Kitimat’s slogan is a “marvel of nature and industry.” But which comes first: nature or industry? Can they exist in harmony? As the community adapts to a burst of new growth linked to LNG Canada, Cedar LNG and other proposed projects, it’s a question the town has to answer, one way or another. Built in the 1950s, the Alcan aluminum smelter is known locally as “Uncle Al.” Nestled along the shoreline directly opposite the industrial complex, the village has had a front-row seat from day one. Now owned by international mining giant Rio Tinto, the smelter’s smokestacks have been puffing ever since.Īcross the harbour from Alcan is Cʼimaucʼa (Kitamaat Village), a reserve home to around 700 members of the Haisla Nation. The town was designed to serve the company’s energy-intensive smelter, which would be powered by a dam built on the other side of a range of snow-capped mountains. Kitimat was settled on Haisla lands in the 1950s, a planned community built on a promise of prosperity from the Aluminum Company of Canada, also known as Alcan. You can’t see the ocean from here or the sprawling industrial complexes that crowd the waterfront. The hub of the community is a jumbled complex of malls with a handful of shops, restaurants and offices serving the population of around 8,000. The town of Kitimat, B.C., is folded into a forested valley, tucked back from where the ocean meets the land at the end of a roughly 100-kilometre long inlet.
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