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go in looking for uranium minerals, all kinds of things,” she says. “You’d
have to have a real passion for it,” she laughs, “because you could dig away
all day and find two or three grubby dark little minerals. People thought
we were crazy.”
But Mike had “a knack for finding interesting minerals,” she says.
“He could look at the geology of an area – the crevices and different
coloring – and pick this little spot to dig in, as opposed to the one twenty
yards away,” she marvels.
“Many active miners produce mineral specimens,” Carole says, “and
often one miner would refer us to another that he had heard had a ‘little
stash of garnet,’ and we’d go and look at them. We’d go into these pubs –
which, by the way, had a policy that required women to go in a separate
entrance – and you’d hear about one man in some house who had a group
of crystals.”
Mike and Carole developed relationships among collectors and
maintained their hobby for a number of years while pursuing careers in
Ottawa. “We had a mentor, an old South African gentleman that lived in
Toronto,” Carole says, “and [because of him] we learned how to make a
business out of our hobby.”
The following is the rest of our interview:
Q
: A number of years ago, while visiting your office, I ran into an English
gent who had an appointment with you. He wore wrinkled khakis and a
three-day-old beard and opened up an oily sack containing a number of large
precious stones, of which he seemed particularly proud. He also had photos of
his trip to Afghanistan, where he procured most of those stones, showing him
riding in the back of a pickup truck surrounded by AK-47-toting mujahideen
fighters. Is this common?
A
:
It’s common that these beautiful stones are found in remote
places, and in many different countries, some of which may have a lot
of political unrest and change heads of state frequently. The man you
are referring to is a friend of ours who became very friendly with the
anti-Taliban Northern Alliance tribal leader Ahmad Shah Massoud,
who was killed by supporters of Al Qaeda disguised as journalists. The
mujahideen controlled most of the lapis mines at that time, and they
produced more lapis then than they had for many years because they
needed the money.
You and Mike traveled to the northwest frontier province of Peshawar in
Pakistan around the same time (mid 1980s) to obtain what you’ve described
as “very fine mineral specimens.” What was that like?
It was exciting. We didn’t go into Afghanistan; we stayed in Pakistan
and adjoining tribal areas. But it was not dangerous for us then; the people
respected us. It was strikingly rugged and beautiful, one of the most
beautiful places I’ve ever been; we traveled along dirt roads where the driving
was treacherous, and [traversed] wild rivers; we slept in converted army
They may live in remote corners of the world, but these gem traders know
the current value of their product, as Mike Ridding (bottom left) tries to
negotiate a fair price