Abstract What happens to a mining town when the mine closes? This paper explores this question through a study of the Britannia copper mine in British Columbia (BC), Canada. Having operated almost continuously since 1905, the Britannia mine shut its doors in 1974. In the years after it closed, the Britannia mine survived through its reinvention as a museum and heritage site. This paper tells the story of that reinvention. Focusing on the work of a small but determined group of people, the Britannia Beach Historical Society (BBHS), it details the transformation of the Britannia mine from an industrial landscape into ‘Canada’s largest museum artefact’ and a national historic site. However, more than a historical account of the development of a mining museum and heritage economy, this paper is also concerned with the ways in which such acts of commemoration and memorialisation constituted particular spatial histories. Highlighting the importance of the materiality of place within these spatial histories, it shows how the BBHS’s narratives of BC history, and mining’s place within it, were grounded in, negotiated through, and eventually undermined by the shifting material traces of mining at Britannia.

中文翻译：

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挖掘意义：讲述不列颠矿山的空间历史

摘要 当矿山关闭时，采矿小镇会发生什么？本文通过对加拿大不列颠哥伦比亚省 (BC) 的 Britannia 铜矿的研究来探讨这个问题。Britannia 矿自 1905 年以来几乎一直在运营，于 1974 年关闭。在关闭后的几年里，Britannia 矿通过重新改造为博物馆和遗产地而幸存下来。这篇论文讲述了那次重新发明的故事。专注于一小群人，即不列颠尼亚海滩历史协会 (BBHS) 的工作，详细介绍了不列颠尼亚矿从工业景观转变为“加拿大最大的博物馆文物”和国家历史遗址的过程。然而，不仅仅是对矿业博物馆和遗产经济发展的历史叙述，本文还关注这种纪念和纪念行为构成特定空间历史的方式。它强调了地点在这些空间历史中的重要性，展示了 BBHS 对 BC 历史的叙述以及采矿在其中的地位，是如何被不列颠尼亚不断变化的采矿材料痕迹所扎根、协商并最终破坏的。