From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Cumberland is a village in the Comox Valley on Vancouver
Island in British Columbia, Canada.
History
The village was originally named Union, British Columbia after
the Union Coal Company, which was in turn named in honour of the
1871 union of British Columbia with Canada. The town was renamed
after Cumberland in Great Britain by James Dunsmuir in
1891. Robert
Dunsmuir had the town built in 1888.[1]:187 The Union
Coal Company was begun in 1871 to exploit a coal discovery made the
previous year on Coal Creek which flows in to Comox Lake. By 1874
the company had built a tramway and a road to Comox Harbour at what
is now Royston but after this
initial work, the high cost of opening a mine proved too high for
the original partners and work stopped. In 1884, the same year he
received the land grant related to
the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway, Robert Dunsmuir bought the
Union Coal Company. He bought the nearby Perserverance Mine at what
is now Union Bay in 1888 and the Baynes Sound Mine in 1881. Two
slopes were open at the Union Mine by 1893. By 1897 the mine was
producing 700 to 1000 tons per day, employed 600 men and supported
a town of 3000.[1]:198 In 1946,
a magnitude 7.3
earthquake demolished chimneys of houses in Cumberland.[2]
There are many old company houses and structures still intact in
Cumberland, and at one point it boasted the second largest Chinatown on the west coast
of North America.
Demographics
Cumberland had a population of 2,762 people in 2006, which was
an increase of 4.9% from the 2001 census count. The median
household income in 2005 for Cumberland was $43,464, which is below
the British Columbia provincial average of $52,709.[3]
References
External
links
Coordinates: 49°37′14″N 125°1′34″W / 49.62056°N
125.02611°W / 49.62056;
-125.02611
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