Gold and Silver

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 00:41:38 GMT

Gold and Silver

I went to work at Giant Mines (Giant Yellowknife Gold Mine) during my summer holidays.

I was fifteen when I started in the Assay office for 40% of the regular wage. My primary job was to make clay cups upon which gold samples were placed before being slid into the furnace.

At sixteen I worked in the Machine shop for 60% of the regular wage. I was back at the Machine shop when I was seventeen working for 80% of the regular salary. I enjoyed those two summers. I learned how to arc weld, oxy-acetylene cutting and brazing with Fred Jerome, operated metal lathes with Arish Foster and Alex Lupinski, pipe-fitted with George Ewasiuk and operated the machine shop’s small Cat Tractor that I took all over the property dragging the attachable stone boat. In my spare time, I would wander over to the Blacksmith shop and pounded hot metal on the anvil. On Wednesdays I would go down to the Rec Hall and operate the projectors for the afternoon movies, under Dragi Jovanovic’s tutelage.

At eighteen I went underground. Mom didn’t like it. She would have preferred me working in the Mill. Dad was the Mill Superintendent so I preferred not to.

My underground mining experience span seven years intermittently from 1965 through 1972 and included Giant Mines at Yellowknife and Terra Mines on the Camsell River near Great Bear Lake. I think I did just about every job there was underground, during the summers that I was still going to school. I was a trammer’s helper then trammer, trackman’s helper, rigger’s helper, pipe-fitter, tool-man, bit sharpener, cage-tender, underground crusher-man and powder-man.

After I finished my stints with schooling in Calgary and Toronto I went underground again although I did take sabbaticals in B.C. with L&R Communications Towers as a tower rigger.

I went “stope” mining with Joe Herriman and Red MacDonald and “raise” mining with Fritz Schussman.

The miner’s life is not an easy one. The work is physically demanding in a dark, wet and cold environment where you were often alone. You are constantly manhandling and operating 50 lb. rock drills, building scaffolding, shoveling muck, moving dynamite, Amex explosive and loading up the holes for the blast. In the raise you would move material and equipment, set up, drill and blast an eight foot “round” in an eight-hour day. The round was an 8-foot wide by 5-foot high by 8-foot deep hole in the ground. The stamina and endurance of miners is unbelievable. Miners get paid to drill, blast and muck out gold ore and bring it to the surface where it was milled and refined into gold bullion. A good miner could almost double his salary in the form of a bonus by producing more ore than was expected. Simply put, the harder you worked the more you got paid.

People got hurt underground. I remember, as a pre-teen and teenager, coming home more than once to my Mother comforting a living-room full of somber and tearful women. They were eagerly waiting for information regarding the fate of their loved ones who were trapped, hurt or killed underground.

I remember Fred Daina. He was a big, gentle, quiet man who came to Giant to earn a living. He sent most of his pay-cheque to his wife and children who were still living in Eastern Europe. As a youngster, I learned how to play “cribbage” by standing beside him and watching him play against other miners down at the Recreation Hall. There after, as a teenager, I played cribbage for hours with him. He was finally able to bring his family to Yellowknife. I was shocked and very sad the day he and his partner were “gassed” as they worked in the “raise” that they were driving up to another level. The mine rescue crew could not reach him before he succumbed to methane gas. He had managed to straddle a support timber high up in the raise while his partner ended up sliding to the bottom. That was where they found him, slumped dead from the invisible methane gas. His partner lived.

I remember the day Audrey Ann Ross’s boyfriend Don Donnelly died. He was crushed by an ore car while working at the underground ore pass. He was a hockey “import” brought to Giant by George Dundas to play hockey for the Mine’s team. The imports would get time-off from work to go play hockey.

I remember Martin Kolenko’s nephew. He fell down a mill-hole and was buried under tons and tons of crushed rock. Buried alive. It took mine rescue crews and miners hours to dig him out. I remember seeing him in the hospital a few days later. He was still very swollen in size from his ordeal. I remember his answer when I asked him what he was going to do next. “Go back underground” was the answer.

I was sitting on the rock pile in an underground “stope” having a coffee break when Joe Herriman told me the tale about himself high-grading air hoses from the Thompson-Lundmark Mine property north-east of Yellowknife. He and Horst Wist were operating the Raggedty Ass Mine (before the Averys acquired it) a few miles away from the discontinued operation at T-L. The mine shut down and the workers and management left, leaving everything there; as it was too expensive to haul everything away. T-L employed a watchman to look after the property. Joe figured out the watchman’s work schedule by the “comings and goings” of a small bush-plane that would take the watchman to Yellowknife on breaks from the property. He would hurry over there then via an old road and carry off mining equipment including air hoses. This went on for a period of time until the watchman returned one day early and saw Joe trudging down the old road with hoses slung over both his shoulders. The way Joe said it, “the watchman gave me two choices, go to jail or return all the equipment”. Joe returned all the equipment the same way he got it - carrying it back along the old road piece by piece.

