The village was originally named Union , British Columbia after the Union Coal Company , which was in turn named in honour of the 1871 union of British Columbia with Canada . The town was renamed after Cumberland in Great Britain by James Dunsmuir in 1891 . Robert Dunsmuir had the town built in 1888 . The Union Coal Company was begun in 1871 to exploit a coal discovery made the previous year on Coal Creek which flows into Comox Lake . By 1874 the company had built a tramway and a road to Comox Harbour at what is now Royston but after this initial work , the high cost of opening a mine proved too high for the original partners and work stopped . In 1884 , the same year he received the land grant related to the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway , Robert Dunsmuir bought the Union Coal Company . He bought the nearby Perseverance Mine at what is now Union Bay in 1888 and the Baynes Sound Mine in 1881 . Two slopes were open at the Union Mine by 1893 . By 1897 the mine was producing 700 to 1000 tons per day , employed 600 men and supported a town of 3000 . In 1946 , a magnitude 7.3 earthquake demolished chimneys of houses in Cumberland
magnitude 7.3 earthquake
1946 Vancouver Island earthquake
Cumberland, British Columbia