moment we have six cutters and one bruter (bruting is the process of grinding the rough diamond to give it its outline),” Ohanessian said. “But when the Renard Mine opens up and, hopefully, the natural resources ministry insists on keeping 10 per cent or any percentage of diamonds in Quebec, we will definitely increase those numbers to 18 to 24 cutters.”

These are well-paying jobs, Ohanessian noted, with experienced cutters making $50,000 to $60,000 a year.

Friction with the polishing wheel causes the diamond to heat up and turn red. Levon Sevunts

He said he’d also like to see Quebec develop its own certification process to certify diamonds produced in the province and create a distinct marketing logo similar to the polar bear logo etched on Northwest Territories diamonds.

“We have also invented a new round diamond cut, which will be even more brilliant than the HCA (Holloway Cut Advisor) round brilliant cut,” Ohanessian said.

For now, he and his partners buy their stones from Brazil and Africa. Each stone they cut is then sent to New York for certification by the Gemological Institute of America.

Once the stones return with their GIA certificates, they’re sold to jewellers who put them in engagement rings, earrings, bracelets and necklaces, or whatever else their customers fancy.

By having some of the best cutters in the business, Melisende can compete with the lower-paid diamond cutters in India or Thailand, he said.

“It’s very simple, in polished diamonds the value of the diamond is not in labour, it’s in the cut,” Ohanessian said.

The price of a diamond cut to an “excellent” grade according to GIA classification could be thousands of dollars higher than the price of a similar diamond cut to a “good” grade, more than making up the difference in wages paid to diamond cutters in India vs. Canada, Ohanessian said.

The Canadian Press, Jacques Boissinot

Montreal (dpa) – The largest known heist ever of sweet and expensive maple syrup oozed a step closer to solution on Tuesday as Canadian police arrested three suspects.

Sergeant Claude Denis, spokesman for the Quebec provincial police, said the hunt for an estimated 3 million kilograms of stolen syrup took police investigators to neighbouring Ontario, New Brunswick and north-eastern United States.

Police had recovered almost two-thirds of the missing syrup, and were still looking for another five suspects, police said.

The precious substance sells for more than many high-priced wines, fetching up to 40 dollars a litre or more. It’s a favourite on breakfast dishes like waffles and pancakes.

The theft took place between August 2011 and July 2012, when the suspects siphoned off 9,600 barrels of maple syrup valued at between 15 and 20 million dollars, from a warehouse in Saint-Louis-de-Blandford, about 100 kilometres south-west of Quebec City.

To cover up the deed, they filled the empty barrels with water.

“What’s incredible is they used ordinary gardening hoses to siphon off the syrup from barrels,” said Pierre Rheaume, a spokesman for the federation representing Quebec maple syrup producers.

Authorities became aware of the heist in August 2012, when a routine inventory at the warehouse discovered the theft, said Simon Trepanier, interim head of Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers.

Trepanier rushed to reassure maple syrup lovers that the supply was safe despite the theft, thanks to Canada’s “strategic reserve.”

“The strategic reserve of maple syrup, about 46 million pounds, is warehoused in three separate locations and we are certain that we can meet global demand despite the theft,” Trepanier said.

It is believed that French settlers were introduced to maple syrup in early 17th century by Algonquin tribes who taught the settlers to collect sap from maple trees in early spring.

The French settlers perfected this technique by introducing spouts that are bored into the maple trees and metal boilers to process the sap and create the syrup.

Author: Levon Sevunts

Minister of Foreign Affairs John Baird takes part in a press conference with Britain’s Foreign Secretary William Hague in the foyer of the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Monday, September 24, 2012. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

London/Ottawa (dpa) – Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird sought to downplay a deal with Britain to share diplomatic missions abroad amid a chorus of criticism of the plan from opposition parties and former diplomats.

Speaking at a joint press conference with British Foreign Secretary William Hague, Baird called the deal with Britain an
“administrative” agreement. The agreement is expected to involve countries where Britain has diplomatic missions and Canada does not or vice versa.

