Interview with Elmer MacGillivary – March 26, 2019 -Formerly of Fourchu, assisted by Robert Shepard, Coal Miner re the Stirling Mine.
What kind of Mine was Stirling?
JEANETTE: What kind of mining was done in Stirling?
Elmer: Hard Rock Mining – lead, copper, Zinc, Silver and a little gold. There was a little bit of gold in the mine muck.
JEANETTE: That’s a different kind of mining then the coal mining right?
ELMER: Yes
ROBERT: Was it room and pillar? You had a shaft?
ELMER: Yes, we had a shaft. It was down 700 feet.
ROBERT: Did they reach out.
ELMER: There were tunnels or drifts, whatever you would like to call them. And above the drifts is where they blasted, caused the muck to come down through the shoots. That’s how they got the muck out.
JEANETTE: What’s a drift?
ELMER: I’d like to say it’s a tunnel. I’m going to say, where they blew (Dynamite) everything down to make the muck come out.
ELMER: They’d blow it down. And then it would come down through a shoot in the wall. And then you’d back the car in with an electric motor. The electric motor was ran with batteries and they were charged every shift and then when you used the electric motor to haul the cars, you filled the cars full of muck. Then you’d close the shoot, bring the cars ahead and take them out and dump them in another hole and then they’d go down the bottom and they’d hoist them to the surface and put them through the crusher in the mill.
ROBERT: They came up on a cable or something, did they? Not a belt line?
ELMER: No, a cable. So, they’d come up in buckets and they’d take it up and dump it and they’d crush it.
JEANETTE: Inside the mine?
ELMER: Up on the surface, they’d crush it. When it came out of the mine it could be in big chunks the size of the sink. It had to be crushed. The crusher was there and the boiler room where they made all the steam to heat the housing and heat everything. It was crushed, then it went up the belt to the mill. And then it would…
ROBERT: (go) into a ball mill?
ELMER: When it went up there it would be like dust. Then it would go down into where it was separated and, whatever (mineral), was taken out of it.
ROBERT: Some of the balls are still over there. I saw a lot of them over there (where the mill used to be).
ELMER: They’d use that.
JEANETTE: Those two big pedestals are still up there.
ELMER: That is where the mill was -where those concrete pedestals are. You know where the glory hole was, well up to the left of the glory hole was where the mill was.
ROBERT: You can see the pillars- with the different heights (leading up to the mill). That was where the belt line was, I guess.
ELMER: Yes. When it would go through the mill, they used Cyanide and I don’t know what else they used but they used a lot of chemicals to separate it and then it (the concentrate) was hauled from there, Stirling, to St Peter’s by truck and then it went on a train and then it went, I don’t know where.
The Glory Hole
JEANETTE: Where the Glory hole is, what did they do over there?
ELMER: The Glory hole was a shaft, from the first time the Stirling mine ran, that caved in. They came too close to the surface around the 100 foot level. That shaft was down - you could walk the hundred-foot level and walk out into the drift and you could see daylight from the surface. That was just a part of the old mine and the new mine where I worked, the shaft was down 700 feet.
JEANETTE: They didn’t use the glory hole?
ELMER: They had to empty it. They pumped all the water out of it. They had to pump all the water out of that, and keep the pump going continually to keep the 700-foot level dry.
JEANETTE: Which was underneath?
The shaft
ELMER: Underneath, the shaft went down 700 feet.
JEANETTE: So, would that go straight down?
ELMER: Straight down
JEANETTE: And how would people get down there?
ELMER: In a cage. And you just stand in it, 6 or 10 or 2, however many men would get in it. There was a shaft house just left of the shaft for the mine. There was a man there. He used to work the cage up and down.
JEANETTE: So was that a pulley system?
ELMER: Yes, there was a long cable run by electric motors that controlled the cage.
ELMER: And he (the operator) lived up around the Stirling Lake. I think he was from Brickyard road. I can’t remember his name. When the mine closed in Stirling, he went to Till Cove (Nfld).
ROBERT: Would he be called a chain man?
ELMER: I don’t know what he’d be called, to be honest with you. I know, Edwin Severance; he ran it for a while. I think there were three shifts on it.
ELMER: A lot of the people who worked in Stirling, left Stirling and went to Till Cove working the iron ore mine down there.
JEANETTE: Stirling would have been closed by then.
ELMER: Stirling closed, yes. When Stirling closed, they all went to Till Cove. Charlie Angus (MacLeod) and Melvin Morrison and Malcom MacDonald from Fourchu. Spenser Bagnell, and my father (George MacGillivary). They all went down in Till Cove.
JEANETTE: Were they all in the mine in Stirling?
ELMER: Yes
ROBERT: Would the mine work 24 hours
ELMER: Yes, a day shift, 4-12 and back shift.
ROBERT: When you went down to a drift, when you went down 700 feet…
ELMER: We never went down 700 feet. The farthest we went was 500 feet. But it was down 700.
ROBERT: When you ran a drift say if you were at 4 or wherever you were at, what was holding up the (ceiling).
ELMER: It was all rock, when they blasted it, still rock.
ROBERT: They didn’t support the roof, no way, at all?
ELMER - No way.
JEANETTE: A few people died there right, one or two people?
ELMER: Yes, a fellow from Gabarus died. He was killed in the mill. He was a Burn’s. Dan Alex Burn’s son. Robert Burn’s brother's son. He was only a young lad, eh. He wasn’t very old.
JEANETTE: Were there any safety people around in those days?
ELMER: No. I went down to get a job there. I was working in Charlie Hooper’s store and my father got me a slip to go underground. So, I went down, and I seen the safety nurse or whoever you had to go see. He was from Gabarus, down by the lake.
