“The Lynx and the Myra were open in 1972 and there was a road up there then. Before 1969 or 1970 the miners would go to Gold River then take the barge to Myra Falls. When I started there was a gravel road. When I went into the mine, the first place a person started was in the ditch, but they have not got that anymore. I would clean up the mud and muck beside the train, and I asked my boss ‘you want me to do this all the time?’ and he said ‘no, no, this is the way that everyone starts.’ A couple weeks later I started to drive the train, taking the ore out. The one other Italian guy who worked there was a track man who put the rail through for the train, and he wanted to teach me how to do that because he wanted to go home for three months and get married. They needed someone who could fill in, so I did that for a few months. After that, I said I wanted to make better money and asked how I could do that. They said to do that I had to go mining, so before 1974 I was already mining.

“In the Lynx everything was small; the most you could do was a ten foot by ten foot drift. In the H-W everything is big, it is either fifteen by twelve feet or fifteen by fifteen feet; it is way bigger. In Lynx, if you did not get the train you had to walk; in the H-W you can take the machinery because it is everywhere, you can go anywhere you want. To get to the different levels in the Lynx you would take the cage and then walk.

“Mining is so easy now, not like what it used to be. Before it was bull work and now it is easy. Now you have the Electric Jumbo where before you had the jack leg. Now you have the McLean, where before it was the stoper. It was all handwork, and now anybody could do it. Now, I could bring my seventeen year-old grandson and show him and he could be a miner. Before, it was all hard work.

“I am the kind of guy that when I start I do not stop. When I was mining I never even carried a lunch pail because I knew I was going to be busy all day. When the job was done, then I sat down and had a cup of coffee or something. At least my job was done. A lot of people do not want to be late so they rush-rush, but the one who rushes the job never comes out well. If you take your time and do the job first, and then have a cup of coffee, it is more worth it. My shift used to be ten and four: Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, eight at night to four in the morning, then Thursday one in the morning to nine in the morning, and then we got six days of day shift, and then four days off. I did not like to be away from my wife and children so long. Then we went night shift and day shift. Now that I work service I work Monday to Friday.

“There is a lot of difference between a coal mine and a hard rock mine. With the lights on, a coal mine still looks dark but in a hard rock mine you can see everything. It is not as dirty in a hard rock mine as it would be in a coal mine, but there is mud and stuff when you walk. I went to work for a coal mine when we got locked out in 1993 for seventeen months.

“I think that in a few years from now there is going to be no more mining because this generation does not believe in mining. They just see that it is dangerous, but there is danger everywhere. Mining is just a little more dangerous because it is underground. The only danger is if you make yourself a danger. When you go mining, you have a piece of steel that is called a scaling bar with which to test the rock, so you can hear if it is loose or not. Many of the new generation do not do that; they do not believe in that.

“First thing you do, not just me but all miners, is that you touch the back of the drift to see if it is loose or not. If it is loose, the first thing you do is knock it down, and put rebar or bolts to hold the ceiling up. You have to work in stages and take care every time, because you never know. If guys want to go mining they should stay at least two years to compare. The way it is right now, everyone wants money but they do not want to work.

“I miss mining, and not just because of the money - I enjoyed mining. People do not know that when you go down and drill a round out you feel so proud when the round breaks. A lot of people who are miners go down there and drill and do not care if it comes out or not. What kind of fun is that? When I drilled a round for three or four hours, blasted it, and left two or three feet in the face, I felt guilty not happy. When I broke it, out I felt happy with my work, because it showed that I knew what I was doing - I had accomplished something.”

Palma's Story

“We moved from Naples because my sister had been here for nine months. The first years were tough, be never regretted coming here. To me, it is paradise.

“I was a little bit scared when Amedeo first started in the mine because it was the first time; we had not been near a mine before. None of my family was involved in mining and I was first introduced to it here. It was tough when he was underground, sometimes when he was doing camp shifts I spent a lot of time at my sister's. He was doing  ten and four shifts. Once he was working on the surface I relaxed a little bit. He was stubborn and wanted to go back down under, but they said no. He loves mining. I went down there, into the H-W; it is nice, like a big city down there! I did not go into the Lynx.

“The language was a barrier; even now it is hard with the accent, and that will never change, but my kids do not have any accent. My first daughter was five years old when we came here. They did not want her to go to school when we came here because she did not speak the language. They said, ‘she does not understand what we say; she can not associate with the other kids,’ but we went, my brother-in-law and I, and he did not speak English then either. We said ‘no, you leave her there, and then tomorrow, and tomorrow....’ and then she became really good at speaking English. It was the same with all the other European kids and Asian kids, wherever they were coming from, they want to put them only in one place. So our daughter associated with the other kids and listened to the teachers, and so she learned. She started at Campbellton in kindergarten and then went to Cedar, and then all our kids went to Pinecrest and graduated from Robron. Our son worked at the mine when he was a student, but now he works in Vancouver and does not live in Campbell River anymore.

“I can relax a bit now that he is working on the surface. I love this beautiful country, and am really glad we came to live here. Amedeo was so proud of his drilling and really misses it, he loves mining!”