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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Wednesday was a weak 63-113-134 as the TSX Venture Exchange fell six points to 609. Ewan Mason's Star Diamond Corp. (DIAM) continued to tread water today, dropping one-half cent to eight cents on 72,000 shares. The company's indefatigable shareholders -- and presumably the insiders -- are tiring of the long wait for Rio Tinto to return the FalCon diamond project and quit the joint venture.

Sean Roosen and Paul Martin's Osisko Gold Royalties Ltd. (OR) added five cents to $16.66 on 594,000 shares. The gold royalty company is also a diamond miner -- a role it reluctantly assumed in 2019 when Stornoway Diamond Corp. went bankrupt mining diamonds at its Renard project in the Otish Mountains district of north-central Quebec. Four years later, Renard is again a drag on Osisko's balance sheet, thanks to sagging rough diamond prices.

Mr. Roosen, Osisko's chairman, was chief executive officer in 2017, when his company paid $1.12-billion for a portfolio of royalties held by Orion Mine Finance Group. Osisko was after gold payments, but Orion's 9.6-per-cent streaming arrangement at Renard was hardly a throw-in -- Osisko applauded the stream as "one of the three cornerstone assets being acquired."

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