Copper. 23mm. 3.0 grams. Robert Cunningham was a British-born former missionary who immigrated to Canada in 1862. According to Richard Harvey, writing in Carving the Western Path: By River, Rail, and Road Through Central and Northern B.C.:

The churchman turned businessman worked for the Hudson’s Bay Company for some years and then set up his own trading empire, starting with a store in Port Essington. This was just the right spot to serve the sternwheelers that had followed the scent of gold and were moving miners and settlers inland to Hazelton.

Cunningham went into a partnership with Thomas Hankin, a pioneer of the Hazelton area, and opened a second trading post there. (The name Hazelton, was rather late in coming; it was originally Skeena Forks.) A third enterprise of the venturesome pair was a contract with the provincial government to improve the trail from Hazelton to Babine Lake, a vital link for the pack trains and itinerant miners with whom they dealt.

The groundbreaking theologian-cum-entrepreneur did not restrict his activities to trading posts and trail building; he went full tilt into water transportation, first with a steam tug operating from Metlakatla and Port Simpson to Port Essington, and then with two sternwheelers for service between Port Essington and Hazelton. One of these vessels was the highly regarded Hazelton.

These Robert Cunningham tokens are scarce relics of a bygone era when fur tradesmen and gold rush pioneers braved the northern and western frontier in search of fortune, relying on trading posts and transportation like those that Cunningham provided.

This token was worth 50 cents in trade and is countermarked H for Hazelton below the incuse denomination. Struck on a moderately wavy copper planchet that shows evidence of minor corrosion and a diagonal pin scratch across the lower obverse. Scarcely offered in any condition.