Blood on the Coal, page 3
During WWII, Gordon had been one of “Minister of Everything” C.D. Howe’s now legendary “dollar-a-year-men”—a team of top Canadian business leaders who volunteered to organize and direct Canada’s war effort. Gordon had become president of A.V. Roe Canada in 1951, at a time when he was increasingly preoccupied with his efforts to get the Avro Arrow off the ground. This space-age aircraft was Gordon’s pet project.
To help facilitate it, he restructured A.V. Roe Canada into two separate divisions, both of which were based at the Malton Airport in Toronto, now Lester B. Pearson International Airport. One division was known as Avro Aircraft Limited, the other as Orenda Engines. It was in a bid to diversify and expand Avro’s business and grow its profits that Gordon initiated the purchases of several companies, one of which was DOSCO. Avro paid $60 million (about $600 million in today’s money) for a controlling interest in DOSCO.3 In retrospect, it was a move that was as puzzling as it was ill-advised.
If you go looking, you’ll find few mentions of DOSCO and not one of its No. 2 Springhill mine in the various Crawford Gordon biographies or in the A.V. Roe corporate histories. Coal and steel production were low on the list of Gordon’s workaday concerns. If they were at all important, it was only to the extent that they might generate revenue and help bankroll development of the Avro Arrow aircraft. Gordon seemed to acknowledge that his purchase of DOSCO was a tad risky when at the press conference where the sale was announced, he mused, “No doubt the coal industry is a worrisome picture, but we haven’t studied this picture.” Sir Roy Dobson, chair of A.V. Roe in the UK and the man who was Gordon’s boss and mentor, was quick to add, “If we couldn’t improve a company, we wouldn’t go into it. If we can’t improve DOSCO we’ll be very disappointed people.”4
It was against this backdrop that DOSCO management stepped up efforts to vertically align the ends of coal faces in the No. 2 mine. The hope was that doing so would result in increased productivity and profits while also reducing the incidence of bumping. However, there were a couple of major problems with this strategy. For one, increasing production of coal—or anything else, for that matter—at a time when prices are falling isn’t a sustainable business model. For another, although the quality of Springhill coal improved as the mine went ever deeper, the ground around it became more unstable, and the work of the miners became increasingly perilous.
ACCORDING TO DOSCO records, the first seismic shock to rattle the No. 2 colliery happened in July 1917, when coal was being extracted at the relatively shallow depth of 2,000 feet. Over the next four decades, company officials and the inspectors from the provincial Department of Mines would record more than five hundred bumps of varying intensities. By the early 1950s, when mining was being done at ever greater depths, the number of bumps increased. Not surprisingly, so too did the sense of apprehension in Springhill.
In the wake of the fiery 1956 explosion that shut down the No. 4 mine at Springhill, the No. 2 pit was the last of the town’s original quintet of mines that remained open. The quality of the coal being produced remained prime; however, prospects for the mine looked bleak going forward. The demand for coal was softening, and the mine itself was widely regarded as being “an accident waiting to happen.” The overriding fear among the miners and their families was that when the next big bump occurred, it could close the mine and kill the town. The attitude of miner Gorley Kempt reflected how serious those fears were. Following a fire that razed the family home, the Kempts made do with whatever furnishings they could find. Gorley’s son, Billy, remembers that his parents had no money for new items and his father refused to go into debt to buy any. He feared that if the mine closed, he’d find himself out of work and wouldn’t be able to make the monthly payments.5
The coal company houses, drafty wood-frame structures in which many miners and their families lived, were scattered throughout the town of Springhill. (Nova Scotia Archives)
Gorley Kempt’s fears—like those of many other Springhill miners—were well founded. Despite government subsidies, the No. 2 mine had become a money loser. Even more worrisome and threatening was the growing likelihood of a major bump. In the almost ten months of 1958 prior to October 23, there were eighteen bumps that injured forty-nine miners. In retrospect, one disturbance that happened on March 18 stands out, for it was eerily reminiscent of the Big One that would happen seven months later. One person died when “a violent bump occurred on the 13,400 level . . . heaving the pavement up one to three feet for a distance of one hundred and twenty feet.”6
In large measure, the instability of the ground beneath Springhill stemmed from the Cumberland Basin’s geological peculiarities; at least, that’s how most of the geologists and mining engineers who studied the situation had it figured. But of course, there were other experts with different opinions. They were convinced the seismic disturbances at Springhill were triggered by the way mining was being done. That had certainly been the opinion of one George S. Rice, the chief mining engineer of the United States Bureau of Mines.
In 1923, provincial officials had invited Rice to inspect the No. 2 mine at Springhill and offer his recommendations on ways to reduce the alarming frequency and severity of the bumping. Rice was regarded as one of the world’s leading authorities on coal mine bumps. After visiting the Springhill colliery and studying the data, he’d issued a report. His principal recommendation was that the “room-and-pillar” system of mining, the preferred method in the No. 2 mine for five decades, be changed to “longwall retreat.”7
Room-and-pillar mining, which was in use in Europe as early as the thirteenth century, came to North America in the early 1800s. The basics of longwall retreat mining—which is also known as “the Shropshire method”—were developed in England in the late seventeenth century. While the technology involved in longwall mining has changed considerably, the basics remain the same. Miners remove as much coal as possible from a broad coal face and then allow the roof and any overlying rock to collapse into the void that’s left behind, while maintaining (hopefully) a safe working space along the face for the miners.
