9 cm across, opaque inky blue cabbing grade, extremely unusual for the locality, found on the dumps a couple of meters from the road! Arnim Walter photograph, T. Jokela collection

The story of an amazing gem aquamarine find at Quadeville in 2001:

In late June of 2001 Harald Fraude of Ulster Park, New York and Al Romey of Poughkeepsie, New York went up to the Bancroft area to collect in the various locations in the area.  On June 28th 2001 they were at the Beryl Pit in Quadeville, Ontario, having a great time collecting many types of minerals.  It was late in the day when, about 30 feet behind the specimen display sign, towards the open quarry pit, Harald saw a bit of dark blue in some hardened mud. 

   He picked up and wiped clean the specimen to find it was actually a 13.2 grams, 66 carat, 41mm X 15mm piece of gem aquamarine! While pretty much the whole piece was gem material, there were only a few perfectly clear and unincluded areas.

   The next day they visited the nearby Rose Quartz Quarry and met three of the four owners there (they also own the Beryl Pit). The owners were very excited, because while they have seen a few small aquamarines come out of the Beryl Pit, they had never seen anything so large and of such good quality for the location. 

   Harald, being a hobbyist faceter, at first felt that he would try to cut this stone himself. After procrastinating for years, and fearing that he would shatter such a rare stone, one of the quarry owners, Dave Patterson, told Harald he knew of this really great gemologist by the name of Brad Wilson that would love to cut such a stone since he specializes in Canadian gems. So Harald handed over the aquamarine gem rough to Dave Patterson, and Dave passed it on to Brad for cutting.

What you see below are two of the three gem Aquamarines that Brad Wilson cut.  

"We shared the three gem aquamarines as such..."

1.63 ct, 7.2 x 6.5mm, Emerald brilliant cut - Harald Fraude
1.30 ct, 7.5mm, triangular cut - Dave Patterson
0.50 ct - Brad Wilson (cut gem not pictured)

Image courtesy of Brad Wilson

There you have it, folks, this ain't Brazil but Ontario does have gem aquamarine. It's out there, you just gotta look for it!