JEANETTE: Oh, Yes. Mitchell.
ELMER: Mitchell, yes. Jim Mitchell. That’s who I had to go see to get the inspection to go underground. Anyway, he checked everything and then he said, “what year were you born?” I told him what year I was born and, “Oh My God’, he says, “you can’t go to work, Compensation won’t cover you”. I was only seventeen.
JEANETTE: They had that (compensation), at least, anyways.
ELMER: I went back to where my father was. He was running the boiler, eh, the steam, for everything. I said, “why didn’t you tell me I needed to be eighteen”. He said, “I didn’t know you had to be eighteen”. So, I said, “Wait a week then ask the Mine Captain for another slip. Get me the slip and I’ll be eighteen the next time I go there.” I was still only seventeen. I went back, same old Jim Mitchell asked me how old I was. I told him I was born in 36. I Was eighteen then (laughter).
JEANETTE: Did he remember you?
ELMER: No. If he did, he didn’t care, as long as I didn’t tell him how old I was.
Raising the Slope/Pulling Shoots/Running the motor
Elmer: Then I went to work and went underground, and I worked with old Clausen.
JEANETTE: Christian Clausen?
ELMER: Yes. Christian Clausen. He was the boss up in raising the slope - I’d say a man hole, a 6x6 square - and we’d just raise that up each time they’d blast, to get above the muck. So, that’s where I worked for a couple of shifts – a week or so, and then from there I went pulling shoots -dragging the muck out with old Angus MacDonald from Big Pond. Myself and John, “the piper” from Soldier’s cove; he and I worked together pulling shoots, oh, for ever. And then the old guy who was running the motor, he got Appendix and had to go to the hospital, so I was the next senior person out there, so I ran the motor. And then John and another fellow pulled shoots. And we worked like hell especially day shift. 4-12 (shift) wasn’t bad. The back shift we would work hard to get as many cars out as we could in a short time and once we got a certain number of cars out, we knew how many, you’d take your light off your hat and put it down inside your oil clothes and sit down and have a little snooze.
JEANETTE: So, you had to wear oilcloths?
ELMER: You had to use oilcloths all the time because it was wet – It was continually water – like rain- underground. Rubber boots, oil pants and an oil jacket and a hard hat.
JEANETTE: Would people wear two pairs of oilcloths?
ELMER: Oh God, no. You would be lucky to be able to wear one.
JEANETTE: It would be hot and sweaty, wouldn’t it?
ELMER: But it was continually wet, it was well - raining down there.
JEANETTE: The shoots what does that mean?
ELMER: Well that is where the muck came down. There a square blown or blasted into the wall. Just a wall of rock and all of this muck that was up above was funneled toward that hole. They would drill up into the rock and they’d drive dynamite up into the rock and they’d set the timers on them, but they’d probably be all electric and leave them till they were ready to blast, touch the button and away she goes. As you got the muck down it kept pouring in and falling down. And it used to get hung up because some one blasted too big, eh. And if they were bad they’d drill far apart and the muck would be big and jam. Anyone that was good at it would drill and blast so that the muck (was in smaller pieces) and wouldn’t get stuck when it was coming down the shoot.
ROBERT: It would get caught in the shoots.
ELMER: It got caught up in the shoots up there, you couldn’t get it down. We had tons of strapping and we’d nail a few lengths of strapping together, hammer and nail and clincher- tie a few sticks of dynamite on one end put a fuse in it, light the fuse and drive it up in the rock as far as you can get her and run like hell.
JEANETTE: Holly molly.
ELMER: Then some guys would say they lost their darn shoot, too much of her came down and a way she goes. And if the stick broke and the dynamite fell down, your shoot was gone. They’d have to get someone in to build a new one on day shift.
ROBERT: Did You have a light on your hard hat with the battery by your side?
ELMER: Ye.
JEANETTE: What were the batteries like in those days, how long would they last?
ELMER: They’d last a shift. Eight hours anyway.
JEANETTE: How big were they?
ELMER: Not very big.
ROBERT: You’d put them on a charger?
ELMER: After the shift you’d put it on the charger till you went back the next day to get one.
JEANETTE: If you turned your light off would you be able to see?
ELMER: No. The only place there was any light was where the cage came down where there was a place you’d go in (about the size of the kitchen here) that is where you landed and you would go to work from there. It was like an opening next to the cage.
JEANETTE: Would that be natural light from outside?
ELMER: No. There were powered lights. That was the only place where there was any power. You had to charge your batteries on your motors for hauling the muck out, eh.
JEANETTE: There was a track down there?
ELMER: Yeah.
ELMER: And then you’d pull the cars out and then dumped them and came back and fill them again.
JEANETTE: Would you say there were 4 or 5 cars?
ELMER: I don’t know, four or five, I’d say.
JEANETTE: As a Mucker, would you use a shovel?
ELMER: No. Only if you had a spill. Because what you were getting was coming out of the shoot. If you overfilled the car and it went on the ground, you’d have to clean it up.
JEANETTE: So you’d get that on that car and then move the next car up.
ELMER: Yes. You almost always made sure not to have any spills because it was too hard work filling the cars with a shovel.
JEANETTE: So, whatever you blasted up there, whatever came down, you made sure you didn’t have too much
ELMER: Yes, all the shoots were, they were coming out of the wall, and there was a rail here and a rail here and like a 2x6 or 2x 8 that’s what you lifted to let the muck come into the car.
JEANETTE: That was what was holding it back?
ELMER: Yes.
JEANETTE: You did well there.
ELMER: But you had to work.
JEANETTE: How much did you get paid, do you know?
