Drowning Out the Void

 

Not all weekends were spent on a barstool. Those years would have been sad indeed, had they been.

I’d already grown tired of the routine, but habits are hard to break.

Those years weren’t boring, far from it. If they were I’d have done things differently, or so I’d like to imagine. There was more live entertainment, but the crowds in Timmins were far less interactive than they were in points south. There were no mosh pits. There was no crowd surfing. People just pressed towards the stage and took their entertainment in passively. Those who did, anyway.

Point in case, my first concert. Between my first and second years of college, The Headpins and Toronto came to town and played at the Mac. Karen and I got tickets. We were excited. We recalled the line leading up to the doors of the Mac in earlier years when the Stampeders and April Wine used to come to town. We expected the same. But Timmins was already gaining the reputation of a town that would travel to see its music but wouldn’t attend concerts in their own town. That “big name” bands only played Timmins on a Tuesday or a Thursday may have had something to do with it, but DUI charges may have had something to do with it, as well. I don’t know. The crush of Schumacher Days ought to have dispelled that myth. No one seemed concerned about DUIs then.

We were surprised to see that the Mac was only half full for Toronto and The Headpins. They had hits! They were played on the radio! They were playing on the weekend! Yet the floor was only half full of patrons. I didn’t care. One of them was Keith! We hung back, watched, talking as The Headpins took the stage, and then as Toronto walked on and Holy Woods asked us, “Is anyone out there high?” She paused for effect and cheers before declaring, “So am I!”

I expected more after my college years, but no one came to town, not often anyway. Johnny Cash did, but I had no interest then in the Man in Black. I did for Big Sugar! We bought tickets, but were surprised to discover they were playing at a little basement bar downtown. They had CDs!

The night came, I was having a couple in the early evening, still in the light of day. It was after 8 pm, the show was not due to start until about 10 pm. I was seated at the bar when I saw Gordie Johnson walk in with Dave Mcloughlin, a local disk jockey. I was star struck. I couldn’t wait for the show.
Skip forward, Big Sugar took the stage. The ceiling was low, the speakers brushing the ceiling. The bar was narrow, a natural funnel for sound. Small, tight, contained. Gordie was dressed in Hugo Boss, natty and neat, his tie cinched, his hair greased back. He waited for the whoops to die down as he strummed his ever so silent jet-black Paul, tuning it for what felt like forever. Then he clicked the pedal and a hum thrummed the narrow space.

He looked up. He surveyed the wall to wall to wall crowd, and said, “Let’s rock this place,” quietly into the mic. His pic raced across the strings, and I wished I’d brought earplugs.

He rocked! Sweat flicked off him like rain and song by song he pealed a layer off. Jacket, vest, tie. Sleeves were rolled up. Hair whipped across his eyes! I wished for a pit to crash in front of the stage, for anyone to be raised up to surf the crowd, but the attendees stood stock still, zombies lured by the amps.

So I was always up for something new, some new type of distraction to fill the void I knew was lurking inside me, rising up with increasing rage. I realized that I needed to get out of town. I needed some quiet pursuits that challenged my mind.

One day much later, in 1996, I was in my bank when I saw a stack of booklets. I picked one up and looked at the cover. The Stratford Festival. I’d heard of it, but I really didn’t know anything about it. So, I picked one up while waiting in line and leafed through the pages. Glossy photos gazed back up, filigreed script scrawled across the pictures. Shakespeare and such. Plays. I thought I might like that, so I asked the teller if I might take one with me. She said yes, so I did. I asked around. Was anyone interested in that sort of thing? I received blank stares in response.

I read about each play being performed, and noticing which plays were being performed on my upcoming week’s holiday in September, I picked up the phone and ordered tickets for Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” and Tennessee Williams’ “Sweet Bird of Youth.” I booked a hotel on the main drag, and when the time came, I drove the 10 hours to see my first theatrical plays.

I fell in love with Stratford. Bookstores, music stores, antiques and chocolatiers. Restaurants and pubs and coffee houses spilled out onto the wide sidewalks. There were manicured parks and statuary and gardens in one and all.

But as I pulled in, I saw people in suits. Suits? I panicked! I didn’t pack a suit.

I asked the front desk whether I needed one, wondering where the hell I was going to get one on such short notice. She told me not to worry, that no dress code was in effect.

After settling in, I walked up and down Ontario Street, browsing shops, buying little, taking in the ambiance. I found myself sitting out a thunderstorm in Balzac’s, as quick and furious as any I’d seen, inhaling a dream of dark roast within as sheets of rain blurred the thunderheads without.

Balzac’s, Bentley’s and the Boar’s Head became my haunts that week. And a remainders bookstore a few blocks down. Pazzo’s, Fellini’s, and the York Street Kitchen filled my belly.

Ever been? Maybe you should go. You might like it.

I found my way to the theatre to wait for Godot. I took my seat, my first of many.

I love Stratford. I’ve been going back for over 20 years now.

Black Water Diving

I’d always wanted to try scuba diving, having grown up watching Jacques Cousteau specials on TV. I finally had an opportunity while on holiday in Jamaica at the Hedonism resort. I was hooked straight off and wanted more but was unsure how to be fully and permanently certified. I was under no illusion that the one hour training I’d received at the resort was of any use, regardless how difficult it was. One of the things I had to do was to tread water while holding two five-pound weights above water for a full minute, otherwise it was a no-go. I passed. It wasn’t easy, and I was a strong swimmer. FYI: that treading water was a totally useless exercise.

