Rocky

"I had a brother who worked in the mines and another brother who worked in the machine shop in Union Bay, who was killed overseas during the war. He never returned from a 1000 aircraft raid on Berlin in August of 1943.

"In Cumberland a lot of the kids who grew up in mining families became teachers. I do not recall parents saying to their kids that they were not to work underground. When coal was being displaced with oil and the market was falling away they opened the Tsable River area which helped the employment situation for a few years.



"One of the regular duties of the mine surveyor was to take soundings near the wharfs at Union Bay. The spillage from loading coal onto the ships would build up and have to be dredged out. Union Bay was a very interesting and busy place in those days.

One of my memories of Union Bay was my visit on board the Pamir in 1946. My sister got an invitation to go on board when she met one of the officers and my father insisted that she go and I had to go along with her.

The Pamir was a beautiful four-massed sailing ship... she went down many years later in the Atlantic with a complement of eighty-six and only six survived. It was the last large massed ship that came in to Union Bay to load up with coal.

"I actually surveyed underground in two of the coal mines, No. 5 and No. 8 and I walked underground in No. 4 mine probably in 1933. It closed in February 1935. I was a youngster of age five or six and walked down the slope holding my dad's hand, who was manager at the time. He must have gotten stuck babysitting!

"Since I retired, I have started to research the location of the portals of mines No. 1 and No. 2 and although their exact location is not obvious or readily known I am sure with a backhoe I could find positive evidence of the portals ... which I still hope to do.

"Also, since my retirement, I realized that No. 3 mine could be re-opened for tourists. It outcrops in several places on a side hill, just southeast of Chinatown. I brought it to the attention of Bronco Moncrief, Cumberland's mayor at the time, and he and a coal geologist Gwyneth Cathy-Bickford and I are on a committee to try and get the job done. It will take a considerable amount of funding and the cooperation of the land owners and covenant holders to be able to proceed. The Village council has stated that they are very much in favor of the project. Normally when mines were closed they would quickly fill up with water but the No.3 mine outcropping on a side hill is self draining. The No. 3 mine has five portals and the No. 5 portal is wide open and dangerous.
Rocky in the field

It is not easy to find, but it can be seen from the biker's trail. The first thing that we have to do is to secure that portal before we can begin to explore underground and determine if the mine can be reopened for tourists.

The portals should not be filled in because the mine has to breathe and vent the coal gases.

The opening of the No. 3 portal for the No. 3 mine has been almost covered over by the land owner of the day, but some circulation of air through the mine still appears to be happening. The actual workings are approximately 1700 feet into the side hill.

The last mine report was from 1893 and the sandstone roof, sixteen feet thick, was so strong that the report stated the mine could be re-opened and worked at any time. No. 3 was mined as longwall to some extent, and there could have been room and pillar as well, the other mines in the coalfield do not have that kind of roof.
The mine only operated from 1888 to 1893. After the closure, the Chinese community situated nearby for many years, took coal from the outcroppings of the seam with wheelbarrows to fill their local domestic needs.

"The portal to No. 4 mine is very close to the east end of Comox Lake and the underground workings are very extensive. When driving from Cumberland to Bevan you pass over the easterly workings of No. 4 mine. From the sharp curve in the road before the entrance to the regional disposal area, for over three kilometers, you are driving over No. 4 workings, approximately 800 feet below. I had two uncles killed in the explosion of 1923, in No. 4 mine. My mother's brother and my father's brother were both killed, along with thirty-one other miners. There was a previous explosion, in the same mine, in 1922 that killed eighteen miners.

"It was not unusual to see rats in No. 5 mine. The assumption is that they would have come down with the hay for the mules. You could hear them scurrying around in the areas where the miners would sit and have their lunch. You would not want to take your lunch in a paper bag. There was an air shaft west of Cumberland where they could have entered but I do not know why they would want to. I remember the stories of rat hunts told by some of the younger guys. They would set some food for bait in the entrance to a length of pipe, say eight feet long, and then with the pipe blocked off at the other end turn a powerful air hose on the entrance with pieces of rock as ammunition and blast the trapped rats
No. 5 Mine

The access to No. 5 mine is by a shaft situated approximately seven hundred meters north west of the Cumberland School. The shaft is 275 feet deep to the upper seam and 604 feet to No. 4, the lower seam. The only seam that I surveyed was No. 2 seam.

You got off the cage at the 275 foot level, walked about one hundred meters in the upper seam workings and then down a fairly steep rock tunnel for about 150 meters and you were in No. 2 seam workings. From there it was a three kilometer hike to the last working face. A good part of the hike was in a stooped position to prevent hitting your head on the supporting mine timbers.

This position underground is situated approximately 1000 feet below the surface at a point about one-half a kilometer easterly of the east end of the Cumberland cemetery. A lot of the citizens of Cumberland know where the mine shafts and portals are but I do not think many are aware of the extent of the underground  workings.