ELMER: I can’t remember that.
JEANETTE: How often would you get paid?
ELMER: Every two weeks
Ventilation
ROBERT: What kind of ventilation would you have there now, just pump air in?
ELMER: Shakes his head
ROBERT: Whatever air was in there, that was it?
ELMER: That was it.
ROBERT: There must have been a lot of dust around?
ELMER: Dust wasn’t the bad part. It was the fumes from the dynamite. Oh, headache. If you were up where they were raising the slope and you had to start working in that, where they blasted last night - you’d have to go up the day they raised it. The fumes were still there. It would tear the head off you. But anyway, everybody lived.
JEANETTE: The people you worked with; they didn’t have any lung diseases?
ELMER: No
JEANETTE: I guess it didn’t hurt them too much.
Editor's Note: Dept of Mines & Resources "Stirling Mine Shaft Capping project" refers to two service/ventilation raises which were capped during this project in 1996 Follow this link for more detail. novascotia.ca/natr/meb/data/pubs/96ofr18/96ofr18_02Mine.pdf
The Surface
JEANETTE: And over by the mill there is a lot of (broken) pieces. It looks like asbestos.
ELMER: You mean the wavy (corrugated) stuff. Well that was what all the buildings were made of, the outer wall. There was no insulation or anything. I don’t know if it was asbestos.
JEANETTE: When you are going down the road to the mine, the shaft house, would that be on the right-hand side of the road?
ELMER: You go down the road, the shaft was on the left-hand side going down and there was -something was put in there and it was filled in with muck (after the mine closed).
JEANETTE: There’s a foundation there. And it looks like you could go down (on a slant).
The Boiler Room
ELMER: The foundation is where I think, the boiler room was at. Next to the boiler room and that’s where the machine was at to hoist the cage up and down and that was next to that. And it was always nice and warm where the boiler was. My father (George MacGillivary) ran the boiler.
JEANETTE: What was involved in that?
ELMER: Just shoveling coal. They used to get the coal from Glace Bay, I think it was, old Charlie, he had a truck. All they had was single axle trucks eh. And (he would) haul loads of coal from Glace Bay to Stirling. To keep the old stoves, the mine going, anything that was heated. See, where the wash house was, where all the miners (went) when you came up – that was always heated and there was always hot water.
JEANETTE: So was that close to the boiler?
ELMER: Oh yes, close. When you came up from the shaft, you’d have to cross the road and go, I don’t know, not that far, and then you’d go in the place where all the clothes were, and you would change your clothes and have a shower.
JEANETTE: Would you be pretty dirty when you got out of there?
ELMER: Oh yeah.
Explosives
JEANETTE: And when you are going down the mine road (on the left-hand side) still today there is a tall building. It has no windows in it and it is very narrow. It looks like a tower. Do you know what that is?
ELMER: No. I haven’t been down there in years.
ROBERT: It looks like a place where you may keep your explosives. Do you know where they kept the explosives?
ELMER: All I Know is that when you needed dynamite all you did was call up on the phone (and say) “bring me down a case of dynamite” and there was no problem to get it.
The Mine Muck
JEANETTE: What about all the water that was coming down (in the drifts)?
ELMER: There was a continual pump going and they used to pump it out into the brook, the brook down by where Clausen’s young fellow lived up on the hill (Stirling road.
JEANETTE: Yes
ELMER: Down at that turn there’s a brook(Strachan’s brook) going through there. That’s where all the junk came down there from the mill in Stirling.
JEANETTE: That brook crossed the barren road (first). We used to call that the mine muck.
ELMER: That’s right. When the mine was running (the first time) everything was dying all the trees and all the plants and anything around that brook.
JEANETTE: Yes
ELMER: Guess what was killing them?
JEANETTE: Cyanide
ELMER: Cyanide from the mill. That all became barren. I think it’s growing back up now. That’s been fifty odd years ago.
JEANETTE: It was all like sand. We used to skate on that when the river would flood over. Editor's Note: click on this link to see work that was done to reconstruct the spillway at the tailings pond. novascotia.ca/natr/meb/data/pubs/ofr_me_1996-016.pdf
Fourchu Wharf – 1930’s
JEANETTE: Do you know what happened in Fourchu where the old graveyard was?
ELMER: That happened when the mine was open in the 30’s. The mine wharf was East of that. You could probably see some of the rocks from it. But that’s all.
JEANETTE: What did they do there?
ELMER: They’d bring a boat in, a steamer and load the ore that was up in the field there, load that into the boat and the steamer would go out the harbour.
JEANETTE: So, they did remove it eventually, they would just pile it there (temporarily).
ELMER: Oh, yes
JEANETTE: And then it leached into the ground (and all the vegetation died).
JEANETTE: So that was in the 30’s then?
ELMER: Yes.
JEANETTE: So where did those boats go?
ELMER: I have no idea.
ELMER: They’d take it (the ore) somewhere and they’d refine it and made something out of it.
JEANETTE: So, in the 50’s the ore was trucked to St Peters by truck to be sent out by train whereas in the 30’s the ore was trucked to Fourchu to be shipped out by boat.
ELMER: Yes.
Where did the people come from/where did they live
ROBERT: Where were the miners from?
ELMER: Oh, they were from all over. A lot of people from Inverness.
ROBERT: So, they stayed there?
ELMER: Oh, yes. There was a bunkhouse and they used to stay in the houses. There were three of them on top of the hill (left side of road going down the mine road).
JEANETTE: Do you know what happened to some of those buildings.
ELMER: I know one of the houses came over here.
JEANETTE: To the Meadows (Sydney Forks)?
ELMER: Yes. Dan Alex (MacLeod) took that from Stirling.
