Place:Britannia Beach, Squamish-Lillooet, British Columbia, Canada

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Britannia Beach is a small unincorporated community in the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District located approximately 55 kilometres north of Vancouver, British Columbia on the Sea-to-Sky Highway on Howe Sound. It has a population of about 300. It includes the nearby Britannia Creek, a small to mid-sized stream that flows into Howe Sound that was historically one of North America's most polluted waterways.

The community first developed between 1900 and 1904 as the residential area for the staff of the Britannia Mining and Smelting Company. The residential areas and the mining operation were physically interrelated, resulting in coincidental mining and community disasters through its history.

Today, the town is host to the Britannia Mine Museum, formerly known as the British Columbia Museum of Mining, on the grounds of the old Britannia Mines. The mine's old Concentrator facilities, used to separate copper ore from its containing rock, are a National Historic Site of Canada.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

The first settler/European person to sail the South Western inlet of what is now British Columbia was George Vancouver in 1792. When surveying the waters, George Vancouver gave name to the area, Howe Sound, in honour of Admiral Richard Howe. Britannia Beach took its name from the nearby Britannia Range of mountains, which form the east wall of the mountainous shore of Howe Sound south of Britannia Beach. About 1859 Royal Navy hydrographer Captain Richards of HMS Plumper named the range of mountains for HMS Britannia, the third of a series of vessels to bear that name. The Britannia was never in these waters.

Copper mine (1888-1974)

A copper discovery on Britannia Mountain by Dr. A. A. Forbes in 1888 led to the development of the Britannia Mine. 10 years after Dr. A. A. Forbes discovered copper, Oliver Furry made 5 claims in the surrounding area. In 1899, a mining engineer named George Robinson was able to convince financial backers that the property had great potential. For several years, companies were formed, merged and dissolved in efforts to raise capital. Large scale mining began in 1903 with the completion of a concentrator that had a 200 ton capacity which was funded by Grant B. Schley. The Britannia Mining and Smelting Company, a branch of the Howe Sound Company, finally commenced mining in the early 1900s, and owned the site for the next sixty years. The first ore was shipped to the Crofton Smelter on Vancouver Island in 1904, and the mine achieved full production in 1905.

A town had grown up around the mine and a post office opened on January 1, 1907 where it was named after the nearby mine.

In 1912 John Wedderburn Dunbar Moodie was authorized to upgrade the operation and increase production from the mine. Improvements in the mineral separation processes stimulated plans for a new mill (No. 2), which was completed in 1916 and was capable of producing 2000 tons of ore per day. The onset of World War I increased the demand for copper and the price rose sharply.

On March 21, 1915 an avalanche destroyed the Jane Camp. Sixty men, women and children were killed and it was a terrible blow to the tiny community. Construction began immediately on a new, safer town at the level above the Britannia Beach site. This portion of the community became known as the "Town site" or "Mount Sheer".

In March 1921 during a brief period when the mine was shut down, mill No. 2 burnt to the ground.

On October 28, 1921 after a full day of torrential rain, a massive flood destroyed much of that portion of the community and mine operations that existed on the lower beach area. 50 of 110 homes were destroyed and thirty-seven men, women and children lost their lives. The flood was caused because the mining company had dammed up a portion of the Creek during the construction of a railway, and when this dam gave way the town below was flooded. Carleton Perkins Browning directed the reconstruction of this portion of the community and the new No. 3 mill, which stands today.

Being an isolated, close knit community which could only be accessed by boat, life in both of Britannia's towns was never dull. The Britannia Mining and Smelting Company tried to minimize turnover by providing amenities and implementing family-friendly policies. Facilities included libraries, club rooms, billiard rooms, swimming pools, tennis courts and even bowling. A thriving social calendar saw sporting events, theatrical productions, dances, movies and parties held throughout the year.

The mine boomed in the late 1920s and early 1930s, becoming the largest producer of copper in the British Commonwealth by 1929, under the management of the mine manager C.P. Browning.

In the 1940s there were talks to build an artist village in Britannia's hills, but that plan did not proceed.

Miners unionized in 1946 and suffered through their first strike. Low copper prices saw the Britannia Mine Company reduced to seven employees, and in 1959 it went into liquidation.

In 1963 the Anaconda Mining Company bought the property and production continued for the next eleven years. 300 employees managed to produce 60,000 tons of concentrate each year. Ferries services stopped around May 1965 after the highway and railway connections had been constructed. The connections made it easier to transport the copper, but high operating costs and taxes eventually forced the mine to close on November 1, 1974. The company did not attempt to clean up the mine and chemical wastes that it produced, since environmental protection laws had not yet been enacted and enforcement of the Fisheries Act was never applied. A newly elected labour government presented higher anticipated union costs and the ore vein had already been 'highgraded'. With the closure of the mine, the economy of the town diminished rapidly, and the railway station shut down soon after. Residents responded to the closure of the mine with a museum plan, preserving the copper concentrator and other historic buildings as part of the British Columbia Mining Museum [now Britannia Mine Museum].

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