The coal seam at Springhill was (and still is) a large sedimentary deposit that’s several miles wide; the coal face had an average thickness of eight feet and as much as nine feet in places. Near the surface, the whole sheet slants at an angle of about 30 degrees. Deeper down—at a vertical depth of about a mile—the coal sheet gradually flattens out to about 20 degrees. Above and below are layers of sandstone, shale, and other smaller coal seams.
When coal mining began at Springhill, surface coal was the first to be removed, for obvious reasons. As mining continued and miners dug ever deeper into the earth, they turned to the room-and-pillar method of mining, removing coal by digging directly into the coal seam and carving out underground rooms, or stalls. The miners left uncut pillars of coal in place to support the mine’s roof. “The thing is, when you’re removing that coal seam, you have all that weight and pressure of the rocks above you all the way to the surface bearing down on the workspace, but you’re also putting pressure right on the face of the coal you’re working on,” John Calder, senior geologist with the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources, explained in a 2018 media interview. “It acts like a lever, almost like a nutcracker, with the coal face being the nut, and the handles are the roof and the floor of the open space.”8
After reaching the western-most boundary of the coal on each level in the No. 2 Springhill colliery, the miners began to work their way back toward the access slope, removing the coal in the roof pillars as they went. As this coal was extracted—as is the case in any mine—gravity dictated that the rock layers above would come down, sooner or later.
The art and the science of coal mining involve safely extracting as much coal from a coal face as possible. With that in mind, mining methods are designed in theory and then modified in practice according to the conditions dictated by Mother Nature—or Father Geology, as many geologists like to say (most of them being male). For instance, as the depth of the mining activity increases, the growing weight of the rocks and earth bearing down on the mine roof means the miners need to leave ever-larger pillars in place. This necessity makes it more difficult—and dangerous—to recover the coal in those pillars. If the roof layers don’t break down easily, the pillars are prone to violent, uncontrolled cave-ins. Some coal is inevitably lost in the room-and-pillar method of mining, but depending on conditions, between sixty and ninety percent of it is recovered by this method.
Eventually, room-and-pillar mining becomes too dangerous and uneconomical. George Rice determined that Springhill had reached this point, and so he recommended a switch to longwall retreat mining. In theory at least, the actual method of mining coal in longwall is the same as for the room-and-pillar method: miners undercut coal along the width of a coal face. They then collect the coal as it falls. The difference between room-and-pillar and longwall retreat mining is in the pattern of extraction.
The word retreat is applied in longwall mining when a series of horizontal tunnels are driven off the transit slope out to the farthest limit of the area to be mined. At Springhill, the levels in the No. 2 mine extended for almost a mile.
The miners dug four levels of horizontal access with 400 feet between them. By October of 1958, the operating levels in the No. 2 mine at Springhill were at slope depths of 12,600, 13,000, 13,400, and 13,800 feet. The first longwall was started from the end of the 13,000-foot level by miners who extracted upward toward the 12,600-foot level. The connections between the levels were known as “heads.” In effect, the head was a 400-foot portion of the coal face that was accessible from above on the 12,600-foot level and from below on the 13,000-foot level. Miners knew this work area as “the 13,000-foot wall.”
As mining progressed, rows of wooden packs—support pillars that had been erected to control any fall of the roof behind the coal face—were removed, and the roof behind the work area was allowed to come down in a controlled way. Whenever all the coal had been extracted from the head that connected any two levels, work began on another one that was 400 feet deeper. That’s how retreat longwall mining works in theory. How did it work in practice?
If you weren’t claustrophobic, didn’t suffer from nyctophobia (fear of the dark), and were brave enough to don a miner’s helmet and headlamp to go on a sortie down into the perpetual blackness of the No. 2 mine, you’d have had quite an adventure.
Think of the mine as an italicized E that had been turned on its horizontal axis and given one extra prong. Above the top of the letter’s vertical spine, off to the left, an older main access slope descended on a 30-degree angle from the pithead to a depth of 7,800 feet. At this point, there was a dogleg right. On your descent into the mine, you’d have exited the trolley car that carried you this far. You’d then have walked to a transfer tunnel that led to the top of the spine of that backward letter E. This was the top of the access the miners referred to as the “back slope.”
After riding the trolley down the back slope, you’d have arrived at the entrance to one of the mine’s four working levels—12,600, 13,000, 13,400, and 13,800 feet. (A level at 11,400 feet had been exhausted, and another at 14,200 feet was being developed, but it was never worked.) Let’s say you descended to the 13,000-foot level. After exiting your trolley car, you’d have gone for another walk, this one to your right, in a westerly direction along the level until you arrived at the gob—the mass of waste material that’s generated by the mining operations and the area where the roof had been allowed to collapse. Gob isn’t a pretty name, but it fit. This area, the dead end on each level, served as an ersatz toilet and a garbage dump. Even though the mine was well ventilated, you’d have been wise to hold your nose and watch your step if you ventured here.