“This is about increasing Canada’s diplomatic reach in a handful of areas where we don’t already have a presence,” said Baird, who signed the agreement with Hague during the British foreign secretary’s visit to Ottawa to discuss British-Canadian relations.

Baird said British-Canadian cooperation in Burma, where a small contingent of Canadian diplomats works at the UK embassy, and Haiti, where British diplomats work in the Canadian embassy, served as examples for such diplomatic cooperation.

“We are not moving to merge all of our embassies and consulates around the world. We are not going to be sharing ambassadors or trade commissioners,” Baird said. “Each country will continue to have complete independence on policy and Canadian public servants will always protect and promote Canada’s interests and Canada’s values. In select locations, this simply allows Canadian diplomats to do their good work faster and at a lower cost to Canadian taxpayers.”

Hague pointed to the common history and values shared by the two countries.

“We have stood shoulder to shoulder from the great wars of the last century to fighting terrorists in Afghanistan and supporting  Arab Spring nations like Libya and Syria. We are first cousins,” Hague said in a statement.

“So it is natural that we look to link up our embassies with Canada’s in places where that suits both countries,” he added, also acknowledging that it saves costs.

Hague also denied reports in the British press that the deal with Canada was part of a larger British strategy to  counteract the European Union expansion.

“It’s not related to that,” Hague said. “Obviously we work very closely with other European foreign services and with the external action services. It’s in addition to our work with the European Union. And finding practical ways to cooperate successfully with other nations doesn’t in any way diminish the relations within the European Union.”

However, the deal with Britain prompted an outcry from Canada’s opposition parties and former high-ranking diplomats.

“Under this agreement, Britain will be the de facto face of Canada in the world,” Tom Mulcair, leader of the official opposition New Democratic Party, said in the House of Commons. “Canada’s foreign policy will be difficult to distinguish from that of the British. It’s all very nice to be nostalgic for the great British Empire, but there are limits.”

Paul Heinbecker, Canada’s former ambassador to the United Nations, said Australia would make a much better international partner if Canada were looking to extend its reach internationally.

“The Australians bring no baggage or very little baggage. They’re well represented in Asia; we’re well represented in the Americas and there is a natural tradeoff there,” Heinbecker said in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. “The difficulty with the British is that they bring baggage, they are a former colonial power. Those countries in Africa and Asia who ‘enjoyed’ British Empire don’t celebrate their colonial status very much.”

The move comes after a strategic review of Britain’s diplomatic services under Hague, which the Foreign Office says is aimed at reducing costs while bringing British diplomacy in line with 21st century requirements.

In a keynote speech in August, Hague called for Britain to shed its “post-colonial guilt” going back to the days of the empire and to seek “new and equal partnerships” with countries unburdened by past history.

Britain is currently seeking to expand its diplomatic presence across Asia, Africa and Latin America in an effort to boost bilateral ties and enhance economic and trade opportunities.

The plan is to deploy an extra 300 diplomatic staff in the “fastest-growing cities and regions” in about 20 countries by 2015.

Ottawa, on the other hand, has been looking for ways to cut its foreign policy expenses. In a series of deficit fighting moves, Prime Minister Stephen Harper introduced cuts of about 170 million Canadian dollars (170,340 US dollars) to Canada’s foreign affairs budget in March.

France Benoit and her husband Doug Ritchie clear the forest around their log house about 25 km east of Yellowknife, NWT.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live at the edge of the Arctic wilderness, far from the hustle and bustle of modern life? I did and found out that living off the grid requires a certain mind set and handiness with tools and high-tech gadgetry. So if you don’t know your amperes from your watts, don’t try this at home.

Listen to my documentary

PS: The song that you hear in the piece was written by Laurie Sarkadi. You can listen to more of Laurie’s music on her MySpace page.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz

Montreal (dpa) – Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigators Friday executed search warrants at the headquarters of multinational engineering giant SNC-Lavalin in Montreal, which has been under scrutiny for its ties to the deposed Libyan regime of Moamer Gaddafi.