JEANETTE: So, those miners were from all over the world?
ELMER: I know the guy next to me in Fourchu, who rented the old house that Sam (my uncle) had there; he was a German.
JEANETTE: Was there a lot of people that found places in Fourchu to live?
ELMER: I know my grandmother’s place. There was a family living upstairs.
JEANETTE: There was a lot of people from St Peters. They would stay down here (Stirling).
ELMER: They would stay in the bunkhouse.
JEANETTE: There were buildings down on the right side.
ELMER: On the left- hand side that’s where the houses were and the bunkhouses and where you went to eat.
JEANETTE: On the right-hand side of the road behind John G’s -there were several houses up there.
ELMER: There were a lot of houses up there.
JEANETTE: Bungalow style houses.
Getting to work
JEANETTE: How did you get to the mine (from Fourchu)?
ELMER: The reason I got to the mine was because I had a new truck. I bought a new half ton truck when I was only 17, because I had to take the papers home for my father to sign them. I was fishing. I quit school when I was 15.
ELMER: I used to travel with Roddie Burns. He had an old car and three or four of us used to go with Roddie. We’d pay him so much to travel back and forth to work with him.
JEANETTE: I guess most of the people from Fourchu, unless they fished (would work in the mine).
ELMER: Even a lot of the ones who fished worked in the mine.
JEANETTE: They didn’t have unemployment (Insurance) then, right?
ELMER: If they did it was only $10/week.
JEANETTE: Not enough to survive on all winter.
ELMER: No. They wouldn’t survive.
JEANETTE: Would the mine go all year round?
ELMER: Yes, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Recreation
JEANETTE: My brother (Donald Strachan) was saying there was a lot of things set up for recreation there.
ELMER: Up on the hill, way up on the hill, there was a place for playing ball and this and that. And they used to have picnics up there.
JEANETTE: Were there any buildings up there.
ELMER: There were little buildings up there like a place for canteens. I can remember going up there and working the canteen one picnic they had and making and selling hotdogs.
The stores
JEANETTE: The stores?
ELMER: There was Danny Shaw’s, Charlie Hooper’s, Morrison’s. There was a clothing store (Spinners). It (Stirling) was a going concern. The old school from Fourchu was up there. Chinese people were running it. They had a restaurant in there.
JEANETTE: They had slot machine in there.
ELMER: They used to play poker, eh. There were a few games of poker going on in Danny Shaw’s back room.
JEANETTE: There was a little movie theatre.
ELMER: I don’t know that.
JEANETTE: My father (Soutter Strachan) used to have the garage there.
ELMER: On the corner.
JEANETTE: Yes.
ELMER: My uncle, Edwin Severence, used to work in that garage with your father.
JEANETTE: Was he a mechanic?
ELMER: Yes. He was from Fourchu. He was my mother’s brother. He went to Newfoundland too, eh. He died in Newfoundland. He worked at the bus garage in Sydney before coming to Stirling.
JEANETTE: Did he have a disability?
ELMER: Yes. He was crippled.
JEANETTE: That didn’t stop him much.
ELMER: He had Polio. My mother did and he did, and he was really crippled with it because he lost the use of his leg and he moved around with crutches continually.
JEANETTE: How did he get around so well with them?
ELMER: You mean in the garage. He could move around the floor just the same as (anyone).
ELMER: He worked at the mine. He’d sit down and use the lever to bring the cage up and down.
JEANETTE: Duncan MacLeod said that place (the garage) was a happening place especially on the weekends.
ELMER: Payday was a bad day there.
The King’s Bus Line – Stirling Bus
JEANETTE: Do you remember the King’s line bus?
ELMER: Oh yeah. Old Hughie MacDonald used to drive the bus. He was from Gabarus Lake. He used to stay up at John G’s. The King’s bus was from Sydney and Hughie used to drive it out to Stirling every night.
JEANETTE: I thought it only ran on weekends.
ELMER: No. I’m sure it ran everyday. He used to make more money with picking stuff up and dragging parcels back and forth for people who wanted something. You’d stop the bus in the morning on his way to Sydney and Hughie would pick it up and bring it back in the evening.
JEANETTE: And the mainline was down at the corner of Dorchester and Charlotte streets (Sydney)?
ELMER: Right, on the corner just past the bank.
JEANETTE: Yes. Duncan told me that. Mostly it was people from out there (Stirling) coming into do shopping.
ELMER: Yes, and if you didn’t have a car you had to go in by bus, do your shopping and come back home.
JEANETTE: But it wasn’t for the miners (to get back and forth).
ELMER: No. It was for anybody.
When the Mine Closed
JEANETTE: That must have been a difference (when the mine closed).
ELMER: It was sad when it closed. The activity, the money the people could make. They had money to buy stuff. Once the mine closed a lot of the infrastructure went down the drain.
ELMER: I Know myself, after the mine closed, and I wasn’t working anymore, I went to work in the woods. Cutting pit timber.
JEANETTE: Pit timber?
ELMER: Yes, with Dan Angus MacLeod from over in Salmon River (near Marion Bridge). Randy (his son) and I would go cutting pit timber.
ROBERT: For the coal mines?
ELMER: Yes, and we’d haul them out to Glace Bay. Oh. My god. We had a lot of fun back then.
JEANETTE: Dan Alex (MacLeod), used to say the mine would open again.
ELMER: There’s still lots of ore up there. Here, not too long ago they were doing some diamond drilling, eh. And they got a lot of stuff out of there. As a matter of fact, down by the highway garage (Strachan’s Garage) there, there are throughs that held the core samples (over the years).
