“Fire was never that much of a problem in hard rock mining especially with the older way of mining. Cave-ins were always a problem; not so much a cave-in where you would expect half the mine to cave in, but ‘a fall of ground’ where a large piece of rock would come down. A loose is what we called it. In Ontario we could usually sound the back, which was the ceiling of a tunnel. Sounding helped us to determine the stability of a tunnel. A stope is the area from which we took a large amount of ore; we opened it up just like a big room and then mined the ore in that area. Wherever we were we took a scaler bar - a long metal bar - and tapped the back or the walls. If there was a crack behind that area where you were tapping, you would hear it, in a lot of mines it sounded drummy. In the Myra mine it is much more difficult to sound because quite often there will be a mud seam in behind the wall. It will not make a strong bond but it will keep it from sounding drummy, so there is really no way of telling just how loose it is, or if indeed it is loose. That makes it more dangerous; it is one of the differences between here and other mines.

 “I cannot recall when they started spraying the ceilings and walls with a concrete mixture - shotcrete - and netting it, but it was probably in the last six or seven years of the Lynx Mine around 1978. When they started over at the HW, they really started doing the shotcreting work. They started mining there about 1985 and it has worked quite well for them; it certainly makes it a lot safer.

“The majority of miners who worked up at Westmin were miners who had learned their trade elsewhere mostly in places like Ontario. A lot of them came from Inco in northern Manitoba because that was a great training ground for miners back in the late fifties and sixties. The Inco nickel mines were up and running there and they were very good about training their employees and offered excellent training programs.

“Miners have always been pretty transient people and back in those days there was a lot of work; you could go pretty well anywhere and get a job in Canada. It has changed a lot over the years but from what I understand it is going back to the busier times. Because mining has been depressed across the country for a number of years, companies have not been training young people and now with so many older miners retiring they are having difficulty finding experienced young people.

“The Union went into Westmin about a year after they opened, probably about 1967. The organizer was Barney McGuire. He was a Mine Mill organizer and had organized quite a few properties. There was a boat that took workers from the Gold River Bridge up to the mine site. I guess he knew some people at Westmin and they brought him in. He stayed in a room for a few days - unbeknownst to the company - he signed up enough people to make the application. I am pretty sure that if they knew he was there they would have run him off the property. Barney was really quite an individual; I really liked Barney. He never did work there but he was a miner in many other places in BC and Ontario.

“With the Canadian Union there was more local autonomy in calling the shots at negotiations. One of the things I did not like about the American union was that our money went straight to Pittsburgh and then we got our cheque back from there. When we left we never did get our last cheque back from Pittsburgh. They kept that and the money we had in the bank. In the end they were able to confiscate all of our local finances. A reading of the constitution revealed that we did not really own our local union’s portion of the dues collected but were just administering the funds for them. It was not that way with the Canadian union; we sent them their portion and kept our portion. It was quite different.
 
“As a Union we encouraged the company to do more training. In the past they were able to hire someone who was already trained but now it is catching up with them. The methods of mining have changed a lot over the years. Years ago most of the trades-people were Westmin trained, except for the few who were looking after the heavy equipment on-surface, and then later on, some heavy duty equipment underground. They did not need a lot of expertise because most of the equipment was the older air-powered equipment so anyone who was handy with tools could often go in and find work. It was good, in one sense, because some of the miners as they grew older and had some difficulty doing their job they could take a job like that.

“As the mine grew, especially after the new HW mine was developed, they introduced modern methods of mining underground with heavy duty equipment and big diesel machines. They then needed people who were properly trained and had gone through the apprenticeship programs. We had a lot of young people who were interested in getting into the trades, and over the years Westmin did recognize the need and started to train more people. From what I understand now because of all the work that is being done up in northern Alberta, especially in the oil fields, they are having trouble getting experienced trades people.

“I was the union president at Westmin for about twenty years and saw the mining companies go through many changes. The relationship between the company and the union changed quite a bit in 1998 when the Swedish company Boliden took over. They brought new ideas and quite a different approach to things. While it wasn’t utopia; it was certainly a great improvement.

“You may be aware that we were on strike and locked out for seventeen months back in 1993-1994; that was a very long struggle. We went to negotiations with fifty-six concessions to deal with. Some of the things we were faced with we just could not give up, like cuts to our health and safety program. If there is anything that has been of utmost importance to the union over the years, especially at a site like Westmin, it is health and safety. In my mind, that was one of the most important aspects of our union work. There were a lot of people killed at that mine, a lot of people….

“Safety was a very big issue. For quite a while we averaged about a death a year. For a workforce of about three-hundred and twenty-five unionized workers that is a pretty high number. When Boliden took over there was improved cooperation right across the board, and they focused more on things like health and safety. I think they really did pay more attention to what the union and the workforce was saying.

“Boliden brought in a Swedish manager and that is when we saw some real changes take place. It was kind of amusing, in a way, because I had always said before ‘if the leadership would show that they really desired change and set an example, things would happen very quickly.’ We noticed the change almost immediately. Their manager set an example and the others just followed suit; we could see they wanted to cooperate.

