Kitimat is a district municipality in the North Coast region of

British Columbia British Columbia is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Situated in the Pacific Northwest between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that ...

, Canada. It is a member municipality of the

Regional District of Kitimat–Stikine The Regional District of Kitimat–Stikine is a local government administration in northwestern British Columbia, Canada. As of the 2021 Canadian census, it had a population of 37,790 living on a land area of . Its administrative offices are in ...

regional government. The Kitimat Valley is part of the most populous urban district in northwest British Columbia, which includes

Terrace Terrace may refer to: Landforms and construction * Fluvial terrace, a natural, flat surface that borders and lies above the floodplain of a stream or river * Terrace, a street suffix * Terrace, the portion of a lot between the public sidewalk a ...

to the north along the

Skeena River The Skeena River is the second-longest river entirely within British Columbia, Canada (after the Fraser River). Since ancient times, the Skeena has been an important transportation artery, particularly for the Tsimshian and the Gitxsan—whose na ...

Valley. The city was planned and built by the Aluminum Company of Canada (

Alcan Alcan was a Canadian mining company and aluminum manufacturer. It was founded in 1902 as the Northern Aluminum Company, renamed Aluminum Company of Canada in 1925, and Alcan Aluminum in 1966. It took the name Alcan Incorporated in 2001. During ...

) during the 1950s. Its post office was approved on 6 June 1952. Kitimat's municipal area is . It is located on tidewater in one of the few wide, flat valleys on the coast of British Columbia. The 2016 census recorded 8,131 citizens. The District of Kitimat Development Services situates the port of Kitimat as an integral part of the Northwest Corridor connecting North America to the Pacific Ocean and the Pacific Rim.

History

"Kitimat" in the

Tsimshian The Tsimshian (; ) are an Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. Their communities are mostly in coastal British Columbia in Terrace, British Columbia, Terrace and ...

language refers to the

Haisla Haisla may refer to: * Haisla people, an indigenous people living in Kitamaat, British Columbia, Canada. * Haisla language, their northern Wakashan language. * Haisla Nation The Haisla Nation is the Indian Act-mandated band government which repr ...

First Nation as the "People of the Snow". Before 1950 the Kitimat township was a small

fishing village A fishing village is a village, usually located near a fishing ground, with an economy based on catching fish and harvesting seafood. The continents and islands around the world have coastlines totalling around 356,000 kilometres (221,000 ...

at the head of the Kitimat Arm of the

Douglas Channel Douglas Channel is one of the principal inlets (or fjords) of the British Columbia Coast, into which the Kitimat River flows. The channel was named in honour of Sir James Douglas, the first governor of the Colony of British Columbia. The offici ...

, a deepwater

fjord In physical geography, a fjord (also spelled fiord in New Zealand English; ) is a long, narrow sea inlet with steep sides or cliffs, created by a glacier. Fjords exist on the coasts of Antarctica, the Arctic, and surrounding landmasses of the n ...

. The municipal town of Kitimat came into existence in 1951 after the Provincial Government of British Columbia invited Alcan to develop hydroelectric facilities to support one of the most power-intensive of all industries—the aluminum smelting industry. The company built a dam, tunnel, powerhouse,

transmission line In electrical engineering, a transmission line is a specialized cable or other structure designed to conduct electromagnetic waves in a contained manner. The term applies when the conductors are long enough that the wave nature of the transmis ...

, a deep-sea terminal and

smelter Smelting is a process of applying heat and a chemical reducing agent to an ore to extract a desired base metal product. It is a form of extractive metallurgy that is used to obtain many metals such as iron, copper, silver, tin, lead and zin ...

. The company also designed, laid out and assisted with the initial construction of the city. At the time, the combined development was considered "the most expensive project ever attempted by private industry." Alcan employed the services of city planner

Clarence Stein Clarence Samuel Stein (June 19, 1882 – February 7, 1975) was an American urban planner, architect, and writer, a major proponent of the garden city movement in the United States known for the Radburn concept. Biography Stein was born in Roche ...

in order to ensure the community design facilitated an environment that would attract and retain workers, although Alcan intended it to not be a

company town A company town is a place where all or most of the stores and housing in the town are owned by the same company that is also the main employer. Company towns are often planned with a suite of amenities such as stores, houses of worship, schoo ...