JEANETTE: A few years ago they did some exploration more up toward St Esprit.
ELMER: They claim there is ore there.
What kind of Mine was Stirling?
JEANETTE: What kind of mining was done in Stirling?
Elmer: Hard Rock Mining – lead, copper, Zinc, Silver and a little gold. There was a little bit of gold in the mine muck.
JEANETTE: That’s a different kind of mining then the coal mining right?
ELMER: Yes
ROBERT: Was it room and pillar? You had a shaft?
ELMER: Yes, we had a shaft. It was down 700 feet.
ROBERT: Did they reach out.
ELMER: There were tunnels or drifts, whatever you would like to call them. And above the drifts is where they blasted, caused the muck to come down through the shoots. That’s how they got the muck out.
JEANETTE: What’s a drift?
ELMER: I’d like to say it’s a tunnel. I’m going to say, where they blew (Dynamite) everything down to make the muck come out.
ELMER: They’d blow it down. And then it would come down through a shoot in the wall. And then you’d back the car in with an electric motor. The electric motor was ran with batteries and they were charged every shift and then when you used the electric motor to haul the cars, you filled the cars full of muck. Then you’d close the shoot, bring the cars ahead and take them out and dump them in another hole and then they’d go down the bottom and they’d hoist them to the surface and put them through the crusher in the mill.
ROBERT: They came up on a cable or something, did they? Not a belt line?
ELMER: No, a cable. So, they’d come up in buckets and they’d take it up and dump it and they’d crush it.
JEANETTE: Inside the mine?
ELMER: Up on the surface, they’d crush it. When it came out of the mine it could be in big chunks the size of the sink. It had to be crushed. The crusher was there and the boiler room where they made all the steam to heat the housing and heat everything. It was crushed, then it went up the belt to the mill. And then it would…
ROBERT: (go) into a ball mill?
ELMER: When it went up there it would be like dust. Then it would go down into where it was separated and, whatever (mineral), was taken out of it.
ROBERT: Some of the balls are still over there. I saw a lot of them over there (where the mill used to be).
ELMER: They’d use that.
JEANETTE: Those two big pedestals are still up there.
ELMER: That is where the mill was -where those concrete pedestals are. You know where the glory hole was, well up to the left of the glory hole was where the mill was.
ROBERT: You can see the pillars- with the different heights (leading up to the mill). That was where the belt line was, I guess.
ELMER: Yes. When it would go through the mill, they used Cyanide and I don’t know what else they used but they used a lot of chemicals to separate it and then it (the concentrate) was hauled from there, Stirling, to St Peter’s by truck and then it went on a train and then it went, I don’t know where.
The Glory Hole
JEANETTE: Where the Glory hole is, what did they do over there?
ELMER: The Glory hole was a shaft, from the first time the Stirling mine ran, that caved in. They came too close to the surface around the 100 foot level. That shaft was down - you could walk the hundred-foot level and walk out into the drift and you could see daylight from the surface. That was just a part of the old mine and the new mine where I worked, the shaft was down 700 feet.
JEANETTE: They didn’t use the glory hole?
ELMER: They had to empty it. They pumped all the water out of it. They had to pump all the water out of that, and keep the pump going continually to keep the 700-foot level dry.
JEANETTE: Which was underneath?
The shaft
ELMER: Underneath, the shaft went down 700 feet.
JEANETTE: So, would that go straight down?
ELMER: Straight down
JEANETTE: And how would people get down there?
ELMER: In a cage. And you just stand in it, 6 or 10 or 2, however many men would get in it. There was a shaft house just left of the shaft for the mine. There was a man there. He used to work the cage up and down.
JEANETTE: So was that a pulley system?
ELMER: Yes, there was a long cable run by electric motors that controlled the cage.
ELMER: And he (the operator) lived up around the Stirling Lake. I think he was from Brickyard road. I can’t remember his name. When the mine closed in Stirling, he went to Till Cove (Nfld).
ROBERT: Would he be called a chain man?
ELMER: I don’t know what he’d be called, to be honest with you. I know, Edwin Severance; he ran it for a while. I think there were three shifts on it.
ELMER: A lot of the people who worked in Stirling, left Stirling and went to Till Cove working the iron ore mine down there.
JEANETTE: Stirling would have been closed by then.
ELMER: Stirling closed, yes. When Stirling closed, they all went to Till Cove. Charlie Angus (MacLeod) and Melvin Morrison and Malcom MacDonald from Fourchu. Spenser Bagnell, and my father (George MacGillivary). They all went down in Till Cove.
JEANETTE: Were they all in the mine in Stirling?
ELMER: Yes
ROBERT: Would the mine work 24 hours
ELMER: Yes, a day shift, 4-12 and back shift.
ROBERT: When you went down to a drift, when you went down 700 feet…
ELMER: We never went down 700 feet. The farthest we went was 500 feet. But it was down 700.
ROBERT: When you ran a drift say if you were at 4 or wherever you were at, what was holding up the (ceiling).
ELMER: It was all rock, when they blasted it, still rock.
ROBERT: They didn’t support the roof, no way, at all?
ELMER - No way.
JEANETTE: A few people died there right, one or two people?
ELMER: Yes, a fellow from Gabarus died. He was killed in the mill. He was a Burn’s. Dan Alex Burn’s son. Robert Burn’s brother's son. He was only a young lad, eh. He wasn’t very old.
JEANETTE: Were there any safety people around in those days?
ELMER: No. I went down to get a job there. I was working in Charlie Hooper’s store and my father got me a slip to go underground. So, I went down, and I seen the safety nurse or whoever you had to go see. He was from Gabarus, down by the lake.
JEANETTE: Oh, Yes. Mitchell.