I was pleased to discover “Blue Water Diving,” a PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) certified company, had returned to town that summer to further train all comers, and there were a lot of us, about 20 all told who signed up for the week-long course, the last of two sessions offered. I had to take a week’s vacation to do it, in the summer. I was lucky to get it, too. I was unable to sign up for the first session (the one Henri had signed up for), two others on my crew had booked it off, the max allowed off at any given time. So, if I were to fail, I’d have to wait until the next year to try again.

The first few days of instruction were held at the Sportsplex, fairly basic stuff, mainly classroom material and tests and a few introductory dives to get used to breathing through our regulators, clearing one’s mask, use of buoyance compensators and weights, regulator care and such. Once were had the basic theory down, and once we proved that we wouldn’t panic when underwater and could use our gear reasonably well, we moved on to the Lake, the Aunor Lake, specifically. It had a lot to recommend it. It was close to town. There was a road alongside it. It had an easy grade to begin with, and it was deep enough, yet still within 33 feet. Anything beyond that depth was reserved for the “advanced” class the next weekend at Greenwater Provincial Park in Cochrane.

Long story short, I passed the PADI diver and Open Water certifications and enrolled in the advanced course. If I were to dive in the Caribbean again I’d have to have my advanced or I’d have to take their course or not dive. And their courses were a joke. They took time otherwise spent diving, and were just a cash grab as far as I was concerned.

Advanced consisted of learning navigation skills, deep water decompression times, night diving, boat diving and rudimentary rescue. It was a packed weekend. I didn’t own a camper so I booked into a room at the Westway Motel. A lot of us did. There was a bar next door, so a few of us ended up there, none of us drinking much, none of us wanting to risk a hangover. Alcohol and diving don’t mix, unless you like narcosis and the bends.

What I recall most vividly of that weekend was the deep dive. There was a particularly deep hole in Blue Lake. It was over 100 feet deep and icy cold past the thermocline. I was waiting my turn to descend into the depths, floating on the surface above it, breathing through my snorkel to conserve my tank, gazing at the weighted line plunging into the black depth. Spotters hung suspended along its length in case we got in trouble.

Once the diver before me broke the surface I was given my cue. I approached the buoy, bled my BC dry and dropped like a stone down the line, my fingers lightly tracing its length. At first the water shimmered about me, the light still strong and dancing across my mask, my jet-black neoprene glove and the bright yellow of the nylon rope, but once I broke through the thermocline the light all but failed, the depths now a rusty tea, easily twenty degrees colder than the comparably tepid shallows. My face stung as I continued to the bottom.

I had a simple task to perform when I reached the bottom. I was to inflate my BC to correct my buoyancy and float weightless above the bottom, fish out the three stones I’d tucked up my thigh between my top and trousers, display the certain dexterity required to place them in a neat triangle, proof that I wasn’t narcing out. Once my task was complete, I was to give the thumbs up and repel back up the line at a rate slower than my exhaled bubbles could rise.

I dropped one of my stones. It’s not easy doing precision work with neoprene gloves on. Not able to complete my triangle of stones, I placed two, and then pointed three times at where the third ought to have been. The instructor nodded twice and gave me the thumbs up. I returned it, and inflated my BC a little to begin my accent. I wasn’t rising fast enough to my taste, so I added another burp of air, one that proved too much. I struggled to control my assent for a few moments, finally coming to a stop opposite one of the spotters.

Cold water invaded my suit, its ice invading one of my ear canals.

Vertigo took hold and spun me like a top. I felt like I was sitting on the edge of a propeller, going round and round. I reached out and held fast to the line, fighting the black out rushing down on me. I kept a steady eye on the spotter, telling myself that the world was not spinning. The spotter was stable, in one place, and so that meant that I too was upright and stable. The blackness closed in, I focused on my hands that were clamped on the yellow line. The black circle at the edge of my eyesight slowly backed off as the spotter inched forward to check me out.

He shrugged and made a made a circle of index and thumb, pointing at me. Are you okay, he was asking.

By then, the spinning propeller had come to a stop and I was. I gave him the okay signal back, then the thumbs up. Thumbs up does not mean okay, it means ascending to the surface.

My final ascent was slow and measured.

Vertigo and narcosis kept its distance.

I broke the surface, never so happy to see the glitter of sunlight dancing on the water’s surface.

Mining Games, Part 2

I’ve had more than a few brushes with death.

Most were rather quick and entirely uneventful. I’d expose my head to blasting chambers and doors to look up hung-up raises. I stood atop precarious perches, over open holes. I climbed into hung-up feeders to place sticks of powder between jammed rocks. We all did. It’s what we did to get the job done. There was little risk in most cases, but there was risk, sometimes great risk. In a word, we were lucky. Without a doubt, we were stupid to have done those things. But mostly we were lucky.

I was lucky when things did happen. I’m still here, after all. I’m still breathing. I still have all my wiggly bits. But I didn’t escape unscathed, either. I’ve had my injuries. I have my scars. I have my brushes with death to boast.

To be fair, our policies could have been better. But we didn’t know what we didn’t know. We learned from our brushes with death. Our procedures improved over time, our injury and accident rates plummeting with that hard-earned wisdom. Kidd was always safe compared to other mines. We were always winning awards. That doesn’t mean we were safe, though.

