Britannia Mine Museum wins Syncrude Award for Excellence
The Britannia Mine Museum—Britannia Beach, BC
The Britannia Mine Museum has added another award to its growing list of accolades, winning the 2012 Syncrude Award for Excellence in Sustainable Development from the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (CIM).
The museum was recognized for its sustainable efforts in its recent 2010 revitalization project. This project built on the museum’s role as an engaged stakeholder and leader with the province’s successful remediation program in Britannia Beach.
The Britannia Mine Museum was reinvented in 2010 by a $14.7-million re-development project that turned a mining legacy site into a vibrant internationally recognized tourist destination. The re-development project focused on preserving the museum’s heritage buildings and mining collections, while creating an enhanced visitor experience with the new Beaty-Lundin Visitor Centre and the Britannia A-Z Exhibit hall.
The museum established an extensive storm water capture system, thereby reducing the amount of surface water contaminated by drainage through acidic soil. They have also preserved their existing heritage buildings by finding new adaptive public purposes, designing a focused environmental education program on Acid Rock Drainage and establishing itself as the region’s largest tourist attraction with upwards of 70,000 visitors annually.
The CIM Syncrude Award for Excellence in Sustainable Development recognizes those in the Canadian mineral industry whose extraordinary systems, programs or processes have far-reaching and positive sustainability effects in all industries across the country.
“This is a significant award for us because it means that our efforts are being recognized; the mining, metallurgy and petroleum members of CIM are obviously proud that Britannia Mine Museum is able to engage the public on the topic of mining and environmental remediation. The award recognizes our focus on ensuring we strive to operate a museum using principles of sustainability in economic, social and environmental areas,” said Kirstin Clausen, executive director of the Britannia Mine Museum. “We have an important role in being an environmental educator, raising public awareness of sustainability issues associated with mining and we’re glad to be able to share our success stories with everyone.”
The museum’s re-development and design approach was to keep as much of the heritage mining site and rehabilitate and reuse as many of the existingbuildings and materials as possible. The result is an interesting and relevant mixture of industrial buildings, structures, and site features with a connection to the storied Britannia community. Architects and exhibits designers embraced the eclectic nature of existing materials while utilizing modern design structures to give the museum’s facilities a sense of modernistic architecture while retaining its historic culture.
Connections with the environment and nature can be seen in the creative use of water, wood, stone and copper elements throughout the site. The visitor centre is clad in a combination of dark-stained local Douglas Fir siding and pre-patinated blue-green copper panels made of recycled content pay homage to the Britannia Mine’s copper mining days, when it was once the British Empire’s largest copper mine.
In addition, the museum’s on-site storm water management system diverts run-off rainwater to intermediate detention areas in the form of feature ponds and water gardens around the museum. Water is also sent to the EPCOR Britannia Mine Water Treatment Plant to be naturally treated and filtered, resulting in clean water flowing back down into Howe Sound.
The Britannia Mine Museum’s successes and efforts to raise awareness of environmental sustainability earned them several awards in the last year. These included the coveted Robert R. Hedley Award for Social and Environmental Responsibility from the Association for Mineral Exploration British Columbia (AME BC), the Award of Merit from the British Columbia Museum Association (BCMA) and the Award for Outstanding Achievement from the Canadian Museum Association (CMA).
The Britannia Mine Museum is open seven days a week at 9 a.m. with regular guided tours of the underground mine throughout the day (last tour at 4 p.m.) Visit www.britanniaminemuseum.ca for more information.
About the Britannia Mine Museum:
The Britannia Mine Museum is a mining legacy site and a vibrant, internationally recognized education and tourist destination located between Vancouver and Whistler on the Sea-to-Sky highway. It is a National Historic Site and is a non-profit organization with the intent to increase awareness of the impact of mining and minerals to society, the history of the storied Britannia Beach community and the ideas and practices of environmental renewal and sustainability. It promotes mining awareness through entertaining, experiential education programs, important historic collection preservation and insightful public engagement that allows guests to leave with a better understanding of mining in BC; past, present and future. www.britanniaminemuseum.ca.
