Accompanying Persons Programme
12 IKC Accompanying Persons Programme
The exciting Accompanying Persons Programme to make your stay interesting, educational, memorable and fun, is now ready to be booked. Once registered as an Accompanying Person (AP) of a fully paid 12 IKC delegate, you can purchase tickets via the Registration Site for the following:
- The 12 IKC evening social events: the Icebreaker and the Farewell Dinner which are also attended by all conference delegates. You will be notified as soon as any new social events are added.
- FT06 – The Field Trip to Diamonds de Canada is open to Accompanying Persons as well as 12 IKC delegates.
- Two days of organised activities in and around Yellowknife. Day 1 provides you with an orientation of the city and surroundings and visits to the best landmarks as well as other highlights. Day 2 will be two very special yet contrasting experiences unique to Yellowknife: a Great Slave Lake boat cruise and a visit to a one-of-a-kind Arctic wildlife gallery. We hope you will join us on both days to see the best of Yellowknife and get to know the 12 IKC AP group. On Monday your guide will provide information on various other Yellowknife activities which may be of interest to you to during the remainder of your stay. APs with mutual interests will have the opportunity to book as a group, or individually, with other local Yellowknife tour operators.
Check out Tourist Attractions and Flavours of Yellowknife pages for more ideas. Don’t forget to follow 12 IKC on social media.
Sunday, 07 July 2024 – $125 CAD
Icebreaker Evening: “Diamonds and Ice”
12 IKC’s Icebreaker welcomes delegates to Yellowknife, one of the main gateways to the Canadian North, to start the celebration of 30 Years of Diamonds in Canada and 50 Years of International Kimberlite Conferences! In Canada, diamonds are intimately associated with ice so this is a true icebreaker. 12 IKC’s opening event will provide attendees the chance to experience the Canadian North in winter without donning a parka and braving the icy cold. The winter wonderland will be held in a marquee in the Somba K’e Civic Plaza on the shores of beautiful Frame Lake. The Icebreaker venue is conveniently located within walking distance of the conference venues and hotels.
Wednesday, 10 July 2024 – $100 CAD
Beer Barge
The Beer Barge was once a proud tradition in the city’s early water faring days. Until 1960, when the highway connecting Yellowknife to the rest of Canada was completed, all transportation to the city was by airplane, ice road freighting or in summer most freight was handled by barge traffic on Great Slave Lake. In the true northern winters, the lake is frozen for six months and with spring breakup the arrival of the much anticipated first barge of the season was a big deal! Most importantly, beer was always the priority for thirsty miners who, by this time, had run out of their winter supply.
This beer garden-style evening will be held at the newly opened Yellowknife Historical Society Mining Museum located at the shore of Great Slave Lake when there will be an opportunity to explore the museum.
Friday, 12 July 2024 – $175 CAD
Farewell Dinner: “Bush Flying Bash”
To conclude the 12 IKC celebrations of 30 Years of Diamonds in Canada, we acknowledge the key role of bush flying in the exploration for diamonds, especially in the adverse conditions of the Canadian North. The Farewell Dinner will be held in the Acasta Heliflight Hangar at the Yellowknife Airport where the attendees will step into a true Northern Canadian Tundra in summer. Guests will enjoy a sit-down dinner set with a few speeches and awards; entertainment and dancing are also on the menu. Many lasting memories will be created, and new stories will undoubtedly be written as attendees celebrate 50 Years of International Kimberlite Conferences and bid au revoir to 12 IKC.
Sunday 7 July or Tuesday 9 July or Thursday 11 July 2024 – $50 CAD
Field Trip FT06: Diamonds de Canada
FT06 – The Field Trip to Diamonds de Canada will provide an opportunity to learn about a new technology applied to process of cutting rough diamonds. The owner, Benjamin King revived the Polar Bear diamond, and his facility is dedicated to support Polar Bears of Canada, by cutting only 16,000 diamonds, tied to the number of polar bears left in Canada. Each of the 16,000 would be at a minimum of 1.50 carats and hand selected as a perfect representation of the diamonds from Canada. Diamonds de Canada restarted the Polar Bear diamond cutting for the first time in nearly 20 years. This Field Trip, despite being a short visit for small groups, will allow everyone to ask questions and see how Diamonds de Canada’s unique way of doing things could be a blueprint for creating viable and more sustainable diamond-cutting facilities in other areas where diamonds are discovered. This Field Trip will be offered on Sunday 7 July, Tuesday 9 July and Thursday 11 July. You are encouraged to book the trip now and select the specific time and day once the confirmed programme schedule is released. Majority of the proceeds from this Field Trip will go to Yellowknives Dene First Nation Education Bursary “YKDFN Education Bursary”.