I worked overtop open holes a lot. I worked around conveyors. I worked with pressurized lines. I worked with a lot of heavy equipment.

I drove into open stopes to dump my load of cemented rockfill closer to edge. I witnessed a 4 inch drill bit break through mere meters from me while standing at the brow of a stope I was filling.

I was tasked with mucking out a 25 foot deep sump with a scoop that was too small for the task. The scoop slid back into the depths, the wheels spinning, leaving me just head and shoulders above the slime before I came to a halt.

I was once dumped from a bucket into a slurry filled sump of similar depth when I was trying to unplug a slurry pipe. I was easing off the Victalic clamp nuts when the pipe blew apart. I was half drenched. My partner was not. Exposed to the full force of the flow in the scooptram’s seat, he flinched and turned away from its force before thinking to drive away. His turning caused him to lean into the bucket joystick, dumping it and me with it. I hung on for dear life, but my fingers couldn’t hold. I fell, sinking to my waist in the cement slurry. Had I not cleaned up under the chute just before my partner arrived, pushing the muck into that very same sump, I’d have dropped into that sump without that lifesaving waste having filled it. I’d have dropped into a murky paste I could never have swum in. I’d have sunk like a stone.

My worst brush with death was while mucking. Backfill had been broken up, our number split into those who’d remain in Upper Mine, and those of us who filled stopes with mobile equipment joining Lower Mine. Our concerns for how different our job was to those others in production fell on deaf ears. Our needs were neglected; indeed, we were used as replacements for the muckers often, despite our skill sets being quite different. Frank, James and I were not muckers. We were more concerned with dropping a scoop into an open stope than with outrush of muck, a concern noted by our brass when a mucker sent to do our job had done just that.

Our Captain never learned though. He didn’t like having to develop two remote bays, one at the edge of the stope for backfilling, the other 17 meters back from the brow for mucking. We needed to be at the edge of an open stope below so that we could see the scoop when it entered the stope and rounded corners; muckers required a healthy distance back from the open stope above them (after the stope below had been filled and the one above had been blasted) to not be injured by flying muck. He decided to develop one in the middle, instead.

I did not see the danger when I was instructed to muck at one such.

I was mucking remote, standing atop the remote pad, the remote transmitter resting on my shoulders, the scoop ahead of me and at the brow. This was not one of the fortresses we construct now; this was just a flat metal box filled with concrete and set against the wall that I was to stand on. I was wrestling with big muck, more specifically, with an oversized slab that was blocking the brow. I was too close; I just didn’t know it. The chassis was directly in line with me, not a respectably safe distance away. So, when the slab shifted, sliding into the raised bucket, the weight of the slab caused the entire scoop to pivot on its front tires. The back end of the scoop rose up. It struck the back. I flinched, jerking the remote controls. The scoop bent, turning in the air, its balance shifting towards me. And that’s where the scoop fell. On me.

It struck the wall behind me, the chassis inches from my face. It also struck the remote control harness resting on my shoulders. The scoop drove me into the wall. The harness bent. I felt the tender weight of the harness and the transmitter and the scoop pressing into my chest.

I was deathly calm throughout all this, oddly. I wasn’t afraid at all. It was just something that was happening.

I blinked. I took a breath. I looked around. I was trapped. The scoop had corralled me into the wall, pinning me, holding me fast.

I turned to scoop off, and felt its final gasp shudder through me.

Once thought returned to me, I realized that the only way out of my predicament was to limbo under the scoop. I shimmied and swayed until I had slid and passed out from under its dripping, clotted, oily, greasy mass. Once free I climbed back up onto the scoop, kicked the transmitter out from its pressed bondage, and having straightened the harness back to a comfortable curve, I started the scoop again, drove it off the pad and back onto the ground.

Thirty minutes later, the shock left me. I soaked my coveralls with an icy sweat and shook for about five minutes.

I was right as rain after that.

Expectations

That first trip to Jamaica awakened the wanderlust that had always lurked just below the surface, one predicted long-ago by a self-described psychic girl on the northbound Northlander bus. “You love to travel,” she said, “or you will. I can always see these things. I’m psychic, that way.” I don’t believe she actually saw anything. Her prediction wasn’t much of a stretch. Most people like or want to travel. I think she was just flirting and making small-talk. More likely, she was just speaking her own heartfelt wish aloud; but she did unwittingly predict my future. I would never feel as free as when I had a backpack strapped across my shoulders, map in hand, dive bag at my feet.

I’d never really been anywhere on vacation until then. Sure, I’d been to Sudbury, and I’d been on that ball trip to Detroit (Windsor, actually) and Toronto, but I’d been to Sudbury and Toronto before, so that was like retracing my steps. Negril was uncharted territory. And I was going it alone. Did I enjoy it? You be the judge.

I basked in the sunshine. I drank Red Cap and Tequila Sunshine. I met people, most notably a couple guys from Michigan (one a gravedigger, the other a nuclear power plant engineer), and a couple girls from Sacramento, California, one who professed to have fallen in love with me by week’s end. It’s easy to fall in “love” while on vacation, I imagine, and I’m all for love at first sight, but I have my doubts whether Becky ever really saw the real me, rather seeing what she’d projected onto me. I was flattered, but I didn’t believe it for a minute. Infatuation and lust were far more likely than love. She even went so far as to ask me to move to California, which surprised me. Tolerating one another in the real world would prove more challenging were I to have chased down that temptation, considering how little we knew one another in so short a time. Hedonism could never be a proper testing ground for what might be.