. Today, Kitimat benefits from the quality of planning resulting from the Garden City design concept. Stein's design kept industry well separated from the community with large areas for expansion. He also created looped streets surrounding an urban city centre mall and linked by over of walkways connecting to all areas of the community. The substantial greenspace areas and future expansion concepts designed by Stein have been upheld to this day by the city planners, thereby resulting in a low-density settlement pattern interspersed with forested patches. Also, the Alcan-based city origin and land provenance remain documented in the form of restrictive covenants registered on title.

Economy

Aluminum Aluminium (or aluminum in North American English) is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol Al and atomic number 13. It has a density lower than that of other common metals, about one-third that of steel. Aluminium has ...

producer Rio Tinto is the main employer in the municipality. Local government, schools, small manufacturing and service/retail are secondary contributors. Secondary core activities include engineering, import of petrochemical products (methanol and condensate), and metal fabrication. Approximately $5 billion in manufacturing investment is anticipated in the 2010–2015 period with a further $5 billion-plus in the investigative stage over the next decade. Anticipated investment includes an approximately $2 billion modernization to the Rio Tinto Alcan facilities and $3 billion in the Kitimat

liquefied natural gas Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is natural gas (predominantly methane, CH4, with some mixture of ethane, C2H6) that has been cooled to liquid form for ease and safety of non-pressurized storage or transport. It takes up about 1/600th the volume o ...

export development on Haisla Industrial Land at Bish Creek. The export facility would see

natural gas Natural gas (also fossil gas, methane gas, and gas) is a naturally occurring compound of gaseous hydrocarbons, primarily methane (95%), small amounts of higher alkanes, and traces of carbon dioxide and nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide and helium ...

piped in from the

Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin The Western Canada Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) underlies of Western Canada including southwestern Manitoba, southern Saskatchewan, Alberta, northeastern British Columbia and the southwest corner of the Northwest Territories. This vast sedimentary b ...

(particularly from

shale gas Shale gas is an unconventional natural gas that is found trapped within shale formations. Since the 1990s, a combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing has made large volumes of shale gas more economical to produce, and ...

developments such as the Montney and

Horn River The Horn River is a river in the Northwest Territories of Canada. It is a major tributary of the Mackenzie River. The river gives the name to the Horn River Formation, a shale deposit of the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin. The Horn River Bas ...

) and shipped to Asian markets. The LNG Canada project, a joint venture between

Shell Shell may refer to: Architecture and design * Shell (structure), a thin structure ** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses Science Biology * Seashell, a hard outer layer of a marine ani ...

and affiliates of

Petronas Petroliam Nasional Berhad, commonly known as PETRONAS (stylised in all caps), is a Malaysian Multinational corporation, multinational petroleum, oil and natural gas, gas company headquartered in Kuala Lumpur. Established in 1974, it is a lega ...

Mitsubishi Corporation is a Japanese general trading company ( ''sogo shosha'') and a core member of the Mitsubishi Group. For much of the post-war period, Mitsubishi Corporation has been the largest of the five great ''sogo shosha'' (Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Itochu, S ...

Korea Gas Corporation The Korea Gas Corporation (KOGAS) is a South Korean public natural gas company that was established by the Korean government in 1983. KOGAS has grown into the largest LNG-importing company in the world and operates four LNG regasification t ...

and

PetroChina PetroChina Company Limited () is a Chinese oil and gas company and is the listed arm of state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), headquartered in Dongcheng District, Beijing. The company is currently Asia's largest oil and ga ...

would, if permitted, begin construction in 2015 of a gas pipeline from northeastern BC and a LNG export terminal with an expected lifespan of 30 years. The terminal, located on the Douglas Channel near the aluminum refinery, would be able to accommodate two LNG vessels at a time. Annual volume would be 24 million tonnes. In July 2014 the ''Financial Post'' reported that Apache Corp. will "completely exit" the Kitimat LNG mega-project planned for B.C.'s West Coast. The U.S.

hedge fund A hedge fund is a Pooling (resource management), pooled investment fund that holds Market liquidity, liquid assets and that makes use of complex trader (finance), trading and risk management techniques to aim to improve investment performance and ...

Jana Partners LLC has pressured Houston-based Apache to sell its 50% stake in the BC shale gas plays. Pending energy projects that have identified Kitimat as a strategic gateway include Pacific Northern Gas' Pacific Trail Pipeline (federal and provincial environmental assessments issued) and the

Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines The Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines were a planned-but-never-built project for a twin pipeline from Bruderheim, Alberta, to Kitimat, British Columbia. The project was active from the mid-2000s to 2016. The eastbound pipeline would have impo ...

