Canadian Rockhound: The Jade Mines of British Columbia

One of the best-known nephrite jade "Mine Finders" was Winnie Robertson, who is a well-known and popular member of the Gem and Mineral Federation of Canada. Win began rockhounding about 1952. Spending a great deal of time at the B.C. Bridge River Power Project, while her husband worked as an engineer, Win developed an interest in jade.

She studied the geology of jade for some twelve years under the guidance of Dr. Robert Folinsbee, Professor of Geology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, who was a great jade lover. Certain a large deposit could be found in the mountains above Fort St. James, B.C., and following her theory, she noted the zones where soda granite contacted serpentine. The best prospect appeared to be in the remote Takla Lake area. With two backers, Tezzeron Nephrite Co. was formed to finance a field trip.

She chartered an FH-1100 helicopter to explore the Mount Sidney Williams' area at the south end of Takla Lake accompanied by her 16-year-old son, Gordon, and two other men. After three days of exploring the area, searching for the contact zone, she found enough water-worn jade boulders in O'Ne-ell creek to establish a camp on the lower part of the creek, so they could further prospect the area. They also prepared the good quality jade boulders to be lifted out and loaded onto a barge on the Middle River.

Working their way upstream they came to a 90-foot waterfall. On climbing to the top of the waterfall, they began finding boulders about eight to ten tons in size. With some difficulty, they hammered off some specimens.

"We checked up the hillside and everything was jade. We noticed huge boulders with a ragged grey coating similar to the exterior portion of the boulders in the creek that were above the high water line," Win said. Samples were hammered off some of the boulders, exposing the typical "torn buckskin" fracture of nephrite jade. There were jade boulders over a large area of the hillside. This was the contact zone. The area ran up the mountain about a half a mile and was about a quarter of a mile wide. The date was August 18, 1968 and they were at the head of O'Ne-ell creek on Mount Sidney Williams when they staked the property at about the 3500-foot level.

They spent five days exploring the area and Win kept thinking, it can't be a mountain of jade – but, in fact it was jade she was looking for!

When she called her financial backer by radio phone, he asked, "Did you find the pony in the pile?"

She replied, "It's a darn Clydesdale! – and you'd better get up here!"

They flew in again by helicopter. With drilled cores, they inserting chokers and bolts for helicopter pickup. When they had approximately twenty-five tons, they contracted a Sikorsky capable of handling 4000-pound loads, to lift the jade out to a barge on Takla Lake. The barge transported the giant boulders to Fort St. James. They were then loaded onto ore carrier trucks and taken to 12-acre property near Cloverdale that had been leased for the purpose of cutting jade into 3500-pound blocks for shipment overseas.

When Win arrived in Smithers and walked into a pub, she was toasted as the "Jade Queen of the World" that day by the other prospectors in the pub. That gave her the name for her mine.

In the spring a permanent camp was set up with what was probably the only "jade heliport" in the world. Tom Lansley, known affectionately as Timber Tom, was the Sikorsky helicopter pilot and engineer who was in charge of lifting the jade out. According to Win, when the helicopters were there Tom was in charge of the whole operation.

Slabbing Saw
One of the specially designed diamond impregnated saws for slabbing jade at the Jade Queen Mine site on Mount Sydney Williams, B.C. Photo courtesy of Winnifred Robertson.

Special diamond-edged slabbing saws had to be designed and built for cutting the jade into blocks in the mountain so they didn't have to freight out any but the best material.

It was extremely rugged country in these mountains, with no roads. Timber Tom Lansley, the helicopter pilot/engineer, thought that O'Ne-ell Creek was pretty violent, but Win reminded him it was low water in summer when they would be loading out the jade.

They had built a good platform well above summer water level, but the next spring the water took it out like it was a "bunch of matchsticks." In the spring of '69 Winnie went in with Mike Bealey to do the assessment work and the water was almost up to the helipad on the cliff. They couldn't get across anywhere and could only fly out again. Mining jade in British Columbia is pretty well a summer-time thing.

