Locations key to the history of the most precious stones in the world are many. In Canada there is – as the name itself indicates – Cap Diamant. An land which is today the city of Québec, profitable raw materials were once being sought by Jacques Cartier, traveller, privateer and explorer. Carter was convinced he had chanced upon – literally – a vein of gold. The magnificent metal was not, however, to be found… And diamonds? The stones extracted by Cartier at considerable cost turned out to be inexpensive quartz. Losses were immense, and the search time-consuming. Since the time the privateer-traveller committed his error, diamonds from Canada have been referred to as an example of something non-existent. And yet several hundred years later – in 1863 – it transpired during the exploration of postglacial deposits in North America that Cartier was right about a great deal. Dug up there was the first Canadian diamond! Why though are Canadian diamonds to be found solely in postglacial deposits? Soon after making the find Professor Hobbs of the University of Wisconsin stated that the cause could be a Pleistocene ice sheet migrating from the north. Several decades later, in 1920, the area of Ontario saw a further stone discovered, a 33 carat! With time there turned out to be more such finds, and in the 1960s the mining company De Beers began permanent work in Canada.