Yukon Jay - 小祥

Mount Polley & Barkerville

It's been a busy past week and only going to get busier the next 2 weeks.

Wednesday and Thursday the geologists and I finally left the office and did some fieldwork... mainly mine inspections. Wednesday was dedicated to Mount Polley owned by Imperial Metals.

Second time at a mine (first was the coal mine) and I had to get a ride on one of these trucks. This is worth $2 million, the tires are about $800,000.

It's a gold & copper mine... the ores have a 5% grade ratio, which is the highest in North America... in other words they make crazy money here. The profit made from silver alone covers costs of operation... that's not even counting profits made from gold & copper, which is the main commodity.

Me inside these machies. :)

On Saturday was a trip to historic town Barkerville, about 2 hrs southeast of Prince George. In 1862 Billy Barker discovered gold on Williams Creek and people from all over the world rushed to the region. Between 1862 and 1870, 10,000 people converged on the goldfields, creating this boomtown called Barkerville.

Fearing the inundation of Americans, James Douglas declared this a British Colony. To this day people, I suppose Canadians in general, are extremely proud of our British roots, heritage and resistance from American's wild west movement to annex British North America, today known as Canada.

Today there's over 125 heritage buildings, live theatre, and unique shops with Victorian era merchants.

Tours were available where they dressed up to enact a prominant figure back in the day, and they would interact with one another... gossiping, discussing new gold discoveries and socio-political issues facing the community. On the right is Dr. Watson (if I remember his name correctly), he is the son of steam engine inventor. Middle is Ms. Irvine... moved to Barkerville from England where she opened up a business. Mighty cute if you ask me. And to the left is... I forget.

Earlier I mention the population of Barkerville was 10,000. Well... 5,000 of them were Chinese from Guangdong Province. Chinese of course were everywhere... datig back from the California gold rush, BC gold rush and also in Thailand, New Zealand, Australia and etc to escape the poor living conditions, civil wars under the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). The history of Chinatown is another story in itself... like all other Chinatowns, they were marginalized, demonized, discriminated and on and on.

Anyways, got busy 2 weeks coming up.
June 19-22: Smithers - for a Reclamation Symposium
June 23-25: Jasper, AB - that is if I feel up for it.
June 26-28: Prince George
June 29-July 3rd: Vacouver - Canada Day long weekend.

Posted by Jay at June 18, 2006 10:48 AM