Accompanying Persons Tours
Day One: Monday 8 July 2024 – $195 CAD
City Tour of Yellowknife
On Monday 8 July, APs will meet at the Explorer Hotel at 10:30 for a Meet and Greet to get to know others in the group. The group will be picked up by bus at 11:00 for the tour of Yellowknife which will start with a light lunch in one of its most famous restaurants, the legendary Bullocks Bistro, set in a quaint log cabin in the heart of Old Town, which has been serving the best local fish wild-caught directly from Great Slave Lake for more than 30 years.
After lunch, the official City Tour of Yellowknife will commence, and it will include:
- Old Town,
- Latham Island,
- the unique Ragged Ass Road,
- a photo stop at Wildcat Café, one of Yellowknife’s earliest buildings from 1937,
- the old-style general store Weaver and Devore which is Yellowknife’s first trading store that still supplies northerners,
- Just Furs,
- a local carver’s shop,
- the Bush Pilot’s Monument dedicated to the bush pilots and engineers whose lives were lost as they flew the wilderness skies of the Northwest Territories, and here you will also get the best view of Great Slave Lake,
- Yellowknife’s first bank which is a privately owned historic log cabin (Bank of Toronto),
- the northern airline Buffalo Airways (home of the popular TV series ‘Ice Pilots’) with a visit to their hangar with both vintage and active aircraft,
- the NWT Diamond Centre which displays diamond jewellery and sells a variety of loose diamonds – mined, cut, and polished in the Northwest Territories,
- a guided tour of the Legislative Building of the Northwest Territories,
- N’Dilo a Yellowknives Dene First Nations community,
- the former Giant Gold Mine with a newly opened Historical Society Mining Museum explaining the origin of Yellowknife,
- and a few other famous landmarks along the way.
This tour will be led by Tracy Therrien a long-time northerner, an experienced guide and the owner and operator of Bucket List Tour.
The bus will drop everyone back at the Explorer at 16:00.
12 IKC requires minimum of 7 APs registered to run the Monday tour (the maximum is 16 participants).
Day Two: Tuesday 9 July 2024 – $295 CAD
Great Slave Lake Boat Cruise and Nature’s North Wildlife Gallery Visit
On Tuesday 9 July, APs will meet again at the Explorer Hotel for coffee at 10:30. The group will be picked up by bus at 10:45 and transported to a local dock for a 3.5-hour Boat Cruise and Shore Lunch. You will be hosted by Carlos Gonzalez of Yellowknife Outdoor Adventures to experience the beauty of only a small fraction of the amazing Great Slave Lake, the 10th largest lake in the world. After a harbour tour and sightseeing, including the houseboat community, you will have a superb Northern Gourmet Shore lunch of freshly caught Great Slave Lake whitefish at their Aurora Island Lodge and then return to the dock where you started.
Then the bus will bring the group to Nature’s North Wildlife Gallery, a unique taxidermy museum which opened in 2023. The Gallery showcases animals from all over the Northwest Territories like never seen before with displays offering an intimate view into the life of each animal and how they interact with different ecosystems, while alive, from polar bears diving for dinner to beavers building their lodges. You will be hosted by Greg Robertson one of the owners. They do not harvest any animals themselves; most of the animal hides are purchased from Indigenous hunters and trappers, and then “built” from pre-formed foam mannequins. This is truly a one-of-a-kind nature museum unlike any you have ever visited before.
The bus will drop everyone back at the Explorer at 16:15.
12 IKC requires minimum of 7 APs registered to run the Tuesday tour (the maximum is 16 participants).
