We were at the Britannia Mine—forty-five kilometers north of Vancouver on the shores of Howe Sound on the unceded territory of the Squamish Nation—the largest mine in the British Empire, opened in 1904 to extract the ore bodies that had formed when volcanic pyroclast flowed onto sedimentary rock and the metamorphosed result came into contact with plutonic intrusions. The miners had quarried the faults and fractures where the rich ore lay, boring right through Britannia Mountain, from Britannia Creek on the northern flank to Furry Creek on the southern side, covering an area of about forty
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