"The second kimberlite brought much better news however. A total of 163.1
kilograms of kimberlite from the Renard-2 body was sent for processing, and it contained 145 diamonds. Of those, 29 stones were classed as macrodiamonds, including five that were large enough to remain on a 0.5 millimetre mesh. The best news was that at least three of the diamonds were also large enough to remain on a one-millimetre screen, with the largest diamond measuring 1.63 millimetres in length.
Ashton's diamonds give the Otish play a big boost, but they are not the first stones recovered from the area. In 1998, Ditem Resources sent 96.1 kilograms of rock for processing, recovering just four diamonds. One of the stones was a macrodiamond 0.96 millimetre in length, and the diamond was large enough to remain on a 0.5-millimetre screen. Despite the very low diamond content, Ditem took a six-tonne mini-bulk sample to test the macrodiamond content of the kimberlite. That program proved to be a complete bust, as not one stone larger than the 0.8-millimetre cutoff was recovered.
The Ashton results clearly seem far superior to the Ditem result, and the numbers seem in line with some of the company's better finds in the Alberta diamond play and the company's recent finds in Nunavut. Ashton threw many millions of dollars at both plays and came up with little to show for its effort until recently, when three new finds breathed new life into both plays."
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