ELMER: Mitchell, yes. Jim Mitchell. That’s who I had to go see to get the inspection to go underground. Anyway, he checked everything and then he said, “what year were you born?” I told him what year I was born and, “Oh My God’, he says, “you can’t go to work, Compensation won’t cover you”. I was only seventeen.
JEANETTE: They had that (compensation), at least, anyways.
ELMER: I went back to where my father was. He was running the boiler, eh, the steam, for everything. I said, “why didn’t you tell me I needed to be eighteen”. He said, “I didn’t know you had to be eighteen”. So, I said, “Wait a week then ask the Mine Captain for another slip. Get me the slip and I’ll be eighteen the next time I go there.” I was still only seventeen. I went back, same old Jim Mitchell asked me how old I was. I told him I was born in 36. I Was eighteen then (laughter).
JEANETTE: Did he remember you?
ELMER: No. If he did, he didn’t care, as long as I didn’t tell him how old I was.
Raising the Slope/Pulling Shoots/Running the motor
Elmer: Then I went to work and went underground, and I worked with old Clausen.
JEANETTE: Christian Clausen?
ELMER: Yes. Christian Clausen. He was the boss up in raising the slope - I’d say a man hole, a 6x6 square - and we’d just raise that up each time they’d blast, to get above the muck. So, that’s where I worked for a couple of shifts – a week or so, and then from there I went pulling shoots -dragging the muck out with old Angus MacDonald from Big Pond. Myself and John, “the piper” from Soldier’s cove; he and I worked together pulling shoots, oh, for ever. And then the old guy who was running the motor, he got Appendix and had to go to the hospital, so I was the next senior person out there, so I ran the motor. And then John and another fellow pulled shoots. And we worked like hell especially day shift. 4-12 (shift) wasn’t bad. The back shift we would work hard to get as many cars out as we could in a short time and once we got a certain number of cars out, we knew how many, you’d take your light off your hat and put it down inside your oil clothes and sit down and have a little snooze.
JEANETTE: So, you had to wear oilcloths?
ELMER: You had to use oilcloths all the time because it was wet – It was continually water – like rain- underground. Rubber boots, oil pants and an oil jacket and a hard hat.
JEANETTE: Would people wear two pairs of oilcloths?
ELMER: Oh God, no. You would be lucky to be able to wear one.
JEANETTE: It would be hot and sweaty, wouldn’t it?
ELMER: But it was continually wet, it was well - raining down there.
JEANETTE: The shoots what does that mean?
ELMER: Well that is where the muck came down. There a square blown or blasted into the wall. Just a wall of rock and all of this muck that was up above was funneled toward that hole. They would drill up into the rock and they’d drive dynamite up into the rock and they’d set the timers on them, but they’d probably be all electric and leave them till they were ready to blast, touch the button and away she goes. As you got the muck down it kept pouring in and falling down. And it used to get hung up because some one blasted too big, eh. And if they were bad they’d drill far apart and the muck would be big and jam. Anyone that was good at it would drill and blast so that the muck (was in smaller pieces) and wouldn’t get stuck when it was coming down the shoot.
ROBERT: It would get caught in the shoots.
ELMER: It got caught up in the shoots up there, you couldn’t get it down. We had tons of strapping and we’d nail a few lengths of strapping together, hammer and nail and clincher- tie a few sticks of dynamite on one end put a fuse in it, light the fuse and drive it up in the rock as far as you can get her and run like hell.
JEANETTE: Holly molly.
ELMER: Then some guys would say they lost their darn shoot, too much of her came down and a way she goes. And if the stick broke and the dynamite fell down, your shoot was gone. They’d have to get someone in to build a new one on day shift.
ROBERT: Did You have a light on your hard hat with the battery by your side?
ELMER: Ye.
JEANETTE: What were the batteries like in those days, how long would they last?
ELMER: They’d last a shift. Eight hours anyway.
JEANETTE: How big were they?
ELMER: Not very big.
ROBERT: You’d put them on a charger?
ELMER: After the shift you’d put it on the charger till you went back the next day to get one.
JEANETTE: If you turned your light off would you be able to see?
ELMER: No. The only place there was any light was where the cage came down where there was a place you’d go in (about the size of the kitchen here) that is where you landed and you would go to work from there. It was like an opening next to the cage.
JEANETTE: Would that be natural light from outside?
ELMER: No. There were powered lights. That was the only place where there was any power. You had to charge your batteries on your motors for hauling the muck out, eh.
JEANETTE: There was a track down there?
ELMER: Yeah.
ELMER: And then you’d pull the cars out and then dumped them and came back and fill them again.
JEANETTE: Would you say there were 4 or 5 cars?
ELMER: I don’t know, four or five, I’d say.
JEANETTE: As a Mucker, would you use a shovel?
ELMER: No. Only if you had a spill. Because what you were getting was coming out of the shoot. If you overfilled the car and it went on the ground, you’d have to clean it up.
JEANETTE: So you’d get that on that car and then move the next car up.
ELMER: Yes. You almost always made sure not to have any spills because it was too hard work filling the cars with a shovel.
JEANETTE: So, whatever you blasted up there, whatever came down, you made sure you didn’t have too much
ELMER: Yes, all the shoots were, they were coming out of the wall, and there was a rail here and a rail here and like a 2x6 or 2x 8 that’s what you lifted to let the muck come into the car.
JEANETTE: That was what was holding it back?
ELMER: Yes.
JEANETTE: You did well there.
ELMER: But you had to work.
JEANETTE: How much did you get paid, do you know?
ELMER: I can’t remember that.
JEANETTE: How often would you get paid?
