SMOKE EATERS

One of the great moments in Canadian hockey history belongs to the small town of Trail, British Columbia. In 1961, a local amateur team from Trail captured the gold medal at the World Hockey Championships, a victory that, at the time, appeared to reaffirm Canada's dominance in international hockey. It turned out to be the end of an era. Thirty-three years passed before another Canadian team – this time composed of elite professionals from the National Hockey League – won the prestigious global tournament. As Canada marched toward victory at the 1994 event, the national media wistfully described the team's quest as the “Trail to Gold,” thereby linking past glories with the glittering promise of present opportunities.

What interests me here, however, is not Canada's international hockey reputation, but the Trail team's unlikely nickname: the Smoke Eaters. In truth, the name Smoke Eaters accurately reflected the reality of life in that community. To live in Trail was literally to be an eater of smoke, a consumer of the relentless emissions that poured from the stacks of the local smelter. Built by American mining promoters in 1896, the Trail smelter was consolidated with several mines in nearby Rossland under the ownership of Canadian Pacific in 1906. After the Great War, the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company perfected the metallurgical process for the refining of low-grade zinc ores, a technological innovation that reflected Trail's transformation from an unstable mining frontier to the smelting capital of British Columbia.