LETTERS TO THE EDITOR — Leave diamond hunters, developers in

Having read the editorial “Silence is not golden” (T.N.M., Aug. 16/93) which referred to ongoing diamond exploration, I, as a highly successful mine-making prospector, offer the following advice.

Initial mineral exploration (more properly, prospecting) is not unlike a fishing or hunting trip. After a “discovery” (a first, intriguing clue) is found, it remains a “maybe” situation.

Even when a discovery is being developed, there is no ultimate assurance of financial success and therefore no reason to speak of the initial venture as an investment; it remains a reasonable or promising development project. If the effort is conducted with public financing, the securities commissions require regular periodic reports, as do the shareholders. Beyond that, the press and stock market operations must wait until — and if — the corporate board approves of interim public releases. Stock markets are unrelated to the industry, save as betting pre-shows for speculators.

Perhaps to the regret of many (and occasionally myself), the days of the “Bay Street Buccaneers” (as described in my book Not for Gold Alone) are past, and so are many of the circumstances of that period.

Apropos of your editorial, leave the serious diamondhunters and developers in peace. It is a tightly managed global monopoly at best and no place for the “penny speculators.” Even the patient and talented boot-and-pick prospectors who located the first evidence of diamonds in the Northwest Territories were fully grubstaked by the major African-Australian producers.

Franc Joubin

Consulting Geologist

Toronto