An SNC-Lavalin employee who asked not to be named told dpa that police officers arrived at the company’s downtown high rise building  headquarters around 9 am (1300 GMT) and evacuated the building.

SNC has confirmed the investigation, but neither the company or the police gave any information about possible arrests.

The company, which has projects in about 100 countries, came under intense scrutiny after its extensive ties to the Libyan regime of the late Moamer Gaddafi came to light following the Libyan revolution last year.

A woman who worked as a subcontractor to SNC, Cynthia Vanier, has been detained in a Mexican jail since November on allegations she tried to  smuggle a member of the Gaddafi family into Mexico.

In a statement posted on its website, the company confirmed that it is cooperating with police.

“The warrant relates to an investigation of certain individuals who are not or are no longer employed by the Company,” said the company. “Because the investigation is currently ongoing, SNC-Lavalin is not able to comment further at the moment.”

Last month, SNC-Lavalin chief Pierre Duhaime resigned after an internal probe found he had breached company policies by approving 56 million dollars in payments that SNC-Lavalin said were inappropriate.

Earlier in February, two SNC-Lavalin executives, Stephane Roy and Riadh ben Aissa, left the company after questions about their conduct related to the company’s work in Libya became the focus of public attention.

In recent years, SNC-Lavalin executives, particularly ben Aissa, had nurtured a close relationship with the Gaddafi family, landing profitable infrastructure contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars, including a 275-million-dollar deal to build a prison.

In November 2011, Mexican authorities arrested SNC-Lavalin consultant Vanier, a Canadian citizen, in connection with a plot to smuggle Saadi Gaddafi, a son of the late leader, and members of his family from  Niger to Mexico.

Vanier, who has vehemently denied charges against her, was meeting with Roy when she was arrested in Mexico City.

In an exclusive interview broadcast this week on CBC News, Vanier said that two officers from the Canadian police’s commercial crime section visited her in the Mexican prison in mid-March.

She said they told her she was a witness and not a suspect, and they asked dozens of questions about her business dealings with SNC-Lavalin, specifically with Roy and ben Aissa.

Vanier was hired by SNC as a subcontractor to do a security assessment of company operations in Libya in July 2011.

Listen to my interview with Daybreak about Russian elections

Jo, Pierre and Volker were the first journalists to be killed in that war. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, since September 2001 13 foreign journalists and six Afghan reporters have been killed in Afghanistan.

This is the dispatch I filed to the Montreal Gazette on the following day, on November 12 (on my birthday) 2001.

CHAGHATAY, Afghanistan – Johanne’s bullet-riddled body lay sprawled on the back of a Russian-made armoured personnel carrier, her dead eyes staring into the billions of stars in the Afghan sky.

There was nothing I could do for her but to tie a piece of cloth around her head to close her half-open mouth and hold her lifeless hand for one last bumpy ride on Afghan roads.

I met Johanne Sutton, a soft-spoken 35-year-old reporter for Radio France International, at a press conference by Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, the Northern Alliance Foreign Minister. He was late flying from the Panjshir Valley, so Johanne and I spent about four hours chatting.

Then I ran into her at Commander Mamur Hassan’s house, in Dasht-e Qala, just two days before she and two other journalists were killed.

Sunday, Nov. 11, went badly for me from the beginning. I got lost, fell into a mudhole and was laughed at by half of the population of Khojabhuddin. With both my computer and my satellite phone crushed, I had to borrow a colleague’s phone to dictate a story just before deadline.

Otherwise, it was like any other day in my two weeks in Afghanistan. Together with my translator, Massoud, we went to the one-storey compound of the Foreign Ministry in Khojabhuddin to get permission to visit the front lines on the Chaghatay Hill, where we were expecting one last push by the Northern Alliance forces to take a strategic Taliban hilltop stronghold.

