Chad Ulansky cut his teeth on Ekati, Canada’s first diamond discovery, but it’s uranium that he’s hunting for now in Canada’s frozen North.
The Kelowna geologist is president and CEO of Northern Uranium (TSXV:UNO), which is exploring in northwestern Manitoba just beyond the eastern edge of the prolific Athabasca Basin.
Ulansky got his start as a geologist with Chuck Fipke’s Dia Met Minerals, which discovered Ekati, Canada’s first diamond mine, at Lac de Gras in 1991. The discovery by Fipke and Dia Met partner Stu Blusson, which came after years of systematic exploration, rocked the global diamond industry and sparked the biggest staking rush since the discovery of gold in the Klondike.
The Ekati discovery also kick-started the Canadian diamond industry and upset the De Beers cartel. Canada is now the world’s third largest producer of diamonds by value, with four mines and another two under construction.
Last year, Fipke sold his 10% interest in Ekati for $67 million US to Dominion Diamond Corp., which owns 89% of the mine (Blusson retains a 10% interest).
The Fipke-Ulansky partnership began when Ulansky was just a teenager. An avid outdoorsman from a young age, Ulansky met Fipke when the geologist attended a presentation Ulansky gave to a Kelowna scout troop, and the two hit it off. Fipke told him he would call him at the end of the school year.
Sure enough, Fipke phoned in June and offered Ulansky a summer job, a gig that turned into a continuing, decades-long partnership.
Ulansky continued working for Dia Met until its purchase by BHP in 2001.
Along the way, he obtained a bachelor’s degree in geology at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, where he studied under renowned diamond geologist Dr. John Gurney.
Ulansky retained his love of the outdoors while living in Cape Town. In 2001, he set a record for the Three Peaks Challenge, a 50-km mountain running trail that involves ascents of the three major peaks above Cape Town — Devil’s Peak, Table Mountain and Lion’s Head.
URANIUM HUNT
He’s climbing a peak of a different sort as president and CEO of Northern Uranium, which is searching for an economic uranium deposit just outside the Athabasca Basin — home to dozens of competitors.
Northern Uranium has earned a 50% option on the Maguire Lake property from CanAlaska Uranium. The property borders on Saskatchewan and is located along the extension of the Mudjatik Wollaston tectonic zone, which runs southwest-northeast near the Manitoba border. The zone hosts many of the Basin’s major uranium deposits, including Cameco’s Cigar Lake, McArthur River and Key Lake.
For the rest of this profile, click here: http://ceo.ca/2015/02/24/fipke-ulansky-take-uranium-hunt-outside-the-basin/