ELMER: Every two weeks
Ventilation
ROBERT: What kind of ventilation would you have there now, just pump air in?
ELMER: Shakes his head
ROBERT: Whatever air was in there, that was it?
ELMER: That was it.
ROBERT: There must have been a lot of dust around?
ELMER: Dust wasn’t the bad part. It was the fumes from the dynamite. Oh, headache. If you were up where they were raising the slope and you had to start working in that, where they blasted last night - you’d have to go up the day they raised it. The fumes were still there. It would tear the head off you. But anyway, everybody lived.
JEANETTE: The people you worked with; they didn’t have any lung diseases?
ELMER: No
JEANETTE: I guess it didn’t hurt them too much.
Editor's Note: Dept of Mines & Resources "Stirling Mine Shaft Capping project" refers to two service/ventilation raises which were capped during this project in 1996 Follow this link for more detail. novascotia.ca/natr/meb/data/pubs/96ofr18/96ofr18_02Mine.pdf
The Surface
JEANETTE: And over by the mill there is a lot of (broken) pieces. It looks like asbestos.
ELMER: You mean the wavy (corrugated) stuff. Well that was what all the buildings were made of, the outer wall. There was no insulation or anything. I don’t know if it was asbestos.
JEANETTE: When you are going down the road to the mine, the shaft house, would that be on the right-hand side of the road?
ELMER: You go down the road, the shaft was on the left-hand side going down and there was -something was put in there and it was filled in with muck (after the mine closed).
JEANETTE: There’s a foundation there. And it looks like you could go down (on a slant).
The Boiler Room
ELMER: The foundation is where I think, the boiler room was at. Next to the boiler room and that’s where the machine was at to hoist the cage up and down and that was next to that. And it was always nice and warm where the boiler was. My father (George MacGillivary) ran the boiler.
JEANETTE: What was involved in that?
ELMER: Just shoveling coal. They used to get the coal from Glace Bay, I think it was, old Charlie, he had a truck. All they had was single axle trucks eh. And (he would) haul loads of coal from Glace Bay to Stirling. To keep the old stoves, the mine going, anything that was heated. See, where the wash house was, where all the miners (went) when you came up – that was always heated and there was always hot water.
JEANETTE: So was that close to the boiler?
ELMER: Oh yes, close. When you came up from the shaft, you’d have to cross the road and go, I don’t know, not that far, and then you’d go in the place where all the clothes were, and you would change your clothes and have a shower.
JEANETTE: Would you be pretty dirty when you got out of there?
ELMER: Oh yeah.
Explosives
JEANETTE: And when you are going down the mine road (on the left-hand side) still today there is a tall building. It has no windows in it and it is very narrow. It looks like a tower. Do you know what that is?
ELMER: No. I haven’t been down there in years.
ROBERT: It looks like a place where you may keep your explosives. Do you know where they kept the explosives?
ELMER: All I Know is that when you needed dynamite all you did was call up on the phone (and say) “bring me down a case of dynamite” and there was no problem to get it.
The Mine Muck
JEANETTE: What about all the water that was coming down (in the drifts)?
ELMER: There was a continual pump going and they used to pump it out into the brook, the brook down by where Clausen’s young fellow lived up on the hill (Stirling road.
JEANETTE: Yes
ELMER: Down at that turn there’s a brook(Strachan’s brook) going through there. That’s where all the junk came down there from the mill in Stirling.
JEANETTE: That brook crossed the barren road (first). We used to call that the mine muck.
ELMER: That’s right. When the mine was running (the first time) everything was dying all the trees and all the plants and anything around that brook.
JEANETTE: Yes
ELMER: Guess what was killing them?
JEANETTE: Cyanide
ELMER: Cyanide from the mill. That all became barren. I think it’s growing back up now. That’s been fifty odd years ago.
JEANETTE: It was all like sand. We used to skate on that when the river would flood over. Editor's Note: click on this link to see work that was done to reconstruct the spillway at the tailings pond. novascotia.ca/natr/meb/data/pubs/ofr_me_1996-016.pdf
Fourchu Wharf – 1930’s
JEANETTE: Do you know what happened in Fourchu where the old graveyard was?
ELMER: That happened when the mine was open in the 30’s. The mine wharf was East of that. You could probably see some of the rocks from it. But that’s all.
JEANETTE: What did they do there?
ELMER: They’d bring a boat in, a steamer and load the ore that was up in the field there, load that into the boat and the steamer would go out the harbour.
JEANETTE: So, they did remove it eventually, they would just pile it there (temporarily).
ELMER: Oh, yes
JEANETTE: And then it leached into the ground (and all the vegetation died).
JEANETTE: So that was in the 30’s then?
ELMER: Yes.
JEANETTE: So where did those boats go?
ELMER: I have no idea.
ELMER: They’d take it (the ore) somewhere and they’d refine it and made something out of it.
JEANETTE: So, in the 50’s the ore was trucked to St Peters by truck to be sent out by train whereas in the 30’s the ore was trucked to Fourchu to be shipped out by boat.
ELMER: Yes.
Where did the people come from/where did they live
ROBERT: Where were the miners from?
ELMER: Oh, they were from all over. A lot of people from Inverness.
ROBERT: So, they stayed there?
ELMER: Oh, yes. There was a bunkhouse and they used to stay in the houses. There were three of them on top of the hill (left side of road going down the mine road).
JEANETTE: Do you know what happened to some of those buildings.
ELMER: I know one of the houses came over here.
JEANETTE: To the Meadows (Sydney Forks)?
ELMER: Yes. Dan Alex (MacLeod) took that from Stirling.
JEANETTE: So, those miners were from all over the world?
