My First Mining Job - Part 1

My first mining job was with INCO in Thompson, Manitoba back in 1969.  In those days INCO was chronically short of workers.  They advertised regularly in all the major western newspapers.  In August I answered an ad in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix for labourers and was interviewed and accepted pending a medical in The Pas prior to reporting for work.

Shortly after the interview I took a passenger train from Saskatoon to The Pas, (Yes, we still had passenger trains back then.)  known as the gateway to Northern Manitoba.  There, I met up with two other INCO hires and we found a hotel room at...what else...the Gateway Hotel.  It was an older well known watering hole for locals, and a popular stopover for miners heading out of Thompson on R&R.  It was SO popular that many miners never made it any farther...blowing their savings in the hotel before returning to work until the next "vacation" at the Gateway.  As an aside...I heard the Gateway burned down a few years ago.  The fire took a lot of history with it.

We stopped in the Gateway bar for a late afternoon beer.  I ordered two glasses of draft.  They arrived and I was impressed by how dark the beer was.  I took a drink out of one glass and the darkness was still there, and that's when I realized it was on the outside of the glass and not in the beer itself.  All of us quickly switched to bottles!  

As we sat there sipping our beer a woman came rushing into the bar.  She was cursing and swearing, saying "Where is he?  Where is he?  You tell that co**sucker if I catch him I'm going to cut his balls off!"  The bartender quickly poured a glass and took it and her into the back.  We never found out who the unfortunate guy was.

After a quiet dinner and a walk around town we retired to our hotel rooms for an early bedtime.  Our rooms were on an upper floor facing the back alley, where we had a superb view of all the drunken fist fights after the bar closed.  The next morning when we awoke there were still several bodies laying in the alley amidst the mud and the blood, but no one seemed to be concerned about this.  After breakfast the three of us headed to a medical clinic where we received our pre-employment medicals along with a chit for a room in Thompson and were told to report to HR at the main office the following morning for orientation.  One of my new friends had a vehicle, a 1959 Ford and offered a ride to Thompson, which was gratefully accepted.  After buying a case of beer from the hotel off sale we headed out on the highway to Thompson, about 250 miles distant.

The road to Thompson was mainly muddy gravel, except for the final 40 or so miles, which were paved, and which were also built over frost filled muskeg.  These miles were constantly being rebuilt and repaved as they slowly sank into the watery soup upon which they were built, making for a great roller coaster ride for the final bit of travelling.  When we finally arrived at our destination we went looking for our room at one of the Polaris bunkhouses.  These were two or three story residences with single rooms for $33 per week and doubles for $28 per week.  For this princely sum you got a hot breakfast, sack lunch and hot supper each day, along with maid service to keep the rooms clean and beds made.

The following morning we trekked to INCO's main office.  It was Saturday, but they were open and ready to accept 26 new employees.  (I wondered how many they would have hired if it had been a weekday.)  While waiting for my job assignment I noticed a seniority list posted on a wall.  Top seniority was about 10 years, and of course I would join the list at the bottom.  When I left Thompson some eight months later I was already about two thirds of the way up the list thanks to the extremely high turnover.

INCO had several mines in operation, including T1, T3, Birchtree and Pipe open pit.  There were additional development projects at Soab North and Soab South, but in 1969 neither were in production and neither had any company employees.  I was assigned to T3, and told to report there the following Monday. 

T3 employed several hundred miners working three shifts, five days per week.  Day and afternoon shifts were production shifts.  Graveyard shift had a skeleton crew to to move materials from surface and replenish level supplies.  There were five active levels, 600, 800, 1,000, 1,200 and 1,400.  1,400 level was strictly a tramming level, where an electric trolley carried T3 ore over to T1 for hoisting to surface.  The lowest and newest production level was 1,200, where Wayne Lapierre was one of two production supervisors.  I was assigned to his crew and was taken underground on a four hour orientation that ended with lunch, where I was handed a shovel and shown a ditch to clean.

Our crew consisted of two stope leaders, a half dozen miners, a half dozen timbermen, a tram crew and several labourers, including me.  My wage was $2.97 per hour, which seemed like a fortune to me back then compared to my previous jobs.  Miners earned $3.23 per hour and leaders were $3.45.  The rules said anyone who worked in a job for five consecutive shifts would automatically go to the rate for that job.  After a week or so of cleaning ditches I was assigned to the tram crew, where my rate increased to $3.23 per hour.  I was in financial heaven!