"My late father-in-law, Lawrence Hutchinson, told me the story of when No. 5 mine had ceased working and the machinery was being brought to the surface for salvage because he was fire-boss and he had the responsibility of getting the main hoist up to the surface. He and his crew got it onto the cage but part way up the shaft, something slipped and the cage was jammed in the shaft. It happened just at the end of their shift and the only way out to the surface was through an old airway that brought them out approximately five hundred meters westerly from the west end of Penrith Avenue in Cumberland. The fire-boss on the next shift was my uncle, Alec Somerville. Lawrence did not know how they got the cage free in the shaft and unfortunately Uncle Alec had passed away before I heard the story and I did not have the opportunity to get all the answers. It must have been a harrowing experience freeing that cage, jammed in a shaft, 275 feet deep.

"No. 6 mine shaft is situated behind the present city hall. It was sunk in 1899 to a depth of 600 feet to the lower No. 4 seam. The upper seam was at 233 feet where a lot of the mining was done. No. 6 shaft and No.5 shaft were connected in October of 1900, prior to the disastrous explosion in February 1901 in the lower No. 4 seam that took sixty-four lives. The workings in No. 4 seam were subsequently left to fill with water and the two shafts were again connected in the upper seam in 1908. For years, water was pumped out of No. 6 shaft to keep the water level down in the workings in No. 5 mine.

"The portal to No. 7 mine is situated just west of the old Bevan town site and the workings extend north-easterly and under the Puntledge River. There is very little indication of the mine location except for a concrete structure near an air shaft and subsidence of the ground surface over the main slope.

"No. 8 mine is actually much nearer to Courtenay than Cumberland, being about 3.5 kilometers southwest of the Lake Trail School on the logging road that was once the railroad to Union Bay from all the mines including No. 4 at Comox Lake. It is only five hundred meters south-westerly from the Island Highway on the south side of the logging road where a large concrete structure, indicates its location. You will see two large rectangular slabs of concrete about twenty-six feet by fifteen feet and 195 feet apart. The easterly slab is covering the main shaft where the coal was hoisted out and the men entered the mine, the westerly slab was the airshaft. They are both 1,000 feet deep to No. 4 seam, where very little of the production came from and 750 feet down to No. 2 seam which was mined for sixteen years. These shafts were dug between 1912 and 1914 and a very limited amount of coal was actually taken out at that time. Some reports indicate it was more of an English market manipulation. It was called The Million Dollar Mystery until 1936 when the water was pumped out and mining commenced in No. 2 seam. It then worked until 1952, when it closed for good, and the tipple was sold for scrap steel.

"I surveyed in No. 8 mine from 1944 to 1955 when I articled to Gordon Wagner of the firm of Schjelderup and Wagner BC Land Surveyors. I met Gordon for the first time on the beach at Head Bay on the West Coast, south of Tahsis. I was sent out there for the mining company to help in the legal survey of mineral claims, owned by the mining company. At that time they were the only BC Land Surveyors north of Parksville on the Island. Their practice also included the Powell River area.

"After qualifying as a BC Land Surveyor in 1962 and practicing in the Comox Valley for 35 years, it was retirement time. My interest and past experience in the Comox Coal Field made me feel that to locate the many mining sites that had been forgotten or ignored, but could still have serious impact on the environment would be an interesting and worthwhile retirement project. I have since 1997, been collecting data about the coal mine workings, air shafts, boreholes and other mining locations including Chinatown and the Japanese settlement in the Cumberland area. Most of the boreholes are in the Cumberland, Bevan and west of Courtenay areas. One is actually in Royston and there are a few between Royston and Courtenay. There are approximately 160 points of interest, on the surface, including mine shafts, portals and boreholes.

"One of the more interesting borehole locations that I have found to date is that of No. 1 bore hole drilled in 1890.

It is located about four meters from a concrete sidewalk, where 4th Street starts at the Courtenay Road. Another location was the actual drill hole casing, found sticking less than a foot out of the ground in a logging slash, north of Bevan. Still another borehole find is approximately 2.8 kilometer from Bevan on the road to Cumberland. You will see a truncated pyramid of concrete with a pipe sticking out of the top on the east side of the road that is a borehole.


"Almost the whole of the populated area of the Village of Cumberland has been undermined by mines No. 5 and 6. Surface to mine working depths under the village are approximately 250 feet or more. Almost all the mine portals are sealed off, one way or another.

"When I was a kid in Cumberland, one of the things to do occasionally, was go down by the tracks on the Courtenay Road where there was a little pond of water, created by the excavation for an exploratory bore hole. We would throw a match into the pond and it would light on fire because of the methane gas and the firemen would come down and chase us out of there. I have found out in the last few years that Bronco Moncrief used to do the same thing in the Camp in Cumberland. So did my brother-in-law, down Grant Road at another bore-hole site. There is a house in Cumberland, not more then a few hundred feet from the Post Office, where they captured the methane gas from boreholes No. 2, brought it into the house to use and they blew the back off the house. It was before my time but the story was often told. Bill Johnstone told me a story about Happy Valley. A family came home one evening, lit the fireplace, and had an explosion in their house due to the methane gas from one of the boreholes that they were not aware of. Methane gas released into the open is not dangerous; but when there is a build up of it in a confined space, very serious problems can arise.

"My search for boreholes continues, and the data collected is being requested by consulting firms investigating environmental issues over the huge and varied projects in the area east of Cumberland. As long as it does not interfere, too seriously with my golf ... I am very pleased to help".
Robert Williams, 2006