The Color of Jade

Our first stop the next day was Jade City.  The Milespost  describes Jade City as "not so much a city as a collection of homes and shops connected with the jade business."

We went into the Cassiar Mountain Jade Store to look around.  Out in front there were stone saws and examples of quarried jade. I wet the edge of one piece to see how it will look when it is polished. 

The owner of the shop was very friendly and seemed to enjoy talking to us. His family has mined and designed jade here for over 30 years. We had no idea the the Cassiar Mountain Range in BC supplies 92% of the world's jade market.  Most of that comes from The Princess Mines.  We were told that a New Zealand miner works here in the summer and takes 100 tons of jade back home with him every year.  He can buy one kilo of jade here for $20.00 and sell it for $80.00 a kilo back in New Zealand.  (Although jade is mined in New Zealand, by law only the Maoris can trade in it.)  I asked about the jade business in China, and was told that they have not mined jade there since the early 1980's.  Representatives from China come to BC to buy hunks of jade. They ship it to China where it is carved and then many of the finished pieces come back and are sold right here in this shop! There was a large piece of jade by the entry that weighed in at 15 tons, and came up to my shoulders.  It gave me an idea of what 100 tons of jade would look like.

Of course our conversation covered a little politics.  This entrepreneur was frustrated by what he referred to as "the Indian problem".  The BC government would subsidize his business if he hired an Indian.  However, in his experience the Indian's "don't like to work".  According to him all the tribes are subsidized by the government, but the money is given to the headmen and often only their families profit from it.  He claimed that the Natives do not pay any taxes, and all of them are given free medical and dental care, welfare whenever they need it and old age pensions whether they ever worked or not. 

If that all is true, then I guess I'd call it a problem. too.

And, we talked weather.  We have been pleasantly surprised by the warm and even hot days and the very cold nights.  We were told that because this has been a dry winter the bugs are not bad, and as long as the nights are cold, their numbers will stay down.  That morning the temperature was already 73 degrees although it had been down below freezing that night. Jade City gets only 21 frost free days a year!  Their summer is short, but during that time this store makes 98% of its income. 

Seems like the tourist business is just as lucrative as the mining business.

Our day ended at Boya Lake Provincial Park, the last provincial park along The Cassiar Highway.

It is a glacial lake, crystal clear and azure in color. Along the shallow shorelines it is ... the color of jade.