Part 2 to come.

Hemlo Days

I was lucky enough to work at Hemlo during the early development days when shafts and ramps were advancing on three properties at the same time.  Every tramp miner in Canada passed through there looking for work.  Hiring for an entire mine is a co-operative affair driven by HR and shared by all departments.  At Williams we had a procedure of three interviews with a candidate and as a general foreman at one of the mines I had responsibility for reviewing resumes and picking out the ones destined for interview.  Every day was different.  You never knew what you would find in the resume pile.  One miner called himself a "scooptramp" operator.  (A scooptram is a low profile front end loader used underground.)  No doubt he was, as he left no address or phone number!  Another miner taped some coins to his resume and invited me, the reader to buy a coffee to drink while I read the resume.

Good miners were never easy to find, despite the large pile of resumes.  Other camps were quite active, and housing remained limited for miners to bring their families.  Most of the development work was done by contractors who lived in large camps onsite.  Production mining was similar to most modern mines, and many of the early miners came from Leaf Rapids, in Manitoba.  They were mainly Newfoundlanders who welcomed the chance to move at least half way back to their homes in Nfld.  These were solid dependable family men with great work ethic and superb skills.  Everything a mine could ask for when starting a new mine.  Another group came from Sudbury, where strikes and low nickel prices created a surplus of well trained miners for the new mines coming on stream.  A lot of them had family trouble adjusting to a small isolated town like Marathon after living their entire lives in Sudbury. 

One of my favourite hires came early on when we decided we needed a mine clerk to manage all the paper flow along with dry assignments.  Morley Crabb was the man we wanted, all 5 foot 4 inches of him.  He was a mid '50's former cagetender with a past that included heavy drinking and significant heart problems.  But he was amazingly efficient with the paper and the most cheerful guy you would ever meet.  There was only one problem...we were instructed by HR that they would come up with three candidates for the position, interview them all and select the best one.  To get our man we came up with a list of requirements that only Morley could fill and submitted it to HR, along with Morley's application.  HR were not impressed.  They saw through our ruse but they couldn't come up with any more candidates, so Morley got the job.  He was a great addition to the team as we slowly brought our manpower complement up to speed, but about four years later he died suddenly of a heart attack.  He's buried in the Marathon cemetery and someday I plan to stop by and say hello to the best mine clerk a mine could possibly have.

Update: In 2019 we travelled through Ontario on our way to New Brunswick to visit friends.  We stopped in Marathon and I was able to find Morley's grave.

Bralorne, BC

For the last few years I've used a dentist in downtown Vancouver for my checkups and follow-up work.  I've got to know the dental assistant a little bit in casual conversation.  On one visit I mentioned that I was working "up North" in BC.  "Oh!" she said "My husband and I have a cabin up North."  I asked where it was, expecting to hear it was near Dease Lake or some other northern town and was surprised when she said "Near Bralorne."  I chuckled a bit because I don't consider Bralorne to be "up North" but I guess for someone born and raised in Vancouver it can be considered "up North."

Bralorne is a gold mining community nestled into the coastal mountains where it was once was home for several thousand people but today holds only 63 inhabitants according to the sign as one enters town.  Nowadays there are two ways to get there.  The easy way is via Lillooet, along the semi paved road to Bridge River.  The second and much more adventurous was is via Pemberton and over the Hurley Pass Road, a washboard gravel back entry to Bridge River, open only in the summer when snow is gone.  I've done both trips several times in recent years but I would only recommend the Hurley route to visitors with 4WD vehicles who don't mind rough back roads.

When I lived there in the early 1950's Bralorne was very isolated.  This was before the internet, direct dial phones and even before television.  The small post war clock radio that sat on top of our counter was the main contact with the world.  Few homes had telephones and mail was irregular due to harsh winter conditions.

This link to the Bralorne Museum provides a lot of the history of the town and area.  I highly recommend spending a couple of hours at the museum itself if you decide to visit Bralorne.

https://www.facebook.com/bralornepioneermuseum/