[BCMA] Vancouver Province article on Britannia Mine Museum

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http://www.theprovince.com/travel/Mining+nuggets+history/3428927/story.html

Mining the nuggets of history

Britannia Museum expansion reveals past, present

 

By Paul Luke, The Province

August 22, 2010

 

 

Britannia Mining Museum's executive director Kirstin Clausen oversees a
$14.7-million rehabilitation of 10 historic buildings, as well as a few new
ones, at the former copper minesite.

 

Britannia Mining Museum's executive director Kirstin Clausen oversees a
$14.7-million rehabilitation of 10 historic buildings, as well as a few new
ones, at the former copper minesite.

Photograph by: Ward Perrin, PNG, The Province

Kirstin Clausen allowed herself a moment of pride three years ago as she
gazed at the reborn mill at the Britannia Mine Museum. 

The mill, which looms over Britannia Beach like a temple to ancient mining
gods, had never looked better. True, the eight-tiered brute would never be
mistaken for The Louvre. 

But the new white cladding and 14,416 hand-puttied panes of glass had
replaced its derelict grandeur with massive industrial grace. 

Then came a phone call from an area resident who said he was appalled at the
gleaming structure that had purged the old one's rundown romance. "You've
just made that mill that had such character look like modern condos," he
said. 

Clausen sympathized. But she had a museum to run -- and propping up a
dilapidated mausoleum to mining would never work. 

The museum takes an even bigger esthetic gamble next month when it unveils
the results to date of a $14.7-million program that has seen it rehabilitate
10 of its 15 historic buildings -- and erect new ones. 

The museum has embraced a contradictory set of challenges -- celebrating
mining's contribution to B.C. while acknowledging the darker sides of its
environmental impact. 

It wants to peer into the past, hopes to encourage visitors to probe
mining's possible future and boost its annual number of visitors from 35,000
to 60,000 -- ultimately, pushing that attendance to 80,000. 

"With 60,000, we're squeaking by at being self-sufficient," Clausen says,
fighting to be heard over the power saws finishing the visitors' centre. 

"If we can double our attendance in the first 18 months with our new
experience, and we're confident we can, then you do like every other
business or museum has to -- you work for your audience." 

Those visitors may be surprised to learn how the museum has transcended its
homage to a bygone era to become a living organism. 

The two-lobed brain of this entity is the exhibit-laden visitor centre, and
the administration building, a restored heritage structure showcasing the
local community's history. 

Underground mining is about punching bowels into rock to extract minerals.
The Britannia Mine Museum may have the longest grand intestine of any museum
in the world -- more than 210 kilometres of tunnels carved through mountains
during the copper mine's 69-year life. 

So vast was the labyrinth that it took up to 45 minutes for the "man cars"
to move miners to work sites -- the same time needed to reach the museum
from Vancouver. 

The 20-storey mill, built in 1922, is the heart of the mine and the museum.
In its heyday, it was a hungry, noisy heart, gobbling 7,000 tons of ore a
day and pounding it to powder. 

"This building was never quiet. It rocked and rolled 24/7, and if it was
quiet, there was trouble in the town." Today, its hushed interior has the
intimate power of a cathedral. A startling feature is the lush, reverb-heavy
ambience created as sounds bounce off huge pipes and raw rock faces. 

Choirs and instrumentalists have come to admire -- and be wary of -- the
mill's eerie ability to prolong a sound's life, she says. 

If music goes quiet during a concert, the audience hears the steady drip of
mineral-infused water forming icicle-shaped stalactites. 

"We recognize the huge opportunity that the mill affords us but it isn't our
priority to turn it into a concert hall," Clausen says. 

"It's not heated. You have to sit on folding chairs so it's not for those
who want to to go to The Chan [Centre] but it is a unique venue." 

The machinery building displays equipment used to tear away and transport
rock. These machines were the mine's muscles. 

And the soul? That belongs to the 60,000 people who worked at the operation
or lived at Britannia from 1905 to 1974. 

Some may see the relaunch set for Sept. 18-19 as an ethical dilemma. The
museum owns the site of the old Britannia Mines, once the largest copper
producer in the British Empire. 

Britannia also became one of the worst polluters of its kind in Canada after
it closed in 1974. Rainwater poured through the operation's tunnels and five
open pits, mixing a nasty, acidic soup of dissolved metals that spewed into
Howe Sound. 

A treatment plant built in 2005 cleans up water coming from the old mine. 

Michael McPhie, co-chairman of the Britannia Beach Historical Society, which
governs the museum, says the site's cleanup shows how the mining industry
has evolved. 

"The mine did leave a legacy and I don't think we should hide from that,"
McPhie says. 

"We should learn from it and make sure that what we do is consistent with
the values of society today." 

pluke at theprovince.com 

twitter. com/provmoney

 

 

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