356 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956 



Britain is currently using 252,000 short tons of aluminum per year 

 on new aircraft, new buildings, new electrical installations, and on 

 other work. To supply Britain and other countries of the free world, 

 the wilderness of a forbidding corner of northwestern Canada has 

 been tamed and harnessed in 40 months. A city of 13,000 has risen 

 where formerly only a few Indians wandered in summer months, and 

 to Canadian shores come ships with alumina, the mining and proc- 

 essing of which in Jamaica bring new employment to West Indians 

 half the world away. 



The production of 1 pound of aluminum ingot requires 10 kilowatt- 

 hours of electricity. The electrical power consumed in producing a 

 ton of aluminum, it has been estimated, would meet the demands of a 

 normal household for 10 years. 



Massive untapped reserves of electricity are nowadays rare. Within 

 the Commonwealth they are to be found in the few large areas re- 

 maining undeveloped, such as the province of British Columbia in 

 Canada, and in British Africa. Surveys had been made of the Tahtsa 

 Lake area of British Columbia, once, twice, three times, between 

 1874 and 1950. The acute world demand for aluminum made the 

 possibilities which these surveys revealed economically workable. 



In 1948 the Aluminum Company of Canada started negotiations 

 with the provincial authorities of British Columbia, and funds were 

 raised for the initial capital outlay of a scheme which is expected, 

 ultimately, to cost in excess of £200 million. This colossal develop- 

 ment job was now "on." Kitimat found itself on the map. 



THE PLAN 



"Kitimat" is shorthand for the whole development project. This 

 comprises five distinct engineering schemes and is flung across an area 

 more than 200 miles long. The name actually derives from the site 

 chosen for the smelter at the head of the Douglas Channel, a navigable 

 inlet running 80 miles up from the northern Pacific. 



The unusual topography of this coast range of mountains has pro- 

 vided the opportunity which the planners of Alcan 2 have so boldly 

 seized. The crest of the range is only a few miles from the sea. More- 

 over, owing to heavy glacial action during the Ice Age (when the 

 whole of British Columbia, save the highest mountain peaks, was iced 

 over) , long, deep, narrow valleys were scoured out on both sides of the 

 crest. The sea flowed into the westerly valleys to form long fjords; 

 the fjordheads (at sea level), lying within a mile or two of the high 

 peaks of the mountain barrier. The valleys on the eastward side 

 descend more gently, but the heads of the lakes approach equally close 

 to the crest of the mountain range. The westerly point of Tahtsa 



■ Alcan Is the term by which the Aluminum Company of Canada is best known. 



