Flooding Island Copper

“The Island Copper mine was the lowest point in the world by the time it closed, and we went a bit deeper than that, since each ledge was 40 feet. I was there when they filled the pit in with sea water; it was not a very good feeling knowing it could have had a second life as a garbage dump for the entire Lower Mainland and the Island for the next two hundred years.  I try to get there once a year to see how nature is taking over, but it is pretty hard; it has been blocked off very well. In the pit area the water has a few little problems that need to be worked out; it is completely contained, so the water is not going anywhere. We filled it up with water to slow down the reaction and for safety. It would have eroded anyway.

“I was on the milling side of the operation at the mine.  The tunnel was at the top end. You can see that tunnel in the book, The Story of Island Copper, by Craig Aspenall.  The liquidation of the assets was not difficult. Some of the things sold by auction and other parts sold to mining companies, but when it was over some of the equipment was still stored at the mine site.


During the life of the mine, the average number employed was 450, which included quite a few husband and wife teams. In 1971 the Gazette newspaper did a complete cover on Island Copper.
“We first started with the 120 trucks and eventually moved up to the 170’s, we did have a bigger one but it just didn’t work.  It was too big.  I used to look after and repair the big steel balls.  We had our own power station for emergency but the majority of the power came from Campbell River, at one point the average cost of hydro was 1.3 million dollars a month.  We even had our own warehouse which housed up to 27 million dollars in stock at any one time, quite a bit of that was left over when the mine closed because the mine maintained their equipment right until the very last day, so we liquidated that as well. We had our own rescue team, fire team and first aid team. Our mine rescue team competed provincially, where we won awards.  We also won awards for our safety record.  Big Truck


The safety record at the mine was excellent and even though we had some mishaps there never seemed to be anything very serious, where anyone was seriously hurt, most seemed confined to property damage.

In-pit Crusher at work
“This mine did not mickey-mouse anything; production was very important right up to the last day. Most of the stuff sold to the Philippines and South Africa.  The crusher went up to Gibraltar. At Island Copper the only thing they bought second hand when the mine was in operation was the ship loader.
Ship Loading


“This is some information I can give you as an overview of the mine:
General
            Throughout range 50-55,000 tonnes a day
            Feed grade 0.45% coppers 0.017% molybdenum
            Copper Concentrate Ave. 200,000 T.P.Y
            Molybdenum Concentrate Ave. 2500 T.P.Y
            Throughput 52280 T.P.D or 19,082,00 T.P.Y
            Pounds of Copper Produced 108,422,000
            Pounds of Molybdenum Produced 3,268,000

Mills
            6 Semi-Autogenous Grinding Mill 32 ft. Diam x 14 ft (two 40000 hp motors)
            Contains 150 tons of steel balls plus 100 tons of wear liners

Ball Mills
            3 – 16.5 Dia. x 22 ft. (one 4,000 hp motor).

“The average stay of an employee in the mine was fourteen years. You would find a higher turnover in the pit than you would in any of the other works in the mine. In all the time that I was there, we only really had one strike, it was a good company and the closure was good as well. Everyone was well informed about when the mine was going to shut down.

They started informing us as much as ten years before the scheduled to shut down. When it was five years prior to the shut-down, they provided courses within the industry and if you passed they paid for it. At two years, they no longer bothered with that, and paid whether you passed or not. You could take any courses you wanted, even photography. When it was closed, the company provided a transition house at the mall, staffed by a fulltime person who worked for a year. Her job was to write resumes, letters, make sure all the web sites were up to date, keep on top of the newspapers and have the coffee on. When the mine finally shut down and the assets sold, I did not retrain.

“One time, a deer fell into the pit and could not get out. At first, we tried to catch it but then gave up on that. Then we dumped a dirt pile in there so it could climb on it and get out.

“There was a fire up there, one of the transformers blew and it turned into a fuel fire.  We would have caught it sooner if the mine had been operating, but the mine was already shut down.

“I went down to Chile for a while with the company then I had an opportunity to go to the diamond mine up in Yellowknife. I did not go because I am getting too old to go to cold country.  When the company was finished, for the next five years I worked for Henry Butcher, who was the person that was selling the assets.  After that, I went out on my own and now have my own janitorial business that allowed me to stay in Port Hardy.  I also sit on the city council and have done that for quite a while.”
 
John Tidbury, 2006