The Jade West Group, a leading nephrite jade company in North America for the past 30 years, drew many buyers at their 2015 GJX booth. Prized in Chinese culture for over 5,000 years, nephrite regained its momentum in the domestic Chinese market after the 2008 Beijing Olympics, when it was used in the gold, silver, and bronze medals (figure 1). The Chinese government launched a campaign promoting the significance of nephrite jade in the country’s history. This reignited the love of nephrite among the Chinese people, and the increasing demand and price drove a new surge of jade rush in northern British Columbia (BC).
A tectonic belt running from Alaska through British Columbia to Mexico favored the formation of nephrite. Tectonic and lithological contacts are the predominant ore body controls. BC has more than 50 known nephrite deposits, distributed mainly along tectonic inclusions of country rocks, dikes, and mafic rock layers within serpentinites, or along the contact between serpentinite and the wall rocks. This formation is very similar to other green nephrite occurrences all over the world. Nephrite is found both in situ and as boulders; the Polar Pride boulder, found in BC’s Polar mine, is a well-known example of the latter (figure 2).