When it was announced in late 1999 that Giant Mine would be coming to a close due to the bankruptcy of the Royal Oak company, a small but very concerned group of Yellowknifer's got together to hash out a plan for saving the history of the mine.

An era of production ended at Giant in 1999 (Ryan Silke photo)

Through the help of government departments, Miramar Mining, and groups such as Spirit YK, the N.W.T. Chamber of Mines, and various individuals, our group was formed in February 2000 as the Giant Mine Heritage Group with the objective of saving priceless artifacts from Giant before they were lost or thrown away.

A comprehensive inventory of the property was compiled during the summer of 2000 by Ryan Silke, and was approved by Miramar Mining in the early summer of 2001, one year later.

By this time, our group had reformed as the N.W.T. Mining Heritage Group to better reflect our new objective. Now that we had saved the items from Giant, our plan was to create a museum or interpretive centre for mining in the entire N.W.T., but using buildings at Giant Mine. The A-Shaft area was the perfect choice and is now the basis of all future planning. Walt Humphries put together a vision of what this centre could look like in time.

During 2001-2002 work proceeded in preparation for fixing up buildings at Giant Mine. A cost assessment report by Ann Peters was completed early in 2001. This gave us an idea of how much it would cost to rehabilitate the structures for public access. The next step was getting an engineer to study the structures and figure out what would be involved to do so. Phil Nolan of Structural All Limited completed this work in summer 2002.

The A-Shaft area of Giant Mine is the envisioned site for the 'NWT Mining Heritage Center' (Ryan Silke photo)

Also throughout these years, members of our group conducted artifact acquisitioning from all around the NWT by visiting abandoned mines and receiving donations. The webpage was commissioned early 2002 and is continuously updated.

In July 2002, our group formed a registered society to gain momentum towards our goals and now go by the title The N.W.T. Mining Heritage Society. Our first annual general meeting was held September 25th 2002 and the first Board of Directors was elected. The season of 2002-2003 was much more formalized as members got together for numerous meetings in an effort to plan out our strategy. The result of these meetings is a firm idea of what our goals are, and how we should go about pursuing the creation of the N.W.T.'s first mining museum.

Our Business Plan was completed in the summer of 2004. It outlines our plans and the funds required to open a mining heritage center over the next Five Years. In August 2005, the society acquired a 10-year lease on the old Giant Mine recreation hall, the building that we will develop as the main museum. Also during the year, we repaired the A-shaft headframe, began development of our outdoor equipment displays, and moved an old log cabin from Con Mine to our site. Work continues on the land acquisition of the A-shaft buildings. In 2006, we began renovations to the recreation hall and designed and constructed our outdoor displays. The year 2007 will be dedicated to the renovation of the recreation hall and the further development of our outdoor displays.

To keep people informed of our society's progress, regular updates will be posted on this web-page. Keep tuned, because we have some 'giant' plans!

Copyright 2001-2007
by the NWT Mining Heritage Society