Trail’s Gyro Park time capsule

One of my odder pursuits is keeping track of local time capsules: where are they, when were they created, when are they due to be opened, and what’s inside them?

One day this inventory will appear as a blog post. In the 2011 edition of the Trail Journal of Local History, I enumerated Trail’s time capsules and noted that I struggled to find information on two of the most recent ones.

What was described as Trail’s Millennium 2000 time capsule was placed inside the Cominco Arena on Nov. 27, 1949, to mark the 50th anniversary of the building’s construction. But its contents are unknown. The city has no record of what is inside. We’ll find out in relatively short order: it’s to be opened on Nov. 27, 1949, on the arena’s 100th anniversary. 

The capsule was originally near the building’s entrance, but was moved sometime after 2017 to near the entrance of the Victoria View room, which is the former public library space. There happened to be a perfect cavity for it: the former book return!

Another time capsule left me baffled for a long time, but I’ve finally figured out why. In Trail’s Gyro Park, you’ll find a large stone cairn with a plaque, which is tarnished and hard to read. It says:

1906-1981

75th Anniversary

Here at Trail in 1906 a few foresighted men formed the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company of Canada Ltd. later to become widely known as Cominco.

It was established with the resolve that this new company would be a diversified and enduring business.

Through the years the success of these plants at Trail have been a major factor in building Cominco into one of Canada’s important enterprises.

Today, Cominco at Trail is the world’s largest lead-zinc production center and a leader in production and environmental control technology in the industry.

This cairn is dedicated by the City of Trail to Cominco.

And to the thousands of people in this area, past and present who have given their work and talent in building this company, as a tribute on the company’s 75th anniversary.

1981

The ore specimen on this cairn is from the Sullivan mine, Kimberley, BC. The ore which made possible the industry at Trail: layered galena and sphalerite containing lead, zinc, silver, and other minerals.

A smaller plaque lower down on the cairn says

Time capsule

To be opened September 2081

Yet I could find no information on the time capsule or its contents. I reviewed the coverage of the Cominco 75th birthday celebration in the Trail Daily Times and found no mention of it. Retired city clerk Jamie Forbes, who was involved in putting the capsule together, says he can’t remember what’s in it, although he thinks a record of its contents might exist somewhere in the vault at city hall.

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I was left baffled until recently, when the full run of the Times and its predecessors was digitized and placed online. Turns out the reason I couldn’t find anything about the time capsule in 1981 is because it wasn’t created in 1981. In fact, it’s from 1983!

It turns out just the idea for the cairn came in 1981. The city apparently held a contest to find ways to commemorate Cominco’s role in Trail’s development. The winning suggestion came from Roger Prior, who recommended the cairn, although I don’t know whether he said it ought to include a time capsule.

Prior was recognized at a council meeting on Sept. 28, 1981. At the same meeting, Cominco boss (and future mayor) Marc Marcolin was presented with the Freedom of the City. It took until March 1983 for a tender invitation to be issued for the cairn.

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Trail Daily Times, Sept. 25, 1981 and March 18, 1983

I don’t know who built it or how much it cost, but the cairn was finally unveiled on Aug. 31, 1983. The Trail Times commented on the time capsule and revealed some of its contents:

A time capsule at the base of the monument is scheduled to be opened in September 2081. Just about everyone who spoke at Wednesday’s ceremony indicated an intention to attend that opening. The capsule contains a tape recording of some of the 1981 festivities at Butler Park and some information on Cominco and the city at present.

Good luck finding a machine that will be able to play that tape in 2081.

At the time, mayor Chuck Lakes said the site for the cairn was chosen with the long-term beautification of the riverbank in mind.

Trail Daily Times, Sept. 1, 1983

About that piece of ore that was included in the cairn: Jamie Forbes told me Bill Leaman of the Cominco public relations department arranged to have it brought to Trail from the Sullivan mine. Because the cairn wasn’t ready yet, it was stored at the public works yard in Glenmerry.