(currently being reviewed by the

National Energy Board The National Energy Board was an independent economic regulatory agency created in 1959 by the Government of Canada to oversee "international and inter-provincial aspects of the oil, gas and electric utility industries." Its head office was locate ...

). Additional investigations into clean energy developments include a Kitimat port development project featuring break-bulk port facilities and consideration of the best uses for the former Eurocan Wharf. In addition, the decommissioning of the former Eurocan

pulp Pulp may refer to: * Pulp (fruit), the inner flesh of fruit * Pulp (band), an English rock band Engineering * Pulp (paper), the fibrous material used to make paper * Dissolving pulp, highly purified cellulose used in fibre and film manufacture ...

and paper facilities or a slimmed down operation are still under consideration. There is also renewed interest in mineral development potential in the Kitimat area. The neighbouring community of

is also in advanced stages of approval for a number of clean energy projects along with the associated infrastructure for linking those projects to the provincial electrical grid. Air services for the community are provided through Northwest Regional Airport, with connections to Prince George, Smithers, and

Vancouver Vancouver is a major city in Western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the cit ...

Kemano hydroelectric project

In the 1920s, the provincial government of

extensively evaluated the province's hydroelectric generating potential. In the late 1940s, the

Canadian Government The Government of Canada (), formally His Majesty's Government (), is the body responsible for the federal administration of Canada. The term ''Government of Canada'' refers specifically to the executive, which includes ministers of the Crown ( ...

sought to tap the untapped resources of northwest British Columbia. All this led to the identification of the Eutsuk/ Ootsa/

Nechako River The Nechako River (Carrier language, Dakelh: ᘅᐪᙠᗶᑋ) arises on the Nechako Plateau east of the Kitimat Ranges of the Coast Mountains of British Columbia, Canada, and flows north toward Fort Fraser, British Columbia, Fort Fraser, then east ...

drainage basin as a potential site for a sizable reservoir. The potential of this vast system of rivers and lakes prompted British Columbia to invite Alcan to conduct a detailed investigation of the area. Alcan was searching for a site for a large

aluminum Aluminium (or aluminum in North American English) is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol Al and atomic number 13. It has a density lower than that of other common metals, about one-third that of steel. Aluminium has ...

, an activity requiring vast amounts of electricity. Alcan concluded that the area was more than adequate to generate the required electricity, and decided to build a smelter there. The timing was right because the post-

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

boom saw a rising demand for aluminum. Between 1951 and 1954, after signing the agreement with the British Columbia government for land and water rights, Alcan undertook the Kitimat– Kemano Project, one of the most ambitious Canadian engineering projects of the 20th century. The project required not only building the

Kenney Dam The Kenney Dam is a rock-fill embankment dam on the Nechako River in northwestern British Columbia, built in the early 1950s. The impoundment of water behind the dam forms the Nechako Reservoir, which is also commonly known as the Ootsa Lake Reserv ...

to reverse the Nechako River, but also boring a tunnel under Mt. Dubose, within the Coast Range, to the large hydroelectric Kemano Generating Station built under Mt. Dubose. Electricity from Kemano is transported across mountains via a custom built twin circuit transmission line. After

avalanche An avalanche is a rapid flow of snow down a Grade (slope), slope, such as a hill or mountain. Avalanches can be triggered spontaneously, by factors such as increased precipitation or snowpack weakening, or by external means such as humans, othe ...

s tore away transmission towers, a

catenary In physics and geometry, a catenary ( , ) is the curve that an idealized hanging chain or wire rope, cable assumes under its own weight when supported only at its ends in a uniform gravitational field. The catenary curve has a U-like shape, ...

system was built. In three years, 6,000 construction workers built the dam, tunnel, powerhouse, transmission line, smelter, and town. The town of Kitimat was carved out of

old-growth forest An old-growth forest or primary forest is a forest that has developed over a long period of time without disturbance. Due to this, old-growth forests exhibit unique ecological features. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Natio ...

. The company invested over CA$500 million (equivalent to CA$3.3 billion) and employed over 35,000 workers over the five years required to build the Kenney Dam, the hydropower plant under Mt. Dubose at

Kemano Kemano was a settlement situated 75 km (47 mi) southeast of Kitimat in the province of British Columbia in Canada. It was built to service a hydroelectric power station, built to provide energy for Alcan to smelt aluminum from its or ...

, a 250,000 tpy aluminum smelter, a year-round deepwater port, a townsite designed for a population of 50,000, and a paved highway to the outside world. As a result of this project other companies saw the potential of the area, resulting in further industrial development in the Kitimat valley.

