Downtown Nanaimo near Pyper Park
Nanaimo was founded as a coal-mining settlement in 1852. Its most productive mine, No. 1, opened in 1881. From the bottom of the main shaft, one-half mile south of here, a labyrinth of workings extended for miles under the sea. These operations were served also by a shaft on Protection Island. Until No. 1 closed in 1938, it was the oldest operating mine in BC.
The Sne ney mux (Nanaimo) First Nation from time immemorial lived in six villages around Departure Bay, Gabriola Island, Nanaimo Harbour and along the banks of the Nanaimo River. Today their reserves are clustered just south of Nanaimo's city centre.
The Spaniard Francisco Eliza visited the area in 1791, but there was litle interest from Europeans in the plaace until 1852, after a Sne ney mux man took a canoe load of coal to Fort Victoria. James Douglas, Hudson's Bay Company Chief Factor and Governor of Vancouver Island, sent Joseph McKay to investigate the source of the coal with these instructions: "You will proceed with all possible diligence to Wentuhuysen Inlet commonly known as Nanymo Bay and formally take possesion of the Coal bed, lately discovered there for and in behalf of the Hudson's Bay Company."
The first coal was shipped out to Victoria in September, 1852. The next year a bastion (fort built for defence) was erected. At 11:00 am on November 27, 1854 a batch of English colliers arrived aboard the Princess Royal to augment the Scottish workforce already there. The date is still observed as an important annivesary in Nanaimo's history.
Within a few years of its opening, the main shaft of the No. I mine was linked by undersea tunnels to shafts on Protection Island, one mile away, and Newcastle Island, three miles away. Supplied by the "Douglas seam", one of three main coal seams in the area, the No. 1 mine produced nearly one-third of the entire coal production of all the Nanaimo collieries (coal mines).
Production and employment increased up until 1922, the peak year, when 4,000 men produced over 1 million tons of coal. But gradually oil replaced coal as the most economic fuel and the industry waned. In 1947, only 400 men were working in the mines, the same number as in 1874. When the Dunsmuir group left town in 1953, only a few individuals remained working private holdings with pick and wheelbarrow.
Today No. 1 shaft is flooded. Other abandoned workings riddle the ground beneath Nanaimo, sometimes causing trepidation and excitement when an excavation for a foundation is being dug.