There was the time I and another miner, could have been Daren Cranna, went to Martin Kolenko’s “school stope” for a coffee break and smoke. Martin instructed his “trainee” to go get ten bags of Amex explosive (ammonium nitrate and fuel oil blend) from the storage box located up on the next level and send it down the man-way. Around fifteen minutes later we heard a loud “poof” followed 10 seconds later by another “poof”. By this time we were up on our feet looking around with our lights and zeroed into the base of the man-way just in time to see another 50 pound bag of Amex go “poof” as its bag burst open from the sudden stop and scatter its pink contents in a 25 foot diameter all around the floor of the stope. The trainee managed to get one more bag “airmailed” to us before our collective yelling and screaming stopped him. His only excuse was ”Nobody told him he was to put the bags of Amex into the “Material Bucket” and lower it into the stope using the air tugger” He was just throwing each bag onto the wooden ramp, that angled down at a slope of 60 degrees, and watched them slide down fifty feet to the end of the ramp where they free fell for another 15 feet to the floor.

And, there was the time I woke up flat on my back in the middle of the railway tracks in the main drift on the 950-foot Level. I was bored as a Trammer’s helper and used to play a game of “chicken” with the rock outcrops, pipes, signs and other miscellaneous projections that extended from the roof of the main drift. Well, one night while playing, I failed to shine my lamp on a rock bolt that was protruding from the roof and “wham” I was cold-cocked. The rock bolt caught me square in the middle of my helmeted head. I don’t know how long I was out but when I woke up the train was long gone. To fully understand this….. after loading 10 to 15 ore cars from the chutes we would transport the 3-ton cars via electric trolley to the ore pass situated at C–Shaft nearly two miles away. As the helper, I would stand on the last ore car’s coupling at the back of the train, with my hands holding on to the rim of the ore car for support as it rumbled down the tracks. Normally, I could stand upright comfortably and not hit my head on the roof however I had to “duck” down as I passed any projections from the roof thus the game of “chicken” where I would spot the obstacles with my light and then “duck” at the last moment as we went whizzing by them……… I was not hurt physically but mentally my ego as bruised.

There was another time I was tramming on the 950-foot Level. I came into the station area at C-Shaft with the electric trolley pulling a full load of ore in a twelve-car train. There was a rail switch that would route the track either into the station or into the “ore pass” tunnel. The switch was always to be positioned to route the trains into the ore pass, supposedly, however this time it was switched to go into the station where an eight foot by ten foot heavy reinforced wooden door blocked the entrance. Someone had not switched it back to the ore pass after using it to move his small electric car out of the station onto the main tracks. The trolley jerked to the right as it was diverted onto the station tracks. The trolley pole disengaged from the trolley line, swung against the drift’s wall leaving me powerless and heading for the wooden door. I began spinning the big emergency brake wheel to stop the train. My speed and the momentum of the fully loaded train sent me crashing into the closed door. I crouched instinctively in the driver’s cockpit with my arms up over my face to protect me from the flying splintered wood and debris that scrapped against the trolley as it burst through. Once past this danger and in a frenzy, I began spinning the brake again because the train’s momentum was now pushing me though the station to the main mine shaft that dropped straight down to the 2100 foot Level, 1150 feet below. The shaft entrance had a metal mesh swing door to stop things from falling down the shaft however it would never stop a fully loaded train. I hoped and prayed that the “Cage” was not below the 950-foot Level with men in it. I finally felt the brakes dig in as I continued spinning and the train slowly shuddered to a stop twenty feet short of the mineshaft.

Mining, at Giant, was a two shift operation. Day shift started by 7:30 with the men being lowered underground in the “Cage” and night shift started by 18:30. Shift change happened every two weeks with the crews rotating their start time. For obvious reasons everyone wanted to be on day shift even though night shift was more peaceful in the sense that less people worked night shift. Day shift had surveyors, mechanics, bosses, etc wandering around doing their thing while night shift was primarily production crews. I didn’t mind night shift except for Friday nights when everyone was out partying and I was stuck underground. Obviously Fridays (nights) was the high absenteeism day – go to work or go to the dance at the Elk’s Hall which had a fantastic venue including the big Italian bouncer “Mario” who had a metal breast plate made to protect himself against the unruly patrons who would take swings at him.

When you worked hard, you partied hard. The “Strange Range” or properly called the Gold Range Hotel’s beer parlour was usually the start for a Friday evening. It is renowned throughout Canada as one of the wildest bars in the North. It patrons were a cross-section of Yellowknife and the North; miners, construction workers, trappers, truckers, diamond drillers, office workers, exploration workers, nurses, bank managers, natives, non-natives all sitting around in large groups with beer glasses covering the top of the tables that were usually pulled together. Sitting with your back to the wall was the safest, however that did not exclude you from any of the action. Thrown beer, thrown glasses, thrown words, thrown fists and thrown out was the normal sequence of events It was the place to “plan” your evening and get primed. The place to find out who was going where and when; to the Hoist Room to sit around, dance at the Elks, party at the Gallery’s cabaret or go to a house party.

I enjoyed the house parties at the Nurse’s Residence but that’s another story.

McSnowWriter's Pamphlet: 2.1 - Gold and Silver

Gold and Silver