CoverIndex

Mining and Uranium

Cominco

3 pictures · 1970–1979

Founded
1906 (Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company of Canada); renamed Cominco Ltd. 1966
Head office then
Montreal (to 1970–72); Vancouver from 1972. Smelter at Trail, B.C.

Cominco was a lead-zinc miner and smelter. The Trail plant on the Columbia River was built in the 1890s, bought by CPR, and folded into the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company in 1906. The firm took the Cominco name in 1966. In 1970 it also ran mercury at Pinchi Lake, B.C., and gold at the Con mine in Yellowknife.

Trail turned Kootenay ore into zinc, lead, chemicals and fertilizer, and was a long-running employer in the West Kootenay. Cominco was CPR’s mining arm and a major Canadian zinc-lead exporter.

Why it mattered

Trail refined Kootenay and later imported ores into zinc, lead, chemicals and fertilizer, and was a long-running industrial employer in the West Kootenay. Cominco was a CPR mining arm and a major Canadian zinc-lead exporter.

Now

CPR sold control in 1986. Teck bought the remaining Cominco shares on 23 July 2001. The metals company is now Teck Metals. The Trail smelter still runs.

Merged (2001) · Now: Teck Cominco / Teck Resources Limited (Teck Metals Ltd.)

Still open

  • Later owners of the Pinchi Lake mercury mine and the Con gold mine were not traced in this file.
  • Rossland Museum dates the Montreal-to-Vancouver office move as 1970, official HQ 1972; Wikipedia agrees on 1972 HQ.
Underground LHD loader at the face, miner in the cab.

Cominco · 1970

Underground LHD loader at the face, miner in the cab.

the picture

A worn pickaxe head, close as a still life.

Cominco · 1972

A worn pickaxe head, close as a still life.

the picture

The Polaris mill, airstrip and ore ship on High Arctic ice.

Cominco · 1979

The Polaris mill, airstrip and ore ship on High Arctic ice.

the picture

Sources

The pictures

References

All companies