LNG Canada terminal project

On 1 October 2018,

Royal Dutch Shell Shell plc is a British multinational oil and gas company, headquartered in London, England. Shell is a public limited company with a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and secondary listings on Euronext Amsterdam and the New ...

and its Asia partners gave formal approval to an estimated $40 billion investment into the construction of a new liquified natural gas port terminal project named LNG Canada, coupled with the construction by a subsidiary of TransCanada of a gas pipeline, known as the Coastal GasLink Pipeline, linking this terminal to the Montney, British Columbia, natural gas field. When completed, LNG Canada will become the first Canadian

LNG Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is natural gas (predominantly methane, CH4, with some mixture of ethane, C2H6) that has been cooled to liquid form for ease and safety of non-pressurized storage or transport. It takes up about 1/600th the volume o ...

export ocean terminal, which will compete with other LNG terminals in the US, either existing or planned on the West (

Alaska Alaska ( ) is a non-contiguous U.S. state on the northwest extremity of North America. Part of the Western United States region, it is one of the two non-contiguous U.S. states, alongside Hawaii. Alaska is also considered to be the north ...

Washington Washington most commonly refers to: * George Washington (1732–1799), the first president of the United States * Washington (state), a state in the Pacific Northwest of the United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A ...

Oregon Oregon ( , ) is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is a part of the Western U.S., with the Columbia River delineating much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while t ...

), Gulf (

Louisiana Louisiana ( ; ; ) is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It borders Texas to the west, Arkansas to the north, and Mississippi to the east. Of the 50 U.S. states, it ranks 31st in area and 25 ...

Texas Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...

) and Atlantic coasts (

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It borders the states of Virginia to its south, West Virginia to its west, Pennsylvania to its north, and Delaware to its east ...

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...

). In October 2023, pipeline installation on the project was 100% complete. This new terminal being built in the port of Kitimat will be connected to the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...

via the existing

. This development will add new sensitive ship traffic when the LNG Canada natural gas storage and liquefaction terminal will be completed and operational, which is estimated to be in 2025. The LNG Canada terminal project will see large

LNG carrier An LNG carrier is a tank ship designed for transporting liquefied natural gas (LNG). Overview The first oceangoing liquified natural gas tanker in the world was '' Methane Pioneer'', which entered service in 1959 with a carrying capacity of ...

ships loading liquefied natural gas at the future Kitimat LNG terminal, and sailing along the

to carry it to export destinations, mainly in Asia.

Pacific Future pipeline and refinery

The Pacific Future Energy Refinery was projected to refine more than 30,000 m3 per day of nearly solid bitumen of the Western Canadian Select variety for at least 60 years. Grupo Salinas were the owners, and "European technology" was touted as the solution to environmental ills. The construction of the plant was budgeted at $11 billion and included

carbon capture and storage Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a process by which carbon dioxide (CO2) from industrial installations is separated before it is released into the atmosphere, then transported to a long-term storage location.IPCC, 2021Annex VII: Glossary at ...

(CCS) technology. Capacity would be increased in 200,000 bpd stages that would cost $6 billion. Simeco, a

Milan Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...

engineering and construction firm would provide the design. Modules would be built in Asia and transported to

Prince Rupert Prince Rupert of the Rhine, Duke of Cumberland, (17 December 1619 ( O.S.) 7 December 1619 (N.S.)– 29 November 1682 (O.S.) December 1682 (N.S) was an English-German army officer, admiral, scientist, and colonial governor. He first rose to ...

for assembly. The project headquarters was in

. When the project was announced in June 2014 the funds has yet to be assembled, and a preliminary venture round for design work was budgeted at $250 million. Stockwell Day was hired by the proponents, as well as Shawn Atleo and

Ovide Mercredi Ovide William Mercredi (born January 30, 1946) is a Canadian politician. He is Cree and a former National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations. He is also the former president of the Manitoba New Democratic Party. Early life and career A ...

. The

Northern Gateway pipeline The Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines were a planned-but-never-built project for a twin pipeline transport, pipeline from Bruderheim, Alberta, to Kitimat, British Columbia. The project was active from the mid-2000s to 2016. The eastbound pipel ...

, originally proposed by

Enbridge Enbridge Inc. is a multinational pipeline transport, pipeline and energy company headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Enbridge owns and operates pipelines throughout Canada and the United States, transporting crude oil, natural gas, and n ...