Always being concerned about environmental issues, Win arranged that the hydraulics used to remove the overburden would only be used during the spring floods, when it would do no more damage than the flood waters themselves. The Jade Queen was located on the upper reaches of the Fraser River spawning grounds, and removing the overburden entailed using high-powered water hoses to flush the overburden soil down to the jade deposit.

Mike Beley
M.J. Beley shows a large slab cut from a boulder at The Jade Queen Mine on O'Ne-ell Creek, Mount Sydney Williams, B.C. Photo courtesy of Winnifred Robertson.

In 1973 or 1974, Penny Tweedy of the London Illustrated News wanted to do an article on the Jade Mine. Win took the visitors to O'Ne-ell Creek and when they arrived they found a grizzly bear had hit their trailer – hard! He had torn the side open, thrown out the stove and bashed in the deep freezer! Win concluded that to be so angry, he must have gotten into some curry powder!

Within a year, Jade Queen Mines Ltd. was a subsidiary of Athabasca Columbia Resources Ltd., which had increased its holding to 72% with Ray Hinkin as head of operations.

By the spring of 1971, the mine employed eight men bringing out 30-40 tons of jade each year.

Imperial Jade Mines of Minneapolis purchased jade from The Jade Queen. This company designed jade tables for the White House and jade doors for a Playboy Club. Orders were being received from Germany, France, Red China, and Hong Kong.

Ogden Mountain

Larry Owen, a retired school teacher came from Anaheim, California, and was sold property at Manson Creek. He knew nothing about jade or gold either for that matter and hoped to find gold. He had the opportunity to acquire some leases and together with another Californian, Gary Gallelli, who financed some of the operation, they found jade on Ogden Mountain in the Omineca Jade Field. Larry and Gary sold Ogden to Continental Jade, a Japanese company.

Joe Bell became involved with jade and Ogden Mountain about 1977 because he and Jeannie MacCulloch had a jade carving workshop, Jade World, and when Gary Gallelli's Studio ceased operations, they got a lot of jade boulders from there. Living in an apartment made it necessary to lease premises from Continental Jade in Vancouver. Continental Jade gave them the opportunity to mine at Ogden. Joe Bell leased the mine from the Japanese from about 1978 to 1985 when he died.

Kirk Makepeace, who had held summer jobs as a driller, formed a company in 1980. He formed a partnership with Joe Bell in 1985 when he bought Ogden from the Japanese interests. As Jade West Makepeace acquired the Dease Lake mine. Jade West Group, now a part owner of Continental Jade Ltd. acquired the old Mohawk Oil Jade property, called the Kutcho mine located near Provencher Lake. Ogden is temporarily closed to concentrate on the easier to mine Kutcho property at this time.

Another producer in 1983 was Francis Lake, a new site in the Yukon Territories. Some other sites in the late 80s and early 90s included the Greenbay Mine operated by The Happy Prospector, W. Schoenbaechler and the C.A.P. mine owned by Cecil and Alice McEwen.

Wheaton Creek

According to Wat on Earth (Summer 2000), nephrite jade was found at Wheaton Creek, a small tributary of the Turnagain River in North Central B.C. The area is only accessible by an all terrain vehicle or floatplane. The creek escaped serious scouring by glaciers and was one of the first in B.C. to be seriously worked for placer gold despite the large number of boulders, which had to be moved. Many of these boulders were composed of nephrite jade, which had no value at the time. One of the boulders weighed 80 or 90 tons and was recently cut in Thailand to produce two Buddha statues weighing about 20 tons each. The statues were cut for a temple in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

This nephrite jade boulder, also known as the The Buddha Boulder, was mined from Ogden Mountain and weighed 11,000 pounds. Photo courtesy of Kirk Makepeace.

Jade West, Kirk Makepeace, donated an 11,000-pound boulder of Ogden Mountain jade to the Japanese Buddhist temple in Vancouver for the carving of a Kwan Yin statue. This boulder was ten feet high.

