They Made Miners out of Us
Heroes Remember
They Made Miners out of Us
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They made miners out of us. Now I worked down in the mines.
We were put in sections, and we were about 50 men to a section,
maybe less, maybe 40. But they’d line you up and they’d count
you 25 times. And you had to count in Japanese, like (inaudible),
you know. They would count you and then they would take you,
walk you to the mines, and before going down into the mine,
they’d count you again. Then they’d put you in a car, in a steel
box, was about eight feet by about four feet wide. You’d get in
there about six in a car and on a long cable and then we’d
go down the mines, and we’d go down into, about, they said it
was one kilometre, but I don’t think, maybe not that long, but
anyway, it was a long ride. And you would be only about that far
from the roof. And then you would start going down the mine and
on a rainy day the cable would start to slip on the winch and the
first thing, you’d go so fast that they’d jump the track and then
you’d be prisoner there maybe for two or three hours
before they’d come down and they’d start railing the cars.
They’d get you all up and then put you back in the car
and send you back down again.
I never worked at a coal face. I was a hard rock miner.
I was in a section that drilled, drilled through rock, granite
rock, soft rock, and blue rock, and red rock, and all the rock
you could get. And we drilled the surface about the size of that
window there, about ten feet and about eight feet high, and we’d
drill a Y in, a V into the surface, then we’d drill holes that
way. Then we’d drill maybe about eight, ten feet deep. Then we’d,
this Japanese fellow would come with this dynamite, and he’d give
us the dynamite and we’d put it in the holes, and then we’d
insert the fuse in, in the cap, and then when everything,
there was me and a fellow by the name of Paul LaFlamme, the rest
of the fellows would all go up the shaft. Now, me and Paul would
set up all the rigging, you know, because you’d only blow the
front out first, then you’d blow the sides out and the top,
you know, you’d blow the... And we’d set all that up and then
we’d walk back about a hundred feet, and we’d get behind
a bunch of boulders or something like and we’d blast with our
blaster, and some of the rocks would go by us at a hundred miles
an hour. They’d go up the shaft. After that blast was done, we’d
go down and I’d go and scale the roof, all the loose rocks
that was hanging. I’d go with a pick and scale all the roof and
have everything fall. When it was safe enough, we’d go up and
tell the guys, “Okay, come on down,” and they would do the
mucking, you know. And you’d have cars, fill the cars, and as you
go ahead we had sections of track, maybe ten feet long.
Put that down, muck, put another. Oh, it was some kind of a job.
But then we worked 12, 15 hours a day, but we had two meals
a day there. We had breakfast and we had supper.
(Inaudible), a little can about that long, that deep, that wide.
That was rice, pieces of turnip and seaweed, not seaweed but kelp
and pickles. But some guys eat grasshoppers and different things
but I never did.
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