"The mining company sued the miners for breach of contract because eighty-four miners went on strike that morning. We went to court with the union lawyer; we were all fined one pound plus court costs, about five or six dollars. The judge told us we were allowed to pay it out, at two and six a week, two pence, and six shillings. I paid out my last fine to the mine and came to Canada in 1928 when I was twenty years old and did not return to England until 1972.

"When I first married Dorothy we lived in Alberta where I mined during the winter months and worked on a farm in the summer months.

The last job I had was as district superintendent of the mines in Cumberland. I retired at sixty-five as per company policy. After the Cumberland area mines closed down, I worked for Weldwood until I retired.

"After I had been retired for quite a few years I was called out of retirement to help with the opening of the Quinsam Coal mine, located just north of Campbell River. They were in need of a person with a mine engineering degree.

"Quinsam Coal called me in 1972 to go underground to get true samples for them. They needed a certified man to supervise the operation. I came up from Victoria in February. When I got there, I had to go to the employment office to find miners, but there were not very many available. I had to frame all the timbers, supervise the drilling, and do the blasting, and everything else that was required. We got the samples out in the snow and had to load the back of a pick up truck with coal just to be able to drive, there was so much snow.

"In the Cumberland Museum, downstairs in the mining exhibit you will find models of a couple of the mines in the Cumberland area that I built and donated to the museum. The mannequins that you see in the exhibit are wearing my old mining clothing.

"I remember back when I was a foreman at one of the mines, we had a visit from a fellow from the Yugoslavian Embassy. He was looking for information on behalf of a widow back in the old country about her husband who died in the Nanaimo coal mines a while back. The widow had wanted to know if there were any benefits, she might be entitled to for her and her children. That put me in a bit of a spot because I happen to know that the fellow they were asking after, had a wife and children in Nanaimo who had collected any benefits there might have been, not that there was a whole lot back in those days. Dorothy and I did not want to get involved so I just said that I had no information and let it go at that and told him to contact WBC.

"Red Harvey a fellow that worked at the mine was crushed by a cage that weighed four tonnes. He had tried to run under the two cages that came down at different times, one that came down while one went up. Red did not quite make it and he got caught in a ten foot section before a three hundred foot drop, we were at the seven hundred foot level then, after that there was another three hundred feet to the bottom of the thousand foot shaft. Only the shape of the bottom of the cage saved him from getting killed. I was working as shift boss and was a couple of miles away at the time of the accident. By the time I got there, Red had been rushed to hospital. I had been expecting to see him crushed under the cage but all that was there were his broken glasses.”

Dorothy's Story

Dorothy, author of Memoires of A Sodbusters Daughter grew up a farmer’s daughter in the prairies of Alberta where she worked the farm and fed the family from a young age helping to raise her siblings after her mother left the farm.

"When he first went into the mines, a miner was able to tell how long he would be underground, and how long he would work by the amount his candle had burned down.

You had to buy your own candles; the company did not pay for them. The candleholders were shaped like a spike that you put into a post where you were working so that you could see what you were doing. These candles provided very poor light, and with the coal dust in the area, the naked flame often caused explosions. We would use approximately two and a half candles per shift.

The miners on haulage had a different kind of light - portable lamp. Safety lamps came in much later and then went to electric lamps still later but the candles were so much cheaper. When Bill was a boy there were up to 1700 men in that mine.

"The mining men that did not have families in Cumberland used to come to our house when they lived at the hotel, because the hotel had a pub in it and if they did not want to drink or wanted to save money, they had a place to go. Neither of us drank, so I guess you could say that our house was a bit of a safe place to be. It did not matter what was going on, if someone needed to talk, or have a cup of tea, he came here because it was a quiet place to be. There were many times we helped young men sober up and get their lives straightened out. I remember a young fellow who fell into drinking badly. He and his wife were having problems, so they separated and he came to stay with us for about three months, and while he was with us, he managed to sober up and put his life back together. Once that happened he and his wife were able to work out their differences and get back together again.

"It was not always about when times were bad that the men would come over. Sometime they came just to have tea, talk or Bill would play the piano, and we would dance.

Bill plays piano beautifully. Often in Alberta when times were hard at the mines, he would hire out and play piano to bring in extra money for the family. He does not need any sheet music to play, if you want to hear it, he can play anything you want him to. Even in the hard times we were okay, when the pay checks were steady I made sure to put some money away from every check, even if it was only twenty five cents and back then that would keep us for two or three months if needed. Keeping a hundred dollars hidden away in case of sickness.

"We were lucky in No.8 because from the time Bill became superintendent they did not have any fatalities. The superintendent before Bill did not care about the men as much. If a mule died it had to be replaced, which cost money. If a man died, it did not cost anything maybe a case of food left at the door, otherwise the women and children left behind got nothing. The mules had a second sense and if they felt something was going to happen, they would not move. The men became attached to the mules because those mules were their ears; they knew when something was not right before a person would.

"Everyone has their poor times - and that was not unusual. In Puntledge we bought fifty chickens each year to feed our family. We ate some chickens when they were growing because they would be tender and we kept the hens for a year to provide us with eggs. At the end of the year, I would can the hens. Fifty chickens fed us for a year and the chickens make a good space for a garden, they scratch up everything on the ground to eat, even the roots.

"Hierarchy prevails even today - miners were classified as low men on the pole. People who were not in mining had odd ideas about mines. They had no idea how intelligent miners had to be, even though they just worked down in a hole! My father had never met a miner until I married Bill.

"These days Bill and I are enjoying retirement and are busy with all kinds of activities and stay physically active while keeping each other in line. When we moved to Victoria, Bill and I could not bring everything with us but because we just could not part with our piano we gave it to our daughter. When we moved to the retirement home, our daughter had it moved there for us. Bill’s love for the piano keeps him busy, playing for everyone to enjoy."

In conclusion, after several hours of smiles, cookies and tea, warm reminiscences of the mining life by this inspirational couple we started to wrap up and left in high spirits as if we were parting with friends, not strangers. To finish off our visit we were askDorothy asked Bill to play a few numbers for us on the piano in the recreation room. She requested he play Amazing Grace, without a doubt a much-loved song in their household. Then Dorothy walked us to the door, a little hurriedly – she was late for her aerobics class!