“One day the staff there decided to clean up the yard. The crew did not know what the large rock was for and proceeded to push it over the bank and into the river. I eventually found out about this and called Bill to request another piece of ore for the cairn.”

Leaman was not impressed. Getting a piece of ore of that size from the mine wasn’t easy, and the staff in Kimberley weren’t happy about it. “We laughed about it later,” Forbes says, “but it was not funny at the time.” 

It’s curious that the time capsule is supposed to be opened 100 years from 1981 rather than 100 years from 1983, when it was actually created. The former date no longer has much significance, since Cominco later merged with Teck to become Teck-Cominco, then dropped the name Cominco entirely (and is soon to merge with Anglo American to become Anglo Teck).

So 2081 will be the 175th anniversary of the creation of a company that once owned the smelter before disappearing in a sea of corporate mergers. (The smelter itself opened in 1896.) 2081 will also be the 98th anniversary of the creation of the cairn and the time capsule.

The story doesn’t quite end there.

In 1986, the Trail Times reported the startling news that the cairn was being demolished at Cominco’s request.

The time capsule bears a plaque saying it should be opened in September 2081, but Cominco has decided it can not wait. Having already laid off more than 300 employees this year and eliminated the free turkeys and fertilizer for workers and widows, the company issued a statement today saying the cairn “can not be considered outside the influence of today’s unfortunate circumstances.

“When Cominco dedicated the cairn on its 75th anniversary it was not anticipating the sorts of problems that have befallen the mining industry world-wide,” said the statement. “But having lost $97 million last year and facing a critical situation of sagging prices and escalating production costs, it has been decided that the metal content in the cairn is vital to the company’s financial picture.

“If it is vital to the company picture, then surely the citizens of the Trail area will understand this monument’s mineral content is vital too to their individual and collective interests.”

The Times added that ore samples that had previously been on display at the company’s gatehouse had also been removed to help prop up the company’s bottom line. 

“If people have had to give up their jobs, as well as fertilizer and turkeys, then surely the company can show some gesture of sacrifice by donating these display samples, as well as the ore in the Gyro Park cairn, to financial recovery,” the newspaper quoted the company as saying.

The paper added that company officials had declined to estimate the market value of the ore in the cairn. But they added that the memorabilia in the time capsule would go to the Trail Museum to be stored until 2081.

An accompanying photo showed what a caption said was a Cominco worker “delivering the first blow of a sledge hammer” to the cairn.

I’m sure the story caused some consternation at the Cominco switchboard. Because the date was April 1.

Trail Daily Times, April 1, 1986

The Times admitted to the prank the following day: “The story about Cominco dismantling the commemorative cairn in Gyro Park to retrieve the mineral content, was not a reflection of Cominco’s current hard times. It was simply April 1 — gotcha. Things are not really quite that bad up the hill, are they Cominco?”

At a remove of 40 years, it certainly fooled me. As bizarre as the story seemed, the fact that it appeared quietly on page 3 and was written so dryly made me willing to believe it.

Other local newspapers have sometimes run April Fool’s pranks — The Express did it annually for many years — but while you might have been taken in at first, usually there were plenty of giveaways that something was amiss.

Thank goodness the April 2 edition of the Times still exists, otherwise I would have been left wondering whether it was a prank (and also confused, since the cairn is still very much there). This demonstrates how something that is recognized as a joke in its own time might be misinterpreted by later generations.

A prime example is the mythical gold boulder of Kootenay Lake, which was invented by writer Randall Kemp and published in the Nelson Tribune in 1894 without a disclaimer. Most readers at that time would have known Kemp was telling a tall tale because he was famous for them. Skip ahead 75 years, though, and people unaware of Kemp’s reputation were taking it at face value and spending money trying to locate the non-existent boulder.

As for the Gyro Park time capsule, I’ll be 104 in 2081. Like all those at its dedication, I also plan to be there for its opening.