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Kitimat is a district municipality in the North Coast region of British Columbia, Canada. It is a member municipality of the Regional District of Kitimat–Stikine regional government. The Kitimat Valley is part of the most populous urban district in northwest British Columbia, which includes Terrace to the north along the Skeena River Valley.
Dec 22, 2021 · By 1951, the provincial government and Alcan had entered into a whopping $500-million partnership — about $5 billion in today’s dollars — to build a wildly complex hydroelectric system that would power an aluminum smelter in a coastal town that did not yet exist: Kitimat.
- Settlement
- Development
- Economy and Labour Force
Before European colonization, the Kitamaat band lived along the Kitimat Arm at the north end of the Douglas Channel (see Haisla). A wave of European settlers came to the area in the early 1900s, when the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway surveyed the site as the railway’s possible western end point. Prince Rupertbecame the terminus of the railway, howeve...
The Eurocan Pulp and Paper Co. built a mill in Kitimat in 1969. West Fraser bought the mill in 1993. It closed the mill in 2010, citing declining profits. (See also Pulp and Paper Industry.) A methanol and ammonia plant also operated in Kitimat from the 1980s until 2005. These plants were significant employers. Spurred by industrialdevelopment, Kit...
Multinational corporation Rio Tinto bought the Alcan aluminum smelter in 2007. Rio Tinto now employs about 1,000 people in Kitimat, roughly 12 per cent of the population. The smelter is a cornerstone of the community’s economy. Other contributors include tourism, small business, port development and international tradeinvestments. Construction is u...
May 1, 2024 · Kitimat gets its name from the Tsimshian language, meaning 'people of the snow'. The name reflects the community's location and climate in British Columbia, Canada.
Named for a nearby Indian village, Kitimat and its deepwater anchorage came to prominence in 1951, when the Aluminum Company of Canada chose it as the site for a huge aluminum smelter, completed in 1954.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Kitimat is derived from Git-a-maat (Kitamaat), a Tsimshian description of the Haisla, which means “People of the Snow.” Prior to colonization, the Kitamaat band of the Douglas and Devastation channels inhabited the unceded territory that Kitimat is now situated on.
The town of Kitimat, founded in the 1950s, is British Columbia's most planned community. The Aluminum Company of Canada (Alcan) created the town to be the permanent home of the workforce for its aluminum smelter and power project.
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