When Squamish's Marshall Tichauer first set foot in Britannia Mine in 1965, he was 18 years old.
He'd taken the job as a wet-behind-the-ears West Vancouver Secondary School grad who had been told by his dad to get a job.
He likely wouldn't have guessed that about 60 years later he would be touring visitors from around the world through his former workplace, which is now Britannia Mine Museum.
Britannia Mine operated as a copper mine from 1904 to 1974.
Tichauer worked in the mine from 1965 to '74.
He did multiple jobs during his tenure, including mine sampler, geologist engineer, ventilation assistant, mine clerk, warehouseman, inventory clerk, purchasing agent, safety officer, assistant employment officer, and captain of the mine, rescue team and first-aid team.
He’s been a tour guide at the mine since 2011.
The 麻豆社国产 sat down with the affable Tichauer in the A-Z Administration Building for a wide-ranging talk about his career and time in the Sea to Sky Corridor.
What follows is a version of that conversation that has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: Can you tell us about when you started at the mine?
A: A friend of mine worked here and said they needed somebody, and so I came up and started working here in the mine in '65. It was actually a well-paying job for a person who never worked in the mines. I got a room in the bunk house, $20 a month. I was making $300 a month, which in '65 was pretty good. I became a sampler. So, a person who takes samples of the rocks, takes them to the assay lab [a place to test a substance to determine its ingredients and quality] to be tested. So, that was my very first job.
Q: Do you remember how it felt that first day going down in the mine?
A: It wasn't that bad, because when you get onto the train, they give you a light, and you get dressed, and you go in there, and, of course, everybody's there. So, it's not a big deal. And one of my high school friends had a job here, so we both went on the train together.
And of course, you know, when you're 18 years old, you're cool. You didn't want to show any fear. I got on the train car, and it was a 40-man car with no windows in it. We sat knee-to-knee or back-to-back, and you just rode underground for anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes and it just rocked you to sleep. Even when I first got here, it just didn't bother me at all.
The train left at eight o'clock in the morning. If you weren't on that train, you missed a shift, and because it was good money, you didn't do that too many times.
Q: I bet. And you met your wife Marianne here, correct?
A: My wife started here in 1970 and the lady that was the personnel secretary here said to me, 'Why don't you start dating someone here?' because there were single women in the office. I said, no. I didn't want to date someone at work. If it didn't work out and then you still have to work with them.
I started dating her, and we got married in October, '71. She was the receptionist. She was actually going to get promoted to the manager's secretary after a few years, but she got pregnant. [The couple now have three grown children, two boys and a girl in their 40s and 50s.]
Q: You did a lot of first aid jobs. What sorts of injuries did you have to help people with?
A: We had a sawmill on site here, because they cut their own wood. A fellow was using a big chop saw. He pulled it across, and then he turned his back and it came back, and it cut him from here all the way down. That was just after I got my first aid ticket. We went up there, and there he is, lying across the board. He was fine. It just took a lot of time to get all the clothing out of his cuts. That was my first experience.
We used to get calls from the RCMP all the time for highway accidents. We could be the first responders on scene before rescuers coming from 麻豆社国产or Vancouver. We did a lot of highway accents as we could get people out of the cars. We were trained on how to do that.
But here we were mostly dealing with cuts, bruises, twists, ankles, things like—fingers. The worst accident was when I first started here, there were three of us from high school who all worked here. We were all within four months of working here, and one of our buddies got killed in the mine. He got squashed by the train. He shouldn't have been where he was, unfortunately.
Fortunately, I didn't have to handle it. My two other friends quit right away. I stayed. I needed the job.
Q: Britannia Beach was a company town, and many folks now aren't as familiar with that concept. Can you tell us more about what it was like?
A: The company—Anaconda—owned everything. They owned the land, housing, timber rights and mineral rights. But they also supplied everything. They supplied the teachers, they supplied the doctors and everything like that. These were self-sufficient communities. It was good.
It was a tight community. Everybody went to the dances. And you put the kids to bed under the table and let them sleep, and you just keep dancing all night long.
If you had to go home, you just walked home. Your rent was 10% of what you were making.
We didn't pay for electricity.
We had our fire department here. We used to have firemen's balls. The whole thing that they do now, the big barbecues, beer, beef and corn on the cob. The company was very good to the people. They sponsored all sporting events, like if you had a baseball team, they sponsored the kids. They put first aid courses on for the kids. Every kid here, at the age of eight, could do first aid.
Q: What was it like to come back to the mine as a museum after working here?
A: The first time I came back, and that was probably the first time I'd gone underground in 30 years, I walked into the tunnel and the smell. It's not a bad smell. It's just—it's a smell. It's like going into a pulp mill. There's the unique smell. It did send chills down my back.
Q: What else would you like people to know about the museum?
A: Visit the mine. It's different. It gives you a good history of what this place is. And they keep doing more and making it better all the time.
Find out more about the on its website.
About a local is a semi-regular column about interesting 麻豆社国产residents. If you know someone who you think would be a good subject (and they agree), email us at [email protected].