Larry Owen felt that a lot of poor quality Dease Lake jade was marketed, with the result that the price dropped and tons were being shipped to Taiwan at far too low a price. Some of the early miners were selling all the jade they could bring out, regardless of quality. He felt this very nearly ruined the jade market for Canada.

Jeannie MacCulloch of Jade World said the thing people forget is, if it wasn't for Taiwan, there would not have been a market started for jade. They were the people who purchased the jade in the beginning. If you are going to mine, you must have a market and nobody is going to be able to mine just for the Canadian people. There are not enough carvers in Canada. The industry had to start somewhere and it has improving a great deal now (1990).

In National Geographic (September 1987) Makepeace said, "I've been just as guilty as any other miner, but no longer. I once let jade go for 50 cents a kilo. This is a precious nonrenewable resource that the world used to treasure, and we treat it like everything else we mined in B.C., just something to dig up and sell. I'm going to be independent of Taiwan now, refusing to sell my jade at giveaway prices ... Last year I sold about 104 tons: 100 to China, and only four to Taiwan."

Win Robertson believed Ogden Mountain jade was more accessible and thus cheaper to transport than that from the Jade Queen which is no longer in production, but when Ogden runs out, the Jade Queen may come into its own.

However, Jade West Group is also a partner in a major new deposit – the Polar Jade property located 50 km east of Dease Lake. This high-grade jade deposit has reaffirmed the position of British Columbia as the producer of the highest quality of nephrite jade in the world. Jade West is working very hard to market jade in a professional manner. In Makepeace's opinion some of the finest jade is from the Polar Jade property – the cleanest and best cutting jewellery-quality jade. "High quality jade is very translucent and bright, and apple or emerald green in colour," Makepeace said in Equinox (October 1996). "It's clear and uniform looking, without any inclusions, fractures, or soft spots. This is some of the best we've ever had." At Jade West's Kutcho Creek site, men work 10 hours a day, seven days a week, through the summer. Winter comes early and they need to extract the nephrite before the season is over. Giant-wheeled, all-terrain vehicles haul the best boulders to Dease Lake, and from there they go south by truck down the partly paved Stewart-Cassiar Highway.

According to Andrew Scott in Equinox (October 1996), most Canadians are likely unaware that B.C. holds vast reserves of jade and supplies more than three quarters of the 300 tonnes that the world currently consumes annually. British Columbia exports most of its jade to China and Taiwan, where 50,000 artisans labour in less than ideal conditions. The best is used in jewelry, and the rest is carved into amulets, figurines, incense burners, and the like. Some jade comes back to Canada in the form of beads, tiny maple leaves, or bears with fish in their mouths, which are sold to tourists as souvenirs.

Canada has been selling jade all over the world for many years. We have sold jade to New Zealand for the Maori to carve since 1974 when Joe Bell and Jeannie MacCulloch went there on a marketing trip. Canada is also selling jade to Wyoming and in 1988, 700 tonnes of Canadian nephrite jade from British Columbia was sold to China – 300 tonnes of this was Jade West production. Ninety per cent of the jade produced in Canada is sold to China.

Related Websites:

References:

Scott, Andrew. Jade the Mystical Mineral, Equinox, No. 89, October 1996
Wat on Earth, University of Waterloo, Summer 2000

Personal Interviews:

Gillies, J.
MacCulloch, Jeannie. Jade World.
Makepeace, Kirk. Jade West.
Owen, Larry.
Robertson, Winnifred.
Schoenbaechler, W. The Happy Prospector.
Note: These interviews took place in British Columbia.

This article may not be copied, distributed or reprinted in any form without the author's permission. To contact the author, please use the e-mail address provided. If you are unable to contact the author, please contact the Canadian Rockhound. Authorized reprints must acknowledge the author, original source and the Canadian Rockhound.

The preceding article is a modified and updated version of a series of articles first published in the Winter 1989-90 issue (Volume 2, Number 5) of Cab & Crystal, a Silver Chameleon publication. Updated August 2000.