"When I worked in the mines I liked timbering best. When you get away from it, you realize how foolish you were for being there." Both Alec and Helena are the children of miners, and Alec followed his father into the underground. Alex’s Story “My father worked in a mine in Fifeshire, Scotland and then came to Cumberland to work in the mines. He worked the shaft slope in the No. 5 mine first, and then he went to No. 6, where he ran water buckets up and down with the hoist to drain the run-off water that was coming through from No.5. After that he went back to No. 5 running the shaft hoist and he retired not long after that. |
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“I was born in Scotland in 1923 and came to Canada in 1924, when I was only one year old. I started mining in 1938 at age fifteen, working at the pit head, and then in April, 1939, I picked rock out of the coal on the picking table at the No. 8 mine. In 1941, I went underground where I ran the winch to move the cars, then worked the haulage underground. When I went to the Tsable River mine I did framing and eventually helped on the joyloader and then finally I was a joyloader operator. My brother James worked in the mine too, but was hurt near the end of the operations at Tsable River.
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