To begin at the beginning, I met those four on the first night while we were being inducted with 100 proof rum drinks that could ignite nose hairs. There were games played, Simon says for one, and others like dancing and freezing in place when the music stopped, sort of like musical chairs, but in this case, if you moved when you were supposed to be frozen (no easy feat when saturated with rum), you were eliminated. I was eliminated. Other games were far more Hedonistic. All males were to face the walls in a circle, the girls to critique our buns. The girls were instructed to test us in any way they saw fit. Before I knew it, I was all but disrobed, a succession of hands kneading me front and back. Oh, you’ve never heard of Hedonism? Neither had I. That fun and games night was a surprising introduction. All I can say is that, drenched in rum, I stood it in stride. Did I win? No. I was a little surprised to make the top five, though. I think Becky might have had something to do with that.

Once I dried out, I was adamant that I’d try scuba diving. I enrolled in their one-day course, a far more inclusive one than others I’d heard tales of, and was fitted for gear. It was serviceable, but it had seen some wear. The days were grey, both to train and to dive. But even so, once I hit the water and learned how to glide effortlessly, seemingly weightless, embraced by the sea, shrouded by fish, I was hooked. I also required medical attention. Nothing serious: softened wax impacted my ear drum while diving, leaving me deaf on my right. My equilibrium was lost. I could barely walk, so Becky was thrilled when I asked her to guide me. She stayed close, she fetched my drinks. What can I say? I luxuriated in the largesse while it lasted. It ended all too soon. The resort doctor flushed both my ears for good measure and I was right as rain again.

The week with Becky passed quickly. We marvelled at the audacity of the Turtles, a swingers club sharing our time on the resort, a little surprised when another couple succumbed to the temptation of the open air and the stars in the late-night hot tub mere feet from us. We took in the sunset each evening, took catamaran cruises to sunset cafes, browsed craft markets where she tried and failed to teach me to haggle, we went on bike rides. I forgot my SPF and paid the price. I burned a little. A nurse, she revelled in the opportunity to care for me, applying aloe and SPF and clucking at my foolishness. She shared my cigarettes, and stole more than a few of my lit ones, giggling at the sideways glances I gave her when she did.

I’ve no doubt she saw something in me that moved her, but California was a long way off, and at the time, Sacramento seemed a desperate gamble. What would I do there? I looked into it, but abandoned the idea when I realized that Sacramento was a government town with mining well buried in its past. I was too pragmatic to travel a road where a person was the only destination.

When she’d gone, I was a little out of sorts. My constant companion had left a void in her wake. Then the Michigan guys left the very next day and I found myself alone. I brushed up against other people, but it wasn’t quite the same. None clicked as well as those first four had, she foremost.

But it was also exactly the same. I discovered that there was a weekly cycle. Mondays had the same dance troupe, Tuesdays the same jugglers, Wednesdays the same trapeze artists, and so on. I grew bored. I drank too much. Drifted. And before long, I was done and wanted to go home.

It was as eventful as any resort vacation might be, maybe more so. I had nothing to compare it to at the time, and little to compare it to afterwards.

I went on only one other resort vacation after that, one that would transform me far more than this one had.

Stir It Up

That little trip to Sudbury had been fun, but it only served to whet my appetite for more.

Before long, Garry Martin was gone, and only Neil Petersen and Henri Guenette were left to me. I’d made no lasting friends at the Mine, and those guys I had begun to hang out with at Casey’s were sad, tired, boring young old men who were waiting for their turn to die. God help me, I realized that was becoming one of them. The difference between me and them is that I knew it, and I had every intention of ensuring that didn’t happen. I would not waste away in Timmins on a barstool. So, I began planning my next escape.

I asked Neil and Henri individually. They were only slightly acquainted, so it was an opportunity for them to become more so, in my view. Neil declined. No money. I couldn’t argue with that. Henri was all in this time. That was encouraging, but I wasn’t holding my breath, just yet. I’d heard that level of enthusiasm on the subject before.

The day came that we were to book the trip. We’d decided after some deliberation on Jamaica. I called Henri, asking if he wanted me to pick him up. He told me that he would drive. I waited with anticipation. This time, it was actually going to happen.

Henri pulled up, and I was out the door in a flash. I was excited and chatting endlessly. Henri was not.

He spoke up after a time, when we were on the outskirts of downtown. “I can’t go,” he said.

There it was, the expected hammer blow. “What?” I asked. “Why not?”

“Because I’m getting married,” he said.

Wow, I thought. Married. I wasn’t expecting that.

“Congratulations,” I said, trying to stir up some enthusiasm about his declaration, all the while wondering about the state of the trip I was until then stoked about. “When’s the lucky day?” I asked, not sure what else to say.

“In two and a half years,” he said.

Two and a half years? I was confused. I was bewildered. Then I felt a black rage rise up in me.

“Wow,” I said. I had just then come to the realization that I was not anyone else’s number one choice, that I would always come second. Were I to ever do something, I’d have to do it myself. I’d just come to the realization that I’d become a loner and would be one evermore.