ELMER: I know the guy next to me in Fourchu, who rented the old house that Sam (my uncle) had there; he was a German.
JEANETTE: Was there a lot of people that found places in Fourchu to live?
ELMER: I know my grandmother’s place. There was a family living upstairs.
JEANETTE: There was a lot of people from St Peters. They would stay down here (Stirling).
ELMER: They would stay in the bunkhouse.
JEANETTE: There were buildings down on the right side.
ELMER: On the left- hand side that’s where the houses were and the bunkhouses and where you went to eat.
JEANETTE: On the right-hand side of the road behind John G’s -there were several houses up there.
ELMER: There were a lot of houses up there.
JEANETTE: Bungalow style houses.
Getting to work
JEANETTE: How did you get to the mine (from Fourchu)?
ELMER: The reason I got to the mine was because I had a new truck. I bought a new half ton truck when I was only 17, because I had to take the papers home for my father to sign them. I was fishing. I quit school when I was 15.
ELMER: I used to travel with Roddie Burns. He had an old car and three or four of us used to go with Roddie. We’d pay him so much to travel back and forth to work with him.
JEANETTE: I guess most of the people from Fourchu, unless they fished (would work in the mine).
ELMER: Even a lot of the ones who fished worked in the mine.
JEANETTE: They didn’t have unemployment (Insurance) then, right?
ELMER: If they did it was only $10/week.
JEANETTE: Not enough to survive on all winter.
ELMER: No. They wouldn’t survive.
JEANETTE: Would the mine go all year round?
ELMER: Yes, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Recreation
JEANETTE: My brother (Donald Strachan) was saying there was a lot of things set up for recreation there.
ELMER: Up on the hill, way up on the hill, there was a place for playing ball and this and that. And they used to have picnics up there.
JEANETTE: Were there any buildings up there.
ELMER: There were little buildings up there like a place for canteens. I can remember going up there and working the canteen one picnic they had and making and selling hotdogs.
The stores
JEANETTE: The stores?
ELMER: There was Danny Shaw’s, Charlie Hooper’s, Morrison’s. There was a clothing store (Spinners). It (Stirling) was a going concern. The old school from Fourchu was up there. Chinese people were running it. They had a restaurant in there.
JEANETTE: They had slot machine in there.
ELMER: They used to play poker, eh. There were a few games of poker going on in Danny Shaw’s back room.
JEANETTE: There was a little movie theatre.
ELMER: I don’t know that.
JEANETTE: My father (Soutter Strachan) used to have the garage there.
ELMER: On the corner.
JEANETTE: Yes.
ELMER: My uncle, Edwin Severence, used to work in that garage with your father.
JEANETTE: Was he a mechanic?
ELMER: Yes. He was from Fourchu. He was my mother’s brother. He went to Newfoundland too, eh. He died in Newfoundland. He worked at the bus garage in Sydney before coming to Stirling.
JEANETTE: Did he have a disability?
ELMER: Yes. He was crippled.
JEANETTE: That didn’t stop him much.
ELMER: He had Polio. My mother did and he did, and he was really crippled with it because he lost the use of his leg and he moved around with crutches continually.
JEANETTE: How did he get around so well with them?
ELMER: You mean in the garage. He could move around the floor just the same as (anyone).
ELMER: He worked at the mine. He’d sit down and use the lever to bring the cage up and down.
JEANETTE: Duncan MacLeod said that place (the garage) was a happening place especially on the weekends.
ELMER: Payday was a bad day there.
The King’s Bus Line – Stirling Bus
JEANETTE: Do you remember the King’s line bus?
ELMER: Oh yeah. Old Hughie MacDonald used to drive the bus. He was from Gabarus Lake. He used to stay up at John G’s. The King’s bus was from Sydney and Hughie used to drive it out to Stirling every night.
JEANETTE: I thought it only ran on weekends.
ELMER: No. I’m sure it ran everyday. He used to make more money with picking stuff up and dragging parcels back and forth for people who wanted something. You’d stop the bus in the morning on his way to Sydney and Hughie would pick it up and bring it back in the evening.
JEANETTE: And the mainline was down at the corner of Dorchester and Charlotte streets (Sydney)?
ELMER: Right, on the corner just past the bank.
JEANETTE: Yes. Duncan told me that. Mostly it was people from out there (Stirling) coming into do shopping.
ELMER: Yes, and if you didn’t have a car you had to go in by bus, do your shopping and come back home.
JEANETTE: But it wasn’t for the miners (to get back and forth).
ELMER: No. It was for anybody.
When the Mine Closed
JEANETTE: That must have been a difference (when the mine closed).
ELMER: It was sad when it closed. The activity, the money the people could make. They had money to buy stuff. Once the mine closed a lot of the infrastructure went down the drain.
ELMER: I Know myself, after the mine closed, and I wasn’t working anymore, I went to work in the woods. Cutting pit timber.
JEANETTE: Pit timber?
ELMER: Yes, with Dan Angus MacLeod from over in Salmon River (near Marion Bridge). Randy (his son) and I would go cutting pit timber.
ROBERT: For the coal mines?
ELMER: Yes, and we’d haul them out to Glace Bay. Oh. My god. We had a lot of fun back then.
JEANETTE: Dan Alex (MacLeod), used to say the mine would open again.
ELMER: There’s still lots of ore up there. Here, not too long ago they were doing some diamond drilling, eh. And they got a lot of stuff out of there. As a matter of fact, down by the highway garage (Strachan’s Garage) there, there are throughs that held the core samples (over the years).
JEANETTE: A few years ago they did some exploration more up toward St Esprit.
ELMER: They claim there is ore there.