| Working in the mine was not very good, believe me, but a lot of us were coming out of high school and there was a depression. There was not much else to do in the Hungry Thirties; a man either went logging or mining. I lived in Cumberland, so I went into the mine. Everybody went to a different job if they could find one, to get out of the coal mines. My younger brother, Leland, went to work in the No. 8 mine. He stayed in mining longer than I did, but then he got a job at the mill in Campbell River and moved up there. | ||||
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“When I left the mine to work in the grocery store and department store in Cumberland, my dad was working at No. 8. I worked at Mounce Brothers Red & White grocery store and then went to Pickard’s department store in 1947. Around 1949, my partner Clifford Gardiner and I bought out Mr. Pickard and about five years later we changed the name to, John-Cliff Dry Goods. Our friend, Sid Williams who owned Searle’s Shoes, came up with that name for us, because we did not know what to call it! “I married Alice Brown in 1941; her family has a mining history, too. The Brown’s moved form Scotland to Merritt, so Alice’s dad could work in the coal mines there, and then they moved to Nanaimo. At one time, after coming to Cumberland, Mr. Brown was the mine manager at No. 5. mine. Alice and I had one son, Ron, but he never went into mining. He went to the University of Victoria to become a teacher and worked his whole career in the Comox Valley. “Cliff Gardiner and I ran the store together until 1969, and then I retired. After that, Alice and I did a lot of traveling, because we both loved to travel!” |
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| John Bannerman, 2006 | ||||