“So, you see why I can’t go,” he said. “I’ve got to save up for the ceremony and the honeymoon.”
I was thinking about how I had waited four or five years to go on a trip with my friends, listening to them beg off, watching them leave town, and I made up my mind that if I were to wait on someone else to do anything with me, I’d die a bitter old man who’d never gone anywhere except to a bar and a barstool. I made up my mind that I’d never wait for anyone, or to rely on anyone else, ever again.

“Do you want to go for coffee?” he asked.

“Drop me at the travel agency,” I said.

“What?” he said.

I repeated what I said.

“You’re going to go without me?”

“Well I’m not going to go on your honeymoon with you, am I?” I said. Did all this play out the way I’ve said. Maybe. Probably. I have a vague memory of these phrases. It’s a largely emotional memory, and memory can be painted by anger and rage.

He dropped me off downtown. I walked in alone. I sat with the travel agent, and she asked if we should wait for my friend.

I told her I’d be going alone. She processed that, said, okay, and set about asking me where I’d like to go, what I expected out of the vacation. I said, anywhere singles go. I wanted to go somewhere where I’ll meet people, and that I wanted to party.

She booked me into Hedonism II. I had no clue about what sort of resort it was, I only knew what she told me. That it was an all-inclusive, adults only Superclub, that it was party oriented. She told me that as I’d be going by myself, I’d have to pay a single supplement, and she explained how much extra that would cost me. I paid my money, collected my tickets and vouchers and made my way to the airport when the day came.

I was nervous. I’d never been on a plane before. Oddly, I’d been in a helicopter, but never a plane. The flights went well, despite my experiencing turbulence for the first time, as well. Montego Bay drew closer, and I saw palm trees for the first time. I felt tropical heat for the first time. I was set upon by Red Caps for the first time. Everyone was eager to move my luggage two feet for 20 American dollars. I escaped with my wallet intact, found my shuttle bus, and was offered a cold Red Cap by the driver. “It’s free,” he said, after my telling him there was no way I was going to pay 20 American dollars for a beer.

Once the rest of our fellow Hedonistic passengers were herded in and collected, we were on our way. I shared a couple more beers and chatted with them on the way, never to have anything to do with them ever again once we arrived. I spied palm trees and poverty whisk past on our way to the highway, remembering how everyone had told me how beautiful Jamaica had been when they’d been there. They never mentioned the garbage shanties, the junkers, or the emaciated cows tied to trees, the overabundance of exhaust hanging in the air. Or the near death experience the Jamaican roads turned out to be.

We pulled into the resort, opulent in comparison with what I’d seen on the ride there. But there was wear at the corners, the tiles sun-bleached and scuffed. I wondered how many thousands of feet had shuffled up to the front desk before me since its last reno, how may bags had rubbed and rested up against the corners and pillars.

I signed in, showed my ID, my vouchers, my credit card, and was given a map that laid out the resort for me, a neat circle where my room was in relation to this and that. The staff bid me welcome, the maintenance staff went one further, whispering to me that should I like to party, they had the means, if I were so inclined. I expected that said means was likely to come to about 20 American dollars and might be a little Rastafarian in nature.

I found my room, opened the door with my key, and wrestled my bags inside. The room was dim and woody, the colours vividly ‘80s dark. The upholstery brown, orange and gold, as was the bed. A little musty from the humidity.

I stood by the door for a few seconds taking in the ambiance. There was a mirror above the bed, a mirror where a headboard ought to have been. A mirror lined the wall across from the bed, reflecting the other endlessly if you set yourself just so.

I dropped what bags I still carried. And laughed. I laughed so hard I bent double and crouched, my arms folded and resting on my knees.

I don’t think I’d ever seen anything so tacky in my life.

For the next two weeks, I was in pornland.

Mining Games

One collects stories after so many years of doing anything. Working underground is no exception. Some are funny. Some are not.

My first brush with industrial death was while still at school. It was a distant brush, but it affected me, just the same. A friend of my future ex-brother-in-law (Marc), Ingo Budwig had died the summer before I arrived in Haileybury. He’d done a foolish thing; he’d walked out onto a hung-up bin. It let go while he was atop it, and when it dropped, he was sucked into the muck and crushed. Death of those my age was rare to me then. Any death was a shock.

I experienced my first fatality at Kidd, my first year there. That’s not to say that I witnessed it. Nobody did. I didn’t know the man, not personally; but I knew him to see him, having done just that at the beginning of the shift, while waiting for the cage. He was a mucker, working alone, as all muckers did. Mid-way through the shift, he clipped the level tag board on the tri-pillar on 1600 Level, pulling it from the wall. The tag board bounced off the scooptram’s front tire and flipped, driving one of the four rebar anchors through his chest. He died instantly. It sounds gruesome. It probably was for the man who found him. It was gruesome enough to me, and I hadn’t seen anything.

I found out when the Mine decided to send the workforce home early. They stenched the mine, the quickest way to get our attention, and once we made our way to surface, and after a headcount, told us what happened and sent us home. They thought it prudent to; had we stayed, word would have spread regardless how tight a lid they’d have tried to keep on it. Bad news has a way of doing that, getting out, and once it was out, we’d have all been distracted, inviting more accidents. I definitely was.

Looking back, I realize that taking chances and accepting risk was routine. We exposed ourselves to danger as a matter of course, sometimes not even aware of how much danger we were in.

We built bulkheads inches from the brow. We straddled open holes without a safety harness or a means of rescue. Indeed, I used to reverse my belt, bringing the D-ring to my front, and trusting in just that, would climb out into an open-stope, a 100 foot drop beneath me, to do pipework. We used to climb into hung-up raises, hung-up feeders, wander within the exposed risk of outflow.