 “We were included in the planning. There was always more than one of us who would go to the planning meetings, one of the things I never thought we would be involved in. To me, that was a real change. Their mine manager, Kjell Larsson, was very open and would tell us and show us information that we never would have seen before. There was a training process that was going on in regard to middle management and I think he set a very good example of how they should work with the union and the workforce. He was very well respected; I could see how he talked to the people and how they responded. Kjell was here for about two years and then he was given a promotion and moved to the Toronto office. We were sorry to see him go.

“The tools of the trade have changed a lot over the years. Years ago, when they started at Myra Falls and up into the early 1980’s they used the older type of tools that were practically all hand-held, pneumatic, air-powered tools. They went into the modern method of mining in about 1985; that is when the big equipment was introduced. There was not too much done prior to that over at the Lynx, maybe a little bit starting about 1983, but it was 1985 when they went into the H-W and moved into the modern method of mining. It was much more automated, and a lot more, big, diesel powered equipment, like big front-end loaders that we called scoops and electric hydraulic drilling machines were used. There was much less manual work.

“Lighting in the mine changed a lot when they adopted the modern method of mining; it was much lighter. Back in the old days, not that far back, you had your light on your hardhat and that was all, but now they have electric lights. With the big machines, if they are diesel powered they have their own light and if the machines are electrically powered they will have some hanging lights. It is really quite a bright place now, but years ago it was rather dull. You could adjust your cap light to a spotlight or make it more broad, but we generally set it on spotlight so that we could focus on things better and see further.

“Working in the dark was just like anything else; if you could adapt to working underground it was just something you did not think about; it was your job. It never bothered me but some people could not do it. Up in Yellowknife I had a helper who only put in one shift; he could not take it so he quit. I have run into a couple of people like that, who only worked a day or two. I guess they felt claustrophobic. They do not need many people on the surface. Surface jobs are mostly office positions, equipment operators, warehousemen and tradesmen, and of course the concentrate mill workers.

“The concentrate truck drivers who haul ore from the mill to the Campbell River dockside do not have an easy job. The road up to the mine can be a treacherous road in the wintertime; they have to put up with the ice and snow. In the summertime, recreational vehicles often slow them down considerably. It is not always an easy job.

“As far as the effects of mining on my health, it is really hard to tell. How healthy would I be if I had not worked there? Who knows? As far as I know I do not have silicosis and I have not had any major damage from injuries, but I do have hearing problems. When they tested me a few years ago they said I had 50% hearing loss in both ears directly attributable to my work. Years ago, when I was in my twenties I would actually catch myself swaying from the vibration of the machines; they were that loud. I would come home from work and I could not hear a thing, but in the morning it all seemed to be okay. In those days we had no hearing protection; it was not mandatory, it was not talked about, nothing was provided, you just did your job. I did not realize the kind of damage that could happen in just a matter of hours. When I look back, I think I should have known better, and so should the company. Mufflers were made to go onto the machinery but they were shipped without them.

“I went down to into South America and toured some of the mines in Bolivia. Safety was non existent; that is just the way they operate down there. At one mine we had their director of safety with us when we toured the mine. They had this little car that was towed by a cable up the side of the mountain at a forty-five degree angle; it was a long haul. They had a brake on the hoist of course, but there was no way that you could have stopped this car if something had happened, such as brake failure or a broken cable. Canadian mining regulations would never ever allow such a lack of safety measures.

“When we went underground we saw that the people had no safety gear whatsoever. I asked them if they introduced any fresh air into the mine and the safety director said that it was not needed because the air was so good, yet when I asked how deep the mine went and what it was like further down the director said he would not take us lower because of the poor air quality. Many of the Bolivian miners said they had silicosis by the time they were forty years old.”

Although Claude was a hard working, dedicated miner he has relaxed into the life of retirement and spends most of his time on his farm which he enjoys.

Dora’s Story

“I really worried about Claude when he worked in the mine. It was a long day for him; he used to catch the bus here at 5:20 am. and get home about 5:45 pm. To be honest, I used to worry about the drive a lot, especially in the winter - not more than the work itself though. He came out for a long weekend one time and when he got back in he learned that there had been a cave in, right where Claude would have been working. The area caved in and totally covered the drill. What if he had been there?

“He has told me about things that have happened at the mine, and he has had injuries. Yes, a wife worries about it, but she cannot obsess because she would go crazy. There was one thing I did though when he left the house in the morning; I always said good-bye. I liked to have contact with him before he left. I don’t know why, it was just something I needed. I lost both of my parents in accidents so I guess I was a little more anxious about it than others might have been.

“There was a period of time when every year one miner would lose his life in an accident at the mine; some years it was more than one; yes, there was danger there. One woman I heard about, who lost her husband, would normally give him a kiss goodbye, but one morning she was sleeping soundly and he did not bother her. She never got to say goodbye. That would be a really tough thing to get over.