[BCMA] Vancouver Sun business cover story on Britannia Mine Museum

[Moderated BCMA subscriber listserv.]

http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Britannia+museum+hails/3508820/story.ht
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Britannia museum hails new era

By SCOTT SIMPSON, Vancouver Sun

September 10, 2010 6:26 PM

 

 

B.C. Mining Museum shows off its new look this week, as new buildings are up
and more displays there for tourists to see.

 

B.C. Mining Museum shows off its new look this week, as new buildings are up
and more displays there for tourists to see.

Photograph by: Bill Keay, PNG

Just the other day, Kirstin Clausen had one of those moments that museum
curators live for.

An elderly woman came into the office/gift shop at Britannia Mining Museum.
She was downcast to learn that one of the museum's newly restored buildings,
containing the story of the venerable mining town and its people, was not
yet open to the public.

Clausen couldn't say no, so instead she said, "follow me" and gave the woman
a personal tour of a building that will be unveiled later this month, as
part of a grand reopening of the museum and its arrival as a major-league
British Columbia tourist destination.

Clausen was not aware of it, but the woman was one of 60,000 people who had
lived at Britannia at one time or another during its 70-year history as a
copper producer. That history extended back to 1904. Before the Second World
War it was the biggest copper mine in the British Commonwealth.

Due in no small part to Britannia's isolation at the northeastern end of
Howe Sound - road and rail service arrived only in the mid-1960s - the
residents shared a rich community life and the visitor was anxious to see
how the museum had chosen to recount it.

The elderly woman walked over to one of the biggest photo-and-story displays
in the building, pointed to a teenage girl seated on a wooden throne and
wearing the Britannia "Copper Queen's" copper crown, and said, "That's me."

"I really had no idea who she was," Clausen recalled. "When those things
happen, that's why you believe in museums. It's important to have a place
where stories are remembered."

Clausen has accumulated a few stories herself during a 10-year tenure as the
mine's curator: furnace breakdowns, power failures, a 20-storey copper mill
whose status as a national historic site was belied by its decrepit
appearance and, nearby, one of the worst environmental disasters in North
America.

When the Britannia mine sputtered to a close in 1974 there were no federal
or provincial laws compelling the owners to clean up the site. Storm water
flowing through abandoned mine tunnels generated an acidic, toxic broth that
flowed into Howe Sound. Up to 700 kilograms of copper and other heavy metal
sludge per day was discharged into the marine environment.

It made the sea bed barren at the outflow of Britannia Creek and threatened
salmon populations a few kilometres north in the Squamish River system.

As recently as 2001, the Outdoor Recreation Council of B.C. named Britannia
Creek the most endangered stream in the province.

What was needed most, Clausen recalled in a recent interview, was
leadership.

The Winter Olympics were coming, and international media would be driving
the Sea to Sky Highway right past Britannia town site, past thousands of
broken window panes at the mill, and for those who looked just a bit deeper,
past the most compelling reason in B.C. for environmentalists to oppose new
mining projects.

It was a bottleneck for the industry, and the museum as well.

"Often I would hear someone say, 'Oh, there is so much potential here' - and
I was sitting in an office that had inadequate heat, and there were power
outages all the time, and we couldn't do anything because of contamination,"
Clausen recalled.

At the initiative of the provincial government, a $30-million water
treatment facility, commissioned in 2006, began removing the toxic sludge
from the flow of the creek. It is adjacent to the museum, and continues to
serve as one of its exhibits.

Reflecting a global boom in the price of metals and minerals, notables in
the B.C. industry including individuals Ross Beaty and Lucas Lundin and
heavyweight companies such as Teck Resources and Hunter Dickinson found the
financial resources to support a re-imagination of the mining museum.
Contributions from industry and the provincial and federal governments total
$14.7 million to date, of which $9 million has been spent on facilities and
amenities.

Heritage buildings have been moved onto new foundations in a cluster at the
base of the mill and there are boardwalks, plazas and children's play areas.
More improvements are planned.

The grand reopening is next weekend, Sept. 18 and 19.

"A whole bunch of people have been toiling away for years in the background
and they are celebrating that moment. Most of us don't really know what
journey they went through," said Michael McPhie of the Hunter Dickinson
Group, co-chair of Britannia Beach Historical Society and vice-chair of the
society's fundraising committee.

"It has the potential, and now represents a very new, refreshed, hopefully
engaging opportunity for people to see how important minerals are to
society, and that we've learned from the past.

"It was a big part of B.C.'s history and economics during its time. But then
it became quite a poignant environmental legacy for a number of years.
Through the funding from industry and the participation from government and
the community, the environmental issues have been addressed.

"There are some things I wish never happened, as an industry person, but we
learned from those. We don't hide from them."

ssimpson at vancouversun.com

 

 

BMM Logo Black+White-01.jpg

 

Yvonne Chiang, Publicist

Britannia Mine Museum

604-880-5090

yochiang at shaw.ca

www.britanniaminemuseum.ca 

 

 

 

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