Fern Carriere and I were blasting a hang-up on 2200. The prior shift had been at it all shift, to no effect. Fern decided that a bag of AMEX ought to do the trick, so we tied a stick of powder with B-line had stuck it in the bag. We hauled the bag up the muckpile to the gap between the brow and the slope, and stuck it in. Almost stuck it in. To have actually placed the bag in the raise would have meant that we’d have had to climb right into the raise. We were disinclined to do that. We shouldn’t have done what we had, either; we were as exposed to the same danger at the brow as we’d have been had we actually climbed into the raise. Had the hang-up come down while we were there, we would have been killed, just the same; we knew that while we were doing it, too, not thinking that if we’d have refused to expose ourselves and demanding a safer way to do the job, our brass would have had to do just that, leaping our safety programs ahead by a decade just then. That said, we did what we did, we pushed it, we shoved it, and even tried to throw it, but we couldn’t get the bag past the brow.

Fern cursed and said, “I guess that’ll have to do.”

So, we slid back down the slope and unrolled a roll of lead wire. It wasn’t long enough to get us safely around the corner into the ore pass access, leaving us exposed in the 01 DR, only to discover that we didn’t have a battery to set off the blast. We didn’t think to bring one. The prior crew had been blasting all shift, after all. We set about looking for theirs, but couldn’t find it. That meant we’d have to blast using one of our cap lamps. We decided on mine. That decided, we went back to the waste pass, tied on the electric blasting cap, and retreated to our blasting “station.” I exposed the shunts. Fern prepped the lead wire.

Before touching the wires to my cap lamp, he asked me, “Ready?”

I nodded and said, “Give ‘er.”

He touched the wires to the shunts.

We heard a vacuous, hollow thump. The air in the drift shifted, drawn back towards the pass. Then the full force of the blast funnelled down the drift to us. It picked us up off our feet and laid us flat. My hard cap flew down the drift, bouncing some ways away, coming to a rest in a murky puddle.

Still stunned, we sat up. I put my lamp back together and spun about, looking for my hat. I felt naked without it.

“Phew,” Fern whistled. “That was close.”

Much later, Frank Chiera and I were tasked with unplugging a slurry line. The shift prior had failed to do so. Frank and I arrived, surveyed the scene, and followed the pipes up-level until we saw where the pipe was apart. We ordered a flush from surface and after about 15 minutes watched as it decanted from the open line. We decided the line was good. We thought the prior shift had actually unplugged the line at the end of their shift and had not known it. We ought to have put a hose in the pipe and watched the water decant to the level below us, but we didn’t. We reattached the pipe and called for a batch of cement, waiting for James to call us from levels below us, informing us that he received it. We received no such call. We called him to confirm that he didn’t get it. We called Dan Lehoux, our slurry-man to confirm that he’d sent it, and at what time. Referring to our watches, we noted that the batch ought to have passed us, so we walked back in to check the pipe. We found the pipe askew, the clamp barely clinging to the edges.

“Wow,” I said, my nose inches from the clamp, “the pipe almost blew.”

That’s when it did. The ends separated from the clam, the laden, pressurized pipe rose up, narrowly missing my head, and the slurry blew out, hitting me in the chest. It knocked the breath out of me, flinging me backwards like a rag-doll, my flung body barely missing the scoop parked just behind me. I spun and rolled, unable to see when I came to a stop.

I gasped, catching my breath. Everything was murky, brownish black. I spit the slurry from my mouth.
“Frank!” I called.

“What?” he called back.

“Frank, I can’t see!”

He laughed. I thought, you fucker! I’m blind and all you can do is laugh at me!

“Take off your glasses,” he said.

Oh crap, I thought, feeling disoriented and stupid. I reached up and found them still on my face. I took them off, wiped my face, my eyes. I blinked hard, my vision clearing. My glasses were covered with slurry. That would explain why I couldn’t see.

Yes, I’ve had closer brushes with death than those.

Settling In

Routine is a hard habit to break. Inertia exerted its pressure and I settled back into my weekly cycle. And why wouldn’t I? Reprieves from the barstool were not the usual, they were holidays, and holidays were breaks from the routine, and Casey’s was fun. A lot of people went to Casey’s on the weekends, not all of them regulars. We drank, we danced, we flirted. We did what all people in their 20s did. We tried to find our way in an indifferent world.

I was always astonished how many new faces arrived each weekend, never to be seen again. What did they do weekends, I wondered. Camping? Cottages? I had my doubts that they were their own. Who could afford a house, let alone a cottage, at 12% interest? My guess was they crashed at their parent’s camps.

Thankfully there were regulars, familiar faces who I could count on to arrive each weekend at the same time, like clockwork. One such was Louise. Lou was an Asian woman, manager at Thrifties in the Square. One weekend I asked Lou to dance. The next I asked again, asking her to stick around for the slow dance that followed. Small talk followed. I loved the way her eyes crinkled up when she smiled, the way her cheeks glowed when she laughed. I found myself watching the door for her to arrive. I’d gather myself to approach her. I was encouraged when she was genuinely happy to see me. We had a lot in common, old movies, new music, a sense of humour that slid precariously to the edge of the gutter after a few drinks. She loved to travel. Even her mention of trips to Toronto to visit family and cruise Spadina for deals lit up her eyes. I began to wonder if I’d found “the one.”

