Start of the Argonaut tid bits from the guys.

George:
The Chinese were up there before we were; they had a tunnel in there on the lakeside before the tracks, where the two ore drills were up on top of the hill. It was years before we got up there!

Angus:
Remember the old guy that handled the horses for the exploration? Ben Fellows, he had the mule and packhorses going across the other side of the lake to the mine site.

The exploration was on the other side from where the mine site was for the Argonaut. They were testing to see how much ore was there. Ben Fellows has his horses and carts in parades. Jasper Sutherland did that as well with the horses.They started building the road in 1949; the mine opened in 1951 and was finished operation in 1957.

George:
It was a great learning place. They broke in a lot of guys. The foreman said, “will you go get a load of powder, so I said sure but I am busy for a few minutes then I will go,” he said, “okay, take that truck over there,” and he was working on the level above, so round up to where he was and I asked what the gears on the transmission were. “What is the rotation on it, do you know, first, second, and third gear. ” so he drew me a picture of them, he did not know that I was going to get a load of powder. So I went back down got in the truck and away I went down around the bottom of the magazine, got a load of powder brought it back up. It was the greatest learning school there was!

Tales from the Argonaut

Bob:
The shovels were ADD Northwest, and they could tip on their sides. I know because I put one on its side.  I think it was my first night on the night shift, and somehow or other I came around with the bucket too far out and it over balanced and flopped over.

One driver dumped a truck over the hill on Argonaut Road, which was one of the ore trucks that went to the Spit in Campbell River.  A truck came right over the bank of the pit one time; the rocks caught in it and hoisted it up.  It went right over the edge, right over backwards.  The driver bailed, he had to jump probably twenty feet.

George:
It was the first place I ever drove a pick up on my own. I was fifteen for three years while I was there before I was old enough to work there.

Angus:
I remember the disaster that happened to Rogers. He was a monkey wrencher, he was not a driver. He took a belly dump from Argonaut to the Spit over night. They had to haul rock from the mine, to haul them down the Cenotaph the next day.  Well Ken Rogers was in one and he pulled the lever and dumped it right there in the yard at the Spit. The rock never made it to the Cenotaph.

Angus:
Stan, do you remember when the powerhouse caught on fire?  Melbourne and Ryan were the first ones there with a fire extinguisher.

Renner:
Jack Toupee was the one that ran the powerhouse.

Stan:
I have heard the name before. I think I remember that one when the powerhouse went.

Angus:
That was an engineer or his helper; they had those hoses to dispense fuel just at the high side of the powerhouse.  The tanks were on the bank above the powerhouse and there was diesel and gas.  The gas hose after he used it he took it with him, it hooked on his rear bumper and he pulled away.  They had these channels in the powerhouse to wash the floors, well they filled with gasoline and they were burning in there.

Renner:
I think it was Jack who went in there and threw the switch.

Bob:
Oh yeah, it would have thrown an arc.

Stan:
I remember one time when the bus came up and all the guys got off and Murphy let off a blast and a rock come down through the roof of the bus.  I asked Murphy, “well, what the hell did you do anyway”? He said to me, “well I proved one thing anyway, you cannot get more than a case of powder in those holes. It is surprising there were not more killed up there.

It sounded like the guys seemed to go through a lot of equipment and this was the response we got:

Renner:
It was worn out before we got there!

George:
There was a fair bit of equipment destroyed!

We had a lot of fun chatting with the guys from the Argonaut and hope you have enjoyed a few of the many stories we heard from the guys. One last note from the gang before we let them go.

A few words from the guys on retirement

Renner:
Retirement can be pretty busy sometimes.

Bob:
Not really, all the time you can do what you want to, there is always someone else wanting you to do something, that is my point of view.

George:
You do not do as much work, it just takes longer to do it and even then you may never get around to it.

Ernie:
Or you never do it.

Angus:
You probably know Chris Brown, the monkey wrencher, at the Spit, he retired from Menzies.  He said since he has been retired he is so busy, never knew how he had time for work.

Stan:
I have an acre and a half of grass to keep me busy.