Most of the reporters were not allowed to visit the front line during the first night of the offensive, but on Saturday the trenches on Chaghatay were full of them.

I knew most of them by first name only. We would run into each other during rare press conferences or on the front lines.

In the forward trenches I ran into Paul McGeough, a Sydney Morning Herald reporter, and Volker Handoik, a 40-year-old writer for Stern, a German magazine. You simply could not miss Volker — in the crowd of dark faces and black hair, Volker’s long, curly blond hair, tied in a knot in the back, stuck out like an orange warning signal. He was wearing a long cotton-filled Uzbek coat over his Western clothes, which made him stand out even more.

I had met both of them at Commander Hassan’s house and we started chatting, trying to stay cool while the war around us was heating up. Nothing breaks the ice between people more than the shared experience of shelling.

At around 3 p.m. the Alliance forces started hitting Taliban positions on the hill ahead.

Mortars fired in the trench behind us as Katyusha rockets whizzed overhead on their way to Taliban trenches.

The Taliban responded without much enthusiasm, lobbing shells way off the mark, the closest landing about 200 metres from our trenches. Paul, Volker and I ducked just in case.

But it was close enough for Commander Muhammad Bashir, who immediately ordered three tanks to open fire at the Taliban positions.

The tanks fired with a deafening thud, releasing an enormous flash and disappearing in a cloud of smoke and dust. Four armoured carriers started moving up the hill, their tracks screeching on the sand and rock.

Satisfied by the performance of his troops, Bashir pulled out his prayer mat and started his prayers.

Looking at Bashir bending and kneeling on the mat, Volker complained he was suffering from back pain. I offered him some Motrin that I always carry with me in a first-aid kit.

At around 5 p.m. voices on the radio became more excited. “God bless you, Mazar,” Bashir yelled into the radio to one of his platoon commanders who managed to fire a rocket-propelled grenade into the narrow slit of a Taliban bunker, causing an enormous explosion.

Bashir sent the Russian-made vehicles to finish the job. “There are foreigners fighting on the Taliban side. They will never surrender and they fight like mad dogs,” Bashir explained.

By 5:30 p.m., as it was getting dark, Taliban shelling ceased completely. Alliance officers and Western reporters left the trenches to get a better view of what was happening.

“We have captured all five Taliban bunkers, the area is clear,” a voice on the radio said. “We’ve driven them one kilometre from their positions.”

Bashir ordered one of the vehicles to come back. “I’m going there to see what’s going on,” Bashir said.

Volker, who was on good terms with Bashir, asked whether he could ride with him. Other reporters, including me, requested the same favour.

“It might be very dangerous,” Bashir said. “There are mines near the Taliban trenches and the Taliban might launch a counter-offensive.” But the temptation of seeing the almost legendary Taliban trenches and bunkers dug in the hill was too strong.

In complete darkness we climbed on top of the carrier. There were about 12 or 15 people sitting there already. Volker was one of the first ones to climb on. Paul and I found a place next to him. I was sitting on the front right side of the turret, facing forward, holding on to the anti-tank rocket launcher. Paul and Volker were on my right.

Just before we were about to go I saw Pierre Billaud, a 31-year-old reporter with Radio Luxembourg, board the carrier in the back.

I never saw Johanne get on the vehicle. I had seen her a couple of hours earlier. She was descending the hill as I was climbing it. We waved to each other and continued on.

Once everybody was on, Bashir, who was sitting in the commander’s seat behind the driver, gave the order to move ahead.

The powerful engine revved, sending hundreds of sparks out of the exhaust pipe, and the vehicle jerked forward, gathering speed.

The driver followed exactly in the tracks of other vehicles, where small craters indicated anti-personnel mines that were set off. I prayed the Taliban did not lay any anti-tank mines. We passed a first line of trenches that looked exactly like the Alliance trenches we had just left.

Approaching the second line, we passed an Alliance platoon marching toward Taliban positions. The second line of trenches was bombed much heavier than the first and a huge crater blocked our way. There was no sign of bodies or abandoned equipment.

