“My wife and I live in a company house in Cumberland. We purchased the house from the Canadian Collieries Company when I finished working for the mine. The Credit Union financed us for a mortgage at thirty-five dollars a month for three years. Johnny Marocchi vouched for us. We made minor changes once  we bought it, and an administrator of the City of Cumberland and some people on the Heritage Society protested and tried to stop the renovation construction. Originally, the walls were covered with cheesecloth and then wallpaper was used to cover that. Paint and wallpaper were supplied by the Canadian Collieries Company but not very often. We changed the front room and took out the verandah and dug a basement. Some people felt that it should be left as it was for heritage purposes.

“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. It was a risky job, a lot of men were hurt in the Tsable River mine, and miners were way ahead when they left the mine. I think leaving the mine was a good thing. When I left the mines I went to Buttle Lake to do road building and then I did some construction and logging in the Comox Valley. Later I worked for MCMillian Bloedel, Kelsey Bay Division, I went on the grade crew and then did drilling and blasting. After I left mining I spent nineteen years in the woods.

“I met my wife Helena in 1947 and we married in 1948 and had four children - three boys and one girl. We have lived in this company house for  forty-seven years.”

Helena's Story

“I am a daughter and a wife of a miner. My father, Tom Ball, was nine years old when he started working in the mine in the old country, Sheffield, England,  as a bratticeman. I was born in Alberta but we moved to Michele, in the Crowsnest Pass when I was young so that dad could work in the mines. I remember that when I had to go pick dad up from work I had a hard time recognizing him because when the coal miners come up from underground they all look alike, so dad would have to holler to me!

We moved to Cumberland when I was about fourteen. When we moved here my father worked in the No. 8 mine until he got hurt. We lived on Marsden Road and I had to hitchhike to school in Courtenay. Not many miner kids went to the Courtenay School, and the ones who did were labeled dirty coal miners and my response was, ‘well, you keep your house warm with our coal!’

“When I was in my later teen years my family moved back to the Crowsnest Pass, but when I was about nineteen I returned with a friend and got work in the Cumberland Hospital. I met Alex in 1947, and in 1948 I went back home to Michele to get permission from my parents to marry him. When I started working at the Cumberland hospital, delivering meals to the patients, we had to carry the plates over our heads like waitresses, until they finally upgraded to carts. The hospital was mainly built for the miners; that is about all who were there.”