, would have supplied the resource. Opponents of the project included SkeenaWild Conservation Trust, and

Haida people The Haida (, , , , ) are an Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. They constitute one of 203 First Nations in British Columbia and 231 federally recognized List of Alaska Native tribal entities, tribes in Alaska. T ...

First Nations First nations are indigenous settlers or bands. First Nations, first nations, or first peoples may also refer to: Indigenous groups *List of Indigenous peoples *First Nations in Canada, Indigenous peoples of Canada who are neither Inuit nor Mé ...

, as well as the Kitselas, Metlakatla and Gitga'at tribes of

people. The CEO of Pacific Future, Samer Salameh, notified the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada (IAAC) in December 2024 of the project's failure, and on 11 February 2025 Minister

Steven Guilbeault Steven Guilbeault (; born June 9, 1970) is a Canadian politician and activist who has served as Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture since 2025. A member of the Liberal Party of Canada, Liberal Party, Guilbeault has sat as a Member of Par ...

wrote that the sponsors confirmed that they had discontinued the project, and that "This letter provides acific Futurewith notification that I have terminated the environmental assessment for the project."

Geography

Kitimat is located south of

and Thornhill on Highway 37.

is northwest, and Prince George is to the east.

Climate

Kitimat has a warm-summer humid continental (

Köppen climate classification The Köppen climate classification divides Earth climates into five main climate groups, with each group being divided based on patterns of seasonal precipitation and temperature. The five main groups are ''A'' (tropical), ''B'' (arid), ''C'' (te ...

''Dfb'') with mild summers and cold, snowy winters (much warmer than inland) with significant snowfall averaging 128 inches (325 cm) each year. The rainiest season is fall, with the wettest month, October, having 320 mm of rainfall. There is also a significant drying trend (Mediterranean pattern) in summer, but it is too cold and rainy to classify as such.

Cloud cover Cloud cover (also known as cloudiness, cloudage, or cloud amount) refers to the fraction of the sky obscured by clouds on average when observed from a particular location. Okta is the usual unit for measurement of the cloud cover. The cloud c ...

is significant, especially in winter, and less than 30% of possible sunshine occurs each year.

Demographics

In the

2021 Census of Population The 2021 Canadian census was a detailed enumeration of the Canadian population with a reference date of May 11, 2021. It follows the 2016 Canadian census, which recorded a population of 35,151,728. The overall response rate was 98%, which is sli ...

conducted by

Statistics Canada Statistics Canada (StatCan; ), formed in 1971, is the agency of the Government of Canada commissioned with producing statistics to help better understand Canada, its population, resources, economy, society, and culture. It is headquartered in ...

, Kitimat had a population of 8,236 living in 3,604 of its 4,381 total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of 8,131. With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021.

Ethnicity

Religion

According to the 2021 census, religious groups in Kitimat included: *

Irreligion Irreligion is the absence or rejection of religious beliefs or practices. It encompasses a wide range of viewpoints drawn from various philosophical and intellectual perspectives, including atheism, agnosticism, religious skepticism, ...

(4,220 persons or 51.4%) *

Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion, which states that Jesus in Christianity, Jesus is the Son of God (Christianity), Son of God and Resurrection of Jesus, rose from the dead after his Crucifixion of Jesus, crucifixion, whose ...

(3,690 persons or 44.9%) *

Islam Islam is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran, and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number Islam by country, 2 billion worldwide and are the world ...

(110 persons or 1.3%) *

Hinduism Hinduism () is an Hypernymy and hyponymy, umbrella term for a range of Indian religions, Indian List of religions and spiritual traditions#Indian religions, religious and spiritual traditions (Sampradaya, ''sampradaya''s) that are unified ...

(45 persons or 0.5%) *

Buddhism Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...

(35 persons or 0.4%) *

Sikhism Sikhism is an Indian religion and Indian philosophy, philosophy that originated in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent around the end of the 15th century CE. It is one of the most recently founded major religious groups, major religio ...