The fighting had subsided considerably and only occasional red tracer bullets could be seen flying gracefully from one position to another.

The armoured personnel carrier negotiated its way around the crater, its tracks screeching busily in the softened soil.

It was gathering speed after passing the crater when, suddenly, shots rang out barely 30 metres to the right of us. At least one machine gun and five AK-47s were firing at us, their muzzle flashes illuminating the night.

As soon as the first shots were fired people started jumping from the armoured carrier.

Volker, who was sitting on the edge, appeared to be one of the first ones to jump. But he had been shot in the head and went into a death roll off the armoured carrier.

“Mines and unfamiliar territory, don’t jump!” flashed in my mind.

Volker, in his green Uzbek coat rolling on the ground like a stuntman, was one of the last things I saw before the driver made a sharp left turn and started descending a steep hill. Those who had nothing to hold on to fell down.

I was thrown in the air as we jolted violently and landed a metre away, flat on my back atop the armoured carrier, holding on to the cannon.

Bullets started ricocheting off the armour; then I heard the familiar sound of the rocket- propelled grenade and caught sight of an orange ball of fire moving fast in our direction.

In the second it took the rocket to hit us I remember thinking: “If it’s an anti-tank RPG, we’re fried.” The back doors of Russian armoured personnel carriers are hollow and serve as gas tanks, even a large calibre machine gun can turn the vehicle into a moving torch if it hits the doors.

The carrier shook as the grenade hit us and I felt the explosion roll over me. Fortunately, it was an anti-personnel grenade and it didn’t pierce the armour.

A few seconds later, which felt like hours, we got out of the view of the Taliban gunners. We reached a hollow and the driver turned off the lights and stopped.

“Levon, you speak French don’t you?” I heard Paul’s voice. He pointed toward somebody lying face down and holding on to the straps on the side of the turret. I had met Veronique Rebeyotte, a Radio France reporter, at Dr. Abdullah’s press conference.

“We are missing two French reporters, Pierre and Johanne,” Veronique said. “I think their translator is missing too.”

“Se journalista kharija wa yak tarjman [Three foreign reporters and an interpreter],” we yelled at Bashir, pointing him overboard.

Bashir immediately got on the radio repeating our message to somebody on the other end. Then Bashir, the driver and two other soldiers who had managed to hang on to the armour started arguing. After they reached a consensus the driver backed up to another hill. But almost immediately we were under fire from another group of Taliban fighters. Red tracer bullets flew overhead, barely clearing the turret.

After several sharp turns in different directions, which left me disoriented, we found another hollow to hide in. We heard voices and one by one people started showing up, appearing like shadows from the darkness.

After waiting several minutes, Bashir and the others decided to change position again.

We were under fire again but more people found us in the new position. Now only Volker, his interpreter, Pierre, Johanne and their interpreter were missing.

We waited some more but there was no sign of the missing. Finally Bashir sent scouts to reconnoiter the way out. Half an hour later the scouts returned and guided us down a rocky ravine and back to the foot of Chaghatay.

Bashir sent a search party to look for the missing people and invited us to his tent. Veronique started making phone calls to editors.

As we sat in the tent cross-legged, eating rice with our hands, there was no sense of the tragedy. It seemed that Volker and the others would walk in any minute.

Then at around 9 p.m. we heard the word “kharija” over the radio and ran out.

As we were getting closer, Massoud, my translator said: “She was killed.” Johanne lay there as soldiers in tank helmets stood on the armour and shook their heads in disbelief. They said she was found in the Taliban trenches. The search team had to attack the trenches to retrieve her body. They said there might have been another body but they could not get to it.

“Can you come up with us to the ministry of defence?” the vehicle commander asked me. “We need somebody to hold her so she doesn’t fall over.”

Volker and Pierre were found dead early in the morning. They, and Johanne, are the first foreign journalists to die in Afghanistan. Their interpreters are still missing.