Bruce Fairbrother, left, a retired fire boss, and Ed Taje, coast area senior inspector of mines and underground coal specialist, are closing up old mine shafts in and around Nanaimo.
Heading into a mine shaft, Fairbrother is constantly testing the air for gas and carries a safety lamp which measures oxygen deficiency. “When I say get the hell out of here, you do it very fast,” he said. Fairbrother started mining at age 18 and worked underground in the Crowsnest Pass in Alberta and Campbell River. “The underground, I just loved it,” he said. Nanaimo’s underground coal mines closed before Fairbrother was old enough to work in them, but stories remain of workers descending to depths in steel cages. In 1918, 16 miners died when the cable snapped on their cage, which plummeted 150 feet to the mine shaft floor.
Miner Robert MacArthur’s pocket watch, which stopped at the exact time of the accident, was recovered and is now on display at the Nanaimo Museum. The underground mines usually had a gradual slope for miners to walk to depth or a vehicle of some sort to take them to the work site, Fairbrother said. Working several metres underground never bothered him, he said. “Nothing like that ever affected me,” Fairbrother said. Fairbrother worked his way up to fire boss, which was the shift supervisor. Back in the day, it was the supervisor’s job to set off explosive charges, hence the name fire boss. Although no blame was placed on anyone in particular, the worst explosion in Nanaimo’s history was attributed
to a poorly prepared and planted charge that ignited gases in the Esplanade No. 1 Mine, near the bottom of Milton Street. The blast killed 148 men in 1877. “Most of those accidents are man-made,” Fairbrother said. “They happen when you take shortcuts.” Nanaimo blues musician David Gogo wrote the song She’s Breakin’ Through about the 1915 South Wellington mine accident that claimed the life of his great grandfather and 18 other men. The miners, using maps from different companies and not to scale, punched through into a flooded mine, sending torrents of water into their mine and drowning the miners trapped underground. Although modern mining is much safer, Fairbrother saw his share of accidents, from roof collapses to explosions. “I lost people underground,” he said. Coal mines are opening again on Vancouver Island, but it’s unlikely the Nanaimo mines will see renewed life as they produce a different type of coal than what is used today. Nanaimo coal was used for burning in steam engines, while today coal is used in steel fabrication. Only a few underground coal mines still operate in Canada as most companies moved to open-pit style of coal extraction. Each year, the provincial government closes more open mine shafts in Nanaimo. Fairbrother and Taje were last at work in February closing openings on Spruston Road. “There were about four openings that we had to close up there,” Fairbrother said. For more information on Nanaimo’s coal mining history, please visit the Nanaimo Museum, where a replica coal mine exhibit contains information on the mines, the workers and the labour disputes that shaped the city’s history. Melissa Fryer arts@nanaimobulletin.com
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