But the region also boasts a famous diamond mine called Mwadui Williamson's, after a Canadian geologist who first owned it and then sold it to De Beers, the South African diamond giant.
Then just ten years ago, 190 miles north of Yellowknife, a determined and then obscure Canadian geologist, Charles Fipke, found the rich Diavik mine, vaulting Canada from irrelevant to third-largest supplier of diamonds, after Africa (again) and Russia.