This simplified drawing of the layout of the No. 2 mine appeared in a 1960 study of the Springhill mine disaster. (US National Academy of Sciences–National Research Council)
Just before you reached the gob, if you’d turned your gaze upward and looked back over your shoulder, through the ever-present thin fog of coal dust that hung in the air, your headlamp would have illuminated the head that was mentioned earlier. At the 13,000-foot level, it extended 400 feet, all the way up to the 12,600-foot level. On your left, up and down the west side of the head, you’d have seen two or three rows of wooden supports—called packs—that held up the roof of the mine above where miners were working. Opposite, on the east side of the head, you’d have seen the coal face. The coal the miners chipped from it tumbled, or was shovelled, into long metallic pans that were joined together to form a chute. Gravity, with help from an engine that periodically rattled the pans, moved the coal downward to the bottom of the head. After cascading there, it fell onto a clattering chain-driven conveyor that moved it along the level to a transfer point, where labourers filled the coal-rakes that carried the coal out to the back slope and up to the pithead. Once it reached the surface, it was washed, weighed, processed, and readied for shipment. Some of it went by rail to the Bay of Fundy port of Parrsboro, while much of the rest travelled west via Canadian National Railway to customers in Quebec and Ontario.
As mining progressed and the coal face moved east and ever closer to the back slope, successive rows of packs were removed up and down the west side of the head, and the roof behind the work area was allowed to collapse. When this happened, the horizontal length of the level became shorter until finally the stock of minable coal was depleted and mining on that level ended. The miners then began working at a new level 400 feet deeper. Production in a mine never stopped, other than when there was a major bump or during the two-week period each summer when the mine shut down and the miners took their holidays.
This was the mining methodology in place at Springhill’s No. 2 mine in the early 1950s. Much of the bumping that continued to occur when DOSCO introduced longwall mining, most notably from 1928 to 1933, was brought under control when the company closed off those parts of the coal seams that were especially unstable. That simple solution proved to be generally effective, and overall, the switch to longwall mining was beneficial for it reduced the incidence of bumping for almost three decades. However, all that changed when mining operations descended below 10,000 feet. Problems began to recur, and underground working conditions became more precarious than ever.
With the number of bumps rising again in 1953, provincial Department of Mines geologists began studying the situation. They set to work with DOSCO management to devise a long-term solution to the bumping problems. No one—not provincial officials, DOSCO management, the miners’ union, or the people of Springhill—wanted to see the No. 2 mine’s operations scaled back or, even worse, terminated. People tried not to think about that possibility, and they tried not to become prisoners to the fear that a catastrophic bump would likely kill a lot of miners and wreck the mine. Life had to go on, and it did.
The miners and their loved ones prayed during each shift that this wouldn’t be the day the Big One happened. However, on October 23, 1958, Springhillers’ luck ran out. And when it did, nothing was ever the same again.
Chapter 3
No Work, No Pay
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 23, 1958
2:00 P.M.
HAROLD BRINE WAS ONE OF THE HUNDREDS OF SPRINGHILL miners whose life was about to change forever on this fateful day. But right now, it was a beautiful sunlit afternoon in late October.
Given the glories of the day and his own life circumstances, if you’d given Brine the choice of staying home today or going to his job at DOSCO’s No. 2 mine, it would have been an easy decision for him to make. He’d have taken the day off. Unfortunately for Brine, he didn’t have that choice. He couldn’t stay home. He was scheduled to work the afternoon shift, 3:00 to 11:00 p.m., and there was no end of reasons why he had to show up. Most importantly, the twenty-six-year-old Springhill native needed money for the house he was building for himself, his wife Joan, and their chubby-cheeked two-year-old daughter. Little Bonnie was the apple of her dad’s eye.
The Brine family’s new home was on Mountain Road, a few miles southwest of Springhill. Brine still had a lot of work left to do on the place; it was a DIY construction site. The kitchen of the trim three-bedroom wood-frame bungalow was the only room he’d finished so far.
On this Thursday, the drywalling, plumbing, and painting had to wait. Just as he’d done every day of the seven years he’d worked for DOSCO, Brine tucked his company-issued lunch pail under his arm and hustled off to work. He was using every dollar he could muster to buy the lumber and sundry building materials to finish his house. At the same time, there were other bills to pay, and he had to put food on the table and buy gas for his car.
Regardless of how nice the weather was or how much he’d have welcomed a day off, Brine couldn’t afford to stay home. Not today. Not any day. Doing so would have cost him as much as twenty dollars; that was a typical day’s wages for him if he was able to exceed the production target and earn a bit of bonus money. But if Brine was ailing and stayed home, he didn’t get paid. If he was injured on the job and couldn’t work, it was the same deal. He didn’t get paid.
Brine was a strong union man. He attended the regular Saturday “chapel meetings” of Local 4514 of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) at the Miners Hall whenever he could. He eagerly embraced whatever benefits his union reps could wring out of DOSCO, even though he and all the other miners knew the unalterable terms of employment at the Springhill mine. They were as simple as they were unyielding: no work, no pay.
