Fran’s Story

Fran worked for Island Copper for eighteen years, she started driving truck in the pit, 120 trucks, and 170 trucks, the big trucks every little kid dreams of driving. These trucks were much bigger than the 35 tonne trucks they trained on at mining school.

Fran also worked as a shovel helper, a shovel operator for nine years and spent the last seven years as a first aid/warehouse person. There are several other positions she has had in the mine as well. Fran attended a mining school in Rossland, BC, five years after completing high school. Initially she just wanted to move to Rossland to ski, but Employment Insurance paid for her training, and after eighteen years at Island Copper, she vows that she loved every minute of it.

Part of the lure of the mine was the working atmosphere. At the time when Fran worked in the pit as a shovel operator, she was the only female shovel operator in the pit, there had been two before her. She worked on Crew 3 and at one time, there were about eight women on her shift, two of the women operated rotary drills, while the others drove truck and operated dozers.

When asked about being a woman working in a male dominated industry, she said that even though it was a non-traditional job she thought that women were respected for the jobs they did.

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