But I was slow, lingered too long, pondered her having a daughter for too long before discovering that she’d begun seeing someone. He knew what I was straight off upon introduction, competition. That much was clear by his composure. Did Lou know that I was smitten with her? I don’t know. Had she known, I wish she’d have given that sad lonely soul a little time, or a little nudge in the right direction. Personally, I wish she’d have taken the bull by the horns and made the first move had she been interested. She must have known; I browsed endlessly in her store, bought shirts I did not need, found every opportunity to talk with her. More likely she wasn’t interested. The winner of that short sprint was tall, blond, broader in the chest. I thought him a dullard. But I was jealous, so I suppose he wasn’t. And before too long Lou was gone.

I sat at the bar, ball cap pulled low and brooded for a time. Until Lena Malley sat beside me one day and asked me what was wrong. She was waiting for her husband who was working afternoons at the college and due to arrive later. She’d seen that sad lonely boy at the bar a few times and took it upon herself to see what made him tick.

Dawson and Lena became a fixture in my life for a while. And through them, others entered my sphere. They introduced me to Jim Mikelait and Geri-Anne Spaza.

Jim and Geri were fringe. Jim was punk, decked out in long hair, muscle-shirts, and shredded jeans long before they were fashionable. He played in a band, a post-punk metal affair with Darrell Pilon. He had a recording studio in his basement.

Geri had a touch of Goth about her, favouring a wraith-like white base, edged in black. I liked them, straight off. They were artsy. They prescribed to views the techy set never dreamed of.
Who else floated past my sphere?

A hard drinking, carefree sort who took life with a dash of laissez-faire. Some had dreams and ambition, most, like me were making our way from day to day, camping out on a road to nowhere, digging out from debt (not me thankfully), making scratch, groping for a future, pontificating about the death of postmodernism, the collapse of Communism, and the unsustainability of unfettered capitalism. We railed against the rape of the environment, discussed an emerging Canada, and if we Gen-X had a place in it. Here we are; entertain us! We were all terribly interesting.

We wore black and plaid, Doc Martins, jean jackets, leather, and tweed, long overcoats. Serengeti, Ray Bans, ball caps (I’d taken to wearing a Tigers ball cap, by then (D for David, and all that), once I’d discovered my tender scalp could burn in the summer and freeze in the winter through that increasingly thin net of hair). There was a lot of denim. We smoked too much.

Who were we?

Kevin Kool, Brian Polk.

Dave Payne, Andrew Warren, Terry Laraman, Jeff O’Reilly and Walter Hohman.

Janice Kaufman, Cathy Walli, Fran Cassidy.

The Casey’s crowd, most bartenders, disk-jockeys.

Most were educated. I mean post-secondary. Most dabbled in the same brush with intellectualism as I was, mainly literature. I’d begun to read less crap, immersing myself in the “I am Canadian” movement that was sweeping our age-set then. We were all about embracing our Canadian heritage, reading Atwood, Cohen, and Ondaatje, immersing ourselves in our homegrown bands: Lowest of the Low, Moist, The Weakerthans. The Hip, the Tea Party, Our Lady Peace.

The Blue Jays got better and better, sweeping the nation.

Janice left to become a cop.

Fran began seeing Mike Reid.

My sister began dating Andy Leblanc.

My nephews were just beginning their own journeys.

The Jays won the pennant, the Jays won the World Series, the Jays won another.

Where was I?

I was happy. I was miserable. I was busy. I was stagnant. My weeks were spent alone in a dark hole none of them would ever know. 1 Mine Backfill and 2 Mine Backfill became one. I spent more and more time deeper and deeper. I chased the carrot of advancement, gaining more and more licenses until I had more than those two codes above me, with still little to put on a resume. Years had passed and I was still code 4.

I was straddling disparate worlds, wondering where I fit it, and finding myself failing at fitting in anywhere at all. I was younger than anyone I worked with. They were married. I was not. They were French. I was not. I worked alone most of the time, and thus hadn’t spent years bonding with my crewmates, or anyone else for that matter. I worked shiftwork. My friends and acquaintances did not. That made it impossible for me to hang out two out of three weeks at a time, excluding weekends.

Sometimes they showed up. Sometimes they didn’t. When they didn’t I never knew why. I suspect they didn’t contact me because they didn’t know when I was working, expecting that I might be asleep. For whatever their reasons, they didn’t call me, always leaving that task to me, oblivious to how that felt about that, how I was always the one who had to contact them, to see what was going on. So, if I didn’t call them, I never heard from them, ever. They never dropped by. And in time, they began making plans without me.

A black rage was seething within me. It was beginning to boil up. I was looking at my friends who shared my weekend nights, but not my weeks. I loved them. I hated them. I wanted to scream FUCK YOU to them and to the world as a whole.

I wanted to buy a backpack and discover the world.

I wanted to leave it all behind.

I wanted to run away.

A Taste of Possibility

Did I escape that barstool at Casey’s? What do you think? I live in Northern Ontario. I had no girlfriend, and few ways to meet women. Those friends I did have were either married, with married friends, or hooked up, shacked up, or engaged and either not inclined to introducing me to anyone, or I didn’t cross their minds. I was not a priority for any of my friends. I received few to no phone calls, and fewer invitations. I am not exaggerating. I phoned others to make plans. Were I not to, I would never be included. I know this for a fact because I tested that theory.

