Jane Camp
Image courtesy of The British Columbia Museum of Mining
It wasn't that the mine was not financially successful; after much wheeling, dealing, fundraising and building, the Britannia Mine became fully operational in 1905 and would become very lucrative. Owned by the Britannia Mining and Smelting Company, a branch of the Howe Sound Company, the mine promised to produce a million tonnes of high-grade copper ore. During its 70 years of operation, the mine would work hard to live up to that promise. It would also become home to more than more than 60,000 miners of multiple races who would haul 50 million tonnes of rich copper ore to the surface. In the 1930's the mine would produce its first zinc and pyrite.
As the mine became established, two communities sprang up to house its workers - Jane Camp and the Beach. Life was peaceful and pleasant in these thriving settlements lining Britannia Creek. Residents of the whitewashed houses indulged in busy social schedules - dancing, theatre, billiards, bowling as well as the many idyllic activities associated with isolated, close knit communities. But even idyllic mining communities seldom escaped the cold hand of death; the Britannia miners were no exception.
Twice the miners would forfeit their lives at Mother Nature's whim. And this time, the townspeople would fall alongside the miners. The two events claimed 93 lives; history called them "two of Canada's most significant natural disasters."
Mother Nature's first attack occurred just after midnight March 22, 1915. Canada's second largest landslide -- in terms of lives lost -- was a snowy jumble of rocks and mud forced down the mountain by an early thaw. It cut a wide swath down the mountainside, took a 90 degree turn at its base, then split into a two-tined monster that would gouge a trench into the earth 30 metres wide and 12 metres deep. Broken rock and saturated surface materials ploughed through Jane Camp, engulfing mine facilities and homes. The happy little community of Jane Camp, established only 12 years earlier, lost 56 of its residents - twenty-two others suffered injuries. Sadly, many of the dead were never recovered.
As in any senseless disaster, the slide demolished buildings indiscriminately - the mine office, cookhouse, dining room, store, rock crusher, candle house, tramway terminus, six homes and a bunkhouse. Fifteen metres of debris, which had shot 1.5 kilometres down the mountain, had buried the camp. The slide stopped just short of the Tunnel Camp townsite and missed a powder magazine by a mere metre. Mud plugged shut a second bunkhouse, killing at least four of the men housed there. Some reports estimated a total volume of 100,000 cubic metres had sped down the mountainside that dreadful night.
Although the slide took most by surprise, suspicions had existed. Only two days earlier, a company inspection labelled the mountainside above Jane Camp "solid," but independent photographs taken at the time revealed a gaping tension crack in the area.
The 1915 Minister of Mines Annual Report called the event a "disastrous snowslide" while others called it a "snow avalanche disaster," but snow had not been the culprit this time. Survivors soon began reconstructing their lives and their homes -- on higher ground.
Six years later, at 9:30 in the evening of October 28, 1921, disaster struck again. A 20-metre high wall of water crashed through Britannia Beach. A fill had failed after six days of heavy rain. The community was devastated. Thirty-seven lay dead. Almost half the 110 homes were gone -- flattened or swept out to sea. Thirty-five families were left homeless. An island of dislodged houses stood as a bizarre sentinel to the disaster.
Image courtesy of The British Columbia Museum of Mining
The flood, it turned out, had resulted from the collapse of the tunnel fill, following ponding of water behind it when the overflow culvert in the structure was plugged. It was a dam break flood but tunnel fill was never meant to serve as a dam. So the Coroner's Jury declared, it "criminal neglect on the part of the Britannia Mining and Smelting Co. Ltd. . . .for deliberately allowing the blocking of . . . Britannia Creek causing a menace to persons living at Britannia Beach."
The tunnel fill substituting as a dam had failed miserably - some reports say as much as 53,000 cubic metres of water were released by the collapse of the tunnel fill. The pinnacle of the world's copper mining industry had once more felt Mother Nature's wrath.
Again, the resilient survivors rebuilt and by 1929, Britannia Mines had grown to the largest copper producer in the British Commonwealth. Having survived landslide and flood, it would go on to weather the great depression, World War II, union strikes, and plummeting copper prices. The mine and its communities survived to see a road wend in at last in 1948, linking the little community to Squamish and ending what some considered their idyllic isolation. Soon the BC railway chugged its way into the community as well.
The mine that could not be crippled by landslide, flood, depression or war, finally collapsed under the heavy weight of financial problems. On November 1, 1974, the final shift's whistle blew a three-minute requiem. But in some ways, the mine's presence remains strong. In 1975, the BC Museum of Mining was opened to the public on site. In 1988 - one hundred years after the accidental discovery of copper ore at Britannia mine - the mine's concentrator was declared a National Historic Site. Britannia later became a filming location and a retreat for artists.
But it seemed Mother Nature had not yet spent her fury at Britannia Mine. Remediation efforts are ongoing to combat the effects of naturally occurring metal sulphide ores exposed to air and rain from seventy years of mining. The exposure resulted in chemical reactions that produce concentrated acidic, metal-contaminated water. The Britannia Mine saga continues.
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