Benjamin Nicholas is a man who chooses to recognize the positive aspects of negative situations. For Ben, as for so many other young men in the coal mining communities, entering the mine was a matter of necessity, rather than choice.
Ben Nicholas is a fountain of mining information, and speaking passionately about his career came easily for him.

The descriptions he has provided about mining cover a broad range of topics and are elaborated upon in great detail.

Mabel [Stockand] Nicholas was born in Cumberland and lived mostly in Royston. There are six generations of her family raised on Vancouver Island; she has five children. Mabel’s father worked in the coal mines for a couple of years as a mule driver. He went into logging as a boom man, but when there was a strike, or it was fire season he would always go work at the mine temporarily. Mabel also had four uncles working in the coal mines.

Ben’s Story

“I was born in Cumberland in 1915, the oldest boy in a family of four kids. My dad was born in Wales into a coal mining family. I guess he wanted to get out of that rut so that is when he joined the army. He was an old imperial soldier in the British Army; he was in West Africa about 1894, before the Boer War. He served eighteen years in the army and then, at age thirty-nine, he decided it was time to get married.