I had a long-standing habit that was carried over from my days at the Empire: I would arrive at about 8 pm. To arrive after 9 pm meant a lengthy wait outside. There was no such requirement at Casey’s. Casey’s was enormous by comparison. Were I to walk in through the door at 10:30 pm, I’d still get a table or a seat at the bar. But, as no one ever called me to make plans, I’d preen myself and walk there, arriving at 8 pm. I’ve always been a stickler for routine and punctuality. It must be the miner in me. Not true. I’ve always been that way.

Arriving that early had its perks. I knew the staff by name and they knew me. That made getting service quick and easy. And arriving at 8 pm promptly meant that I had a cold beer waiting for me at my usual seat, where I was in short order met by other sad lonely young men, living out their lives in the same manner that I was. Let’s be clear; I was not/am not an alcoholic, and never have been an alcoholic. I’ve never once craved a drink of any kind. Working underground, I certainly never drank during the week.
I made that mistake once. Hangovers are a gruesome, noisome affair underground. The atmosphere is only about 19% oxygen down there, so any ill effects of drinking are felt ten-fold. This is not to say that there are no alcoholics working underground. I’ve a theory that every crew had/has at least 2 functioning alcoholics. How they endure that environment is anyone’s guess, but anyone who hasn’t fallen down that slippery slope will tell you the same thing: you only make the mistake of going underground hungover once. I experienced my misery when I was a student and have never made that mistake again.

Those early Casey’s mates were of a similar sort, in their 30s or 40s and never married. A couple may have been divorced. They had no kids. They worked for a living and lived for work. They remembered their party years fondly, eager to tell me their tales of the 1970s and early 1980s as though they were only yesterday. They spoke on what happened to them at work, usually bitter tales of wrongs done them, and bosses too stupid for description. But that’s where their tales ended. They had no stories of girlfriends, of trips taken. I suspected they were gay, although they would never have admitted to it. I don’t judge, but Timmins was not what I’d call enlightened in the ‘90s. After a time, they bored me. And soon after that I was looking for other younger friends and wingmen. If I were to meet girls, I decided that I had better not hang out with potentially gay men, ten or so years older than me, who never spoke of or to women.

One day Manon began chatting me up. She was a waitress, French, a few years older, but not so old as to turn me off. She was cute, too. But very French. She did not understand English like a native speaker; indeed, she spoke English like it was a foreign language. But she was showing an interest in me, surprising as that was to me; that, in itself, bought her more than a few brownie points. I’d tried breaking the ice with a few of the girls working at Casey’s but none had been that interested in me or my views beyond what I was drinking and how often, as quick service meant more tips. I’d heard myself called hun, but those girls who called guys hun call everyone hun, invariably in what I’ve always referred to as the “secretary voice.” You know what I mean, that fake interest and enthusiasm of someone who really couldn’t give a shit about you or what you’d like. I’d also seen my fair share of the “service smile,” that paste that reaches up to and never includes the eyes. You know, a smile devoid of humour.

Manon had none of these. Manon was actually interested. Manon made a point of sitting with me on her breaks, her smile reaching up to and including her eyes.

But Manon was also a troubled girl. She told me about how she’d grown up on a farm, of how simple her mother was. She told me how she hadn’t been exposed to much growing up, and how that had made her simple too.

I told her not to sell herself short. She had, after all, learned to speak English, however haltingly, a feat that had outstripped my ability to speak French. Once I said that, she took it upon herself to teach me; not an easy task, giving how little time we had to speak to one another and my being belly to a bar.
Unfortunately, I worked weeks and Manon worked weekends. And Manon worked until all hours, never wrapping up until 3 am or 4 am. I’d long since staggered home by that hour. On Saturday nights I’d taken to going home earlier once I discovered the Twilight Zone was playing. I loved the Twilight Zone. I still do. It’s not like I was doing anything at Casey’s, other than drowning my sorrows, anyway.
One day Manon asked me out for coffee. I accepted, despite how difficult our conversations could be. We met, spent an hour or so together, and she walked most of the way home with me, despite it being out of her way. We even kissed.

She didn’t show up for work that weekend. I asked after her, but all I was told was that she was sick.
She was at Casey’s the next, so I asked her how she was feeling. She seemed a little perplexed. Realization lit her eyes after a moment. She told me than that she’d had a spell and was admitted to the psych ward for observation for taking a fistful of pills. She told me that she was supposed to take her pills every day, but she didn’t like the way they made her feel, so she didn’t take them. Then she had her spell, she said, and took too many. It was nothing, really, she said.

I didn’t know what to say. She became concerned. I tried to set her at ease, but I was having difficulty processing what she’d said. I don’t think my reaction to her assertion that it was all alright set her at ease. She had to go back to work just then, so she asked if we could talk again later. I agreed, but we never did.

In fact, we never spoke again.

I learned that Manon had another relapse. I not sure about the details, but I think she cut herself and had been hospitalized again. She stayed the minimally mandated time required for a psychiatric evaluation and was again released. Repeat customers learn what to say to the expected questions. I was sad. I tried to hurt myself. I’m okay now. I feel better. I don’t want to hurt myself, anymore. It’s not like they could commit her, could they? Maybe they could, but they didn’t.
They should have.

She committed suicide a couple days later.

I still cry when I think of her.