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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Monday was a depressing 41-64-160. The TSX Venture Exchange fell 6 points to 912 while polished diamond prices rose slightly. Dr. Hans Black and James Wyant's Williams Creek Gold Ltd. (WCX) jumped 2.5 cents to 8.5 cents on 420,000 shares. The company is still seeking a permanent CEO; both Dr. Black and Mr. Wyant have filled the role on an interim basis this summer. It is also waiting for Almaden Minerals Ltd. (AMM: $1.52), its co-venturer at the ATW diamond play south of Lac de Gras, to resume drilling. Alexander Stewart's Xmet Inc. (XME) closed unchanged at 3.5 cents on 3.65 million shares. Xmet has found a geophysical anomaly at Blackflake West, a graphite prospect near the Zenyatta Ventures Ltd. (ZEN: $1.95) discovery at Albany, in Northern Ontario.

Patrick Evans's Mountain Province Diamonds Inc. (MPV), down 6.5 cents to $5.63 on 28,000 shares, is cheering the Canadian government's approval of a Type A water licence for a new diamond mine at Gahcho Kue, 250 kilometres northeast of Yellowknife. Mr. Evans, CEO since 2007, extended his appreciation and thanks to De Beers Canada, the operator at Gahcho Kue, "for successfully guiding the project through the regulatory process." His current reverie may obscure the fact his co-venturer required the occasional sharp prod along the way. De Beers earned into the Gahcho Kue project after Mountain Province discovered the AK-5034 pipe in the mid-1990s by promptly discovering the Hearne and Tuzo pipes. Still, its other projects always seemed more important. Gahcho Kue was dutifully awakened, examined and sent back to bed at regular intervals through the 2000s while De Beers poured $2-billion into other ventures.

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