COURTESY OF THE KIMBERLEY HERITAGE MUSEUM ARCHIVES
DAILY BULLETIN Newspaper March 3, 1966
Door-To-Door Mail Service
James Byrne, Member of Parliament for the East Kootenays and Secretary to the Minister of Transport, announced today in a special news release to the Daily Bulletin, that the Honourable John Pierre Cote, Postmaster General of Canada, has authorized the establishment of letter carrier delivery service for Kimberley.
The area to be served by letter carrier comprises some 2,029 calls located in the city of Kimberley and the adjoining village of Chapman Camp. The area has been divided into 5 letter carrier routes which will cover a total street distance of some 20 miles. Forms will be distributed to the home owners concerned informing them of the impending service and advising them of the requirements to be met for the mail receiving service. This improved service will commence when 80% of the homes which are to receive door to door service are suitably equipped to receive mail.
An inspection team from the postal department made a survey of Kimberley last month.
March 10, 1966
Cominco Steel Plant In Operation Soon
A steel plant now under construction at Kimberley should be in operation by mid-summer.
Robyn Porter, General Superintendent of Cominco Kimberley Operations, said the mill will produce ingots for Western Canada Steel at Vancouver to augment scrap supplies.
“This oxygen converter steel plant will be in production by mid-year, and sooner I hope,” he said addressing the March meeting of the Chamber of Commerce Tuesday night at the Steak House in Cranbrook.
His speech, in essence, said that there is every reason to be optimistic about Cominco’s future in the Kimberley-Cranbrook area, but let’s not get carried away.
“We are optimistic that expansion in the production of chemicals or pig iron or steel or related products may eventually be justified, he said.
Mr. Porter pointed out that Cominco was one of the world’s largest – and Canada’s largest – producer of lead, zinc, silver and chemical fertilizers. Output also includes an expanding iron and steel interest in B.C., cadmium, bismuth, gold, indium, antimonial lead, tin, ammonia, urea, chlorine, caustic soda and sulphuric acid.
Expansion projects of Cominco’s operations and interests underway in 1065 totalled about $130,000,000.
He gave some East and West Kootenay figures, saying that since World War Two:
Payrolls have totaled $500,000,000; expansion projects have totaled $150,000,000; expansion projects in Kimberley area have totaled $30,000,000; rail traffic if all placed on one train, would reach from Trail to London, Eng., and most of this freight passes through Cranbrook.
Payroll at Kimberley last year, he said, was $10,300,000.
Of the 1,500 employees at Kimberley 120 live in Cranbrook which makes Cominco one of that city’s larger employers
DAILY BULLETIN Newspaper May 17, 1966
Cominco Name Change
Cominco Ltd. Is now the official name of the firm known for the past sixty years as The Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company of Canada Limited. Supplementary Letters Patent effective May 16th from Secretary of State confirm the change of name, as approved by the shareholders at a special general meeting following the 60th annual general meeting in Montreal on April 28th.
The new name was proposed because the expansion and diversification of the Company had carried it into other activities beyond mining and smelting, and into other areas beyond the confines of Canada. Today Cominco Ltd. Is a major international Company, although ninety-five per cent Canadian owned, with undertakings on five continents.
While the greater part of the Company’s business is still in mining and smelting and is still based on its early holdings in Southeastern British Columbia, mainly at Trail and Kimberley, B.C., Cominco has grown since the issuing of the Dominion Charter of 1906 to be one of the world’s largest producers of base metals and chemical fertilizers. During the same period it has broadened its interests into a number of other industrial fields.
Beginning in 1931, when the Company started the production of fertilizers, capacity has been steadily added and new plants commissioned. Installations at Trail and Kimberley, B.C., at Regina, Saskatchewan, at Clagary, Alberta and at Beatrice, Nebraska, now have an annual output in excess of one million tons. A new potash mine in Saskatchewan is scheduled to be in production by 1969, and will give Cominco a basic position in the three main fertilizer materials, Nitrogen, Phosphate, and Potash.
Cominco Ltd. Is also engaged through subsidiaries in the fabrication of lead and zinc. The Company, in addition, is sole owner of Western Canada Steel Limited, an integrated steel complex in Vancouver. Other interests range from heavy chemicals to high purity metals, compound semiconductors, and thermo electric materials.
Overseas, Cominco is a partner in Mitsubishi Cominco Smelting Company, which is building a lead smelter at Naoshima, Japan, and in Cominco Binani Zinc Limited, which has a zinc smelter and sulphuric acid plant under construction in Southest India. Both of these projects will be in operation this year.
Mining activiries have also been expanded, so that Cominco now operates ten mines in Canada and the United States, including the great Sullivan Mine in Kimberley, B.C., the world’s largest lead and zinc mine, and the Pine Point Mine in the Northwest Territories, in which Cominco has a majority interest. Cominco American Incorporated, the Company’s subsidiary in the United States, is currently engaged in bringing into production a new lead mine near Salem, Missouri.
Exploration, the vital first step in replacing mineral reserves as they are consumed, has been given added impetus by Cominco. The Company is active in several parts of Canada, the United States, Australia, Greenland, Ireland and Continental Europe.
Cominco Ltd., besides commemorating its Diamond Anniversary with a new corporate name, will adopt a new, distinctive symbol and signature and take other steps to complete the modernization of every aspect of its public identification. These are regarded as needed to reflect the present scope and direct ion of this vigorous sixty year Company.