(20 persons or 0.2%) * Indigenous Spirituality (10 persons or 0.1%) *Other (75 persons or 0.9%)

Controversies

The Alcan project was not free from controversy. Politicians, aboriginal groups, farmers and residents of the Nechako Lakes District opposed the contractual release of provincial resources with the profits going to a private firm. Many individuals and groups protested the flooding caused by the creation of the new reservoir, with the destruction of homesteads, villages, burial grounds, millions of board feet of prime timber, and the disruption of prime fish habitat on the

. In the late 1980s, the company began work on the Kemano Completion Project which would have doubled the generating capacity of the Kemano plant. After Alcan had already bored a second tunnel through the mountain and extended the generating station within the mountain, the provincial government of the day called a halt to the project for a variety of reasons. Having invested over $500 million into the project, Alcan took the provincial government to court. This controversy was settled when Alcan and the provincial government signed the 1997 KCP agreement. Most of the first decade of the twenty-first century saw the District of Kitimat in court with the Provincial Government over the electricity rights granted to Alcan and its obligations to the Province and to the District. Rio Tinto Alcan plans to increase the output of its Kitimat smelter from 250,000 MT/Yr to 400,000 MT/Yr and initially committed $300 million to this effort. Since late 2008, relations between Rio Tinto Alcan and the District appear to have become more cordial, with the two parties working to achieve modernization of the aluminum facilities. In December 2011, Rio Tinto Alcan announced its investment of $2.7 billion to complete the modernization of the smelter.

Media

Newspapers

* ''Kitimat Northern Sentinel'' * ''Skeena Reporter''

Radio

* FM 92.1 –

CFNR-FM CFNR-FM is a Canadian radio station based in Terrace, British Columbia, owned and operated by Northern Native Broadcasting (Terrace). The station operates at 92.1 FM from the station headquarters in Terrace. The programming reflects and is broadc ...

community A community is a social unit (a group of people) with a shared socially-significant characteristic, such as place, set of norms, culture, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given g ...

classic rock Classic rock is a radio format that developed from the album-oriented rock (AOR) format in the early 1980s. In the United States, it comprises rock music ranging generally from the mid-1960s through the early-1990s, primarily focusing on comm ...

(

) * FM 92.9 – CJFW-FM-1,

country A country is a distinct part of the world, such as a state, nation, or other political entity. When referring to a specific polity, the term "country" may refer to a sovereign state, state with limited recognition, constituent country, ...

(repeats CJFW-FM,

) * FM 97.7 – CKTK-FM,

hot adult contemporary Adult contemporary music (AC) is a form of radio-played popular music, ranging from 1960s vocal and 1970s soft rock music to predominantly ballad-heavy music of the 1980s to the present day, with varying degrees of easy listening, pop, soul ...

* FM 100.3 – CFKI-FM,

CBC Radio 2 CBC Music (formerly known as CBC FM, CBC Stereo and CBC Radio 2) is a Canadian FM radio network operated by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. It used to concentrate on classical and jazz. In 2007 and 2008, the network transitioned towards a ...

(repeats CBU-FM,

) * FM 101.1 – CBUK-FM,

CBC Radio One CBC Radio One is the English-language news and information radio network of the publicly owned Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. It is commercial-free and offers local and national programming. It is available on AM and FM to 98 percent o ...

(repeats CFPR,

) * FM 105.1 – CBUF-FM-5, Première Chaîne (repeats CBUF-FM,

)

Television

* Channel 3 –

CFTK-TV CFTK-TV ( analogue channel 3) is a television station in Terrace, British Columbia, Canada, airing CTV 2 programming. Owned and operated by Bell Media, it is part of the Great West Television system. CFTK-TV's studios are located on Lazelle Ave ...

CTV 2 CTV 2 is a Television in Canada, Canadian English language, English-language television system owned by the Bell Media subsidiary of BCE Inc. The system consists of four terrestrial owned-and-operated station, owned-and-operated television stat ...

affiliate (

) * DTBS cable channel 10

Notable people

* Benjamin Arthur – actor * Kayla Czaga – poet * Mark Fitzpatrick – professional ice hockey goaltender * Wayne Kelly – Swimmer. 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. 5th – freestyle relay. * Jon Kelly – Swimmer. 1988 Seoul Olympics. 7th 200m butterfly, 12th 400m Individual Medley. *

Bill Leeb Wilhelm Anton "Bill" Leeb (born 21 September 1966, in Vienna, Austria) is an Austrian-Canadian electronic musician and record producer. He is best known for being a founding member of the industrial music group Front Line Assembly and Deleri ...

– musician and record producer * Alison Redford – lawyer, Canadian politician, Alberta Progressive Conservative Leader and MLA (2011–2014), first female Premier of Alberta * Eden Robinson – author * Benjamin Thorne -speed walker * Bill Riley (ice hockey, born 1950) professional ice hockey player third black man in the NHL * Rod Pelley professional ice hockey player

Notes

References

External links

www.kitimat.ca
* {{authority control Company towns in Canada District municipalities in British Columbia Populated places in the Regional District of Kitimat–Stikine North Coast of British Columbia Populated places on the British Columbia Coast