AME BC History - 1940s

The early forties under President Gomer P. Jones (1941) and A.F. Jukes (1942-46), saw improvements in the local economy, AME BC, and a move in 1941 to 790 Dunsmuir Street.  In 1942, following a letter to Prime Minister Mackenzie King opposing Order 19 which prohibited gold mines from hiring new men until base metals mines had sufficient manpower, the order was dropped.  The same year it was decided that Yukon was to be added to the then title of “British Columbia Chamber of Mines” and branches of the new British Columbia & Yukon Chamber of Mines were opened in Whitehorse and Dawson. Immediately following the end of World War II, AME BC put a lot of effort into helping ex-servicemen get back into the mining industry.  A number took the Prospecting Training School course and soon some 300, fully trained prospectors were reported to be in the hills.

M.M. O’Brien, elected president in 1947, a position he held until 1951, was immediately faced with a conflict between the miners who had rights to the timber on their claims, and the loggers who claimed the miners interfered with their logging operations.  The same year new capital and new mining companies, like Kennecott Copper Corporation, American Metal Co. of Canada Ltd., New Jersey Zinc Cp., Noranda Mines and Anaconda Copper Co. moved into Vancouver.  AME BC was now unofficially serving as an employment office for miners, muckers, geologists, engineers, etc.  By 1948 the increasing price for base metals, zinc at 15.5¢/lb., lead at 21.5¢/lb, copper at 23.5¢/lb, and silver at 76¢/ounce brought predictions of a base metal boom.  The increased mining activity in Western Canada was in no small way due to the efforts of AME BC over the previous thirty years.