Mining Games, Part 5

I’ve probably never been happier than when I was in Oreflow. Granted, that doesn’t mean that I was always happy with what boss we had, that I did not have rough patches; it means that I was more content and enjoyed what I was doing more than I ever had before. There was advancement. There were code increases, there was more money. There were twelve-hour shifts, as well. I could have done without them.

It did take a couple years to get over the anger I harboured from past years. Those of us on Capital Development suspected that we were being harassed out of a job; that takes some getting over. And for years prior, I had been chasing the unattainable carrot of Code 5, even though I was doing the expectations of that Code, and more.

Things changed when I approached one of my shifters.

“Joe,” I said, a little nervous, “what can I do to help you help me get my code?”

Joe paused, and then said, “What do you got and what do you need?”

That set the wheels in motion. I needed to get my cage and crusher licenses, for 2 Mine specifically. I already had the 3 Mine equivalents. My shifts were busy after that, first with training, then with gaining the hours I needed to “prove” that I was a competent operator. All that remained was for me to get my cutting license, and I got that in short order. I discovered there was a proper way to refuse work that sped up the process of getting what training I needed. I would never say that I couldn’t do the job because I wasn’t trained; I said that I’d love to do that for them, but I didn’t have the license, and could you line me up for the training, please? Mutual back scratching required follow-up, though. Once I had the training, I didn’t have a reason to not to get the job done. So, I got the job done; and in time I began to be a “go-to” man. “I need you to do something for me.” “Sure thing,” I’d say, so long as it wasn’t against the law or company policy.

Then Joe left, and so did my superintendent, Wayne. And I had to start the process all over again. And unfortunately, my supervisor while in Capital Development was my new Captain, and he “lost” my code application. Months past.

Long story short, I went to see HR and they made it happen. My Captain was running by the end of the day to get my “new” application signed. He left, much like many of our bosses did, and for a while, we had a continuous turnover of shift bosses.

We never seemed to have enough crew mates, though. When I was a student, four people were required to operate the crusher: the Leader (who operated the system), the Spare (who was supposedly in training to replace the leader, but usually kept the muck flowing through the chains), the ore pass man (who kept the muck flowing through the passes, transferring the required ore types from C and A passes to the crusher feed), and the picking belt man (who moved the shuttle from bin to bin, and pilled scrap metal from the muck before it fell into the bins), code 6,5,4,and 3, respectively. When I worked there, there was only three, one of us acting as both the ore pass man and the spare. He could be gone a lot, necessitating the operator to bound up and down the steps from the pass to the operator’s booth, keeping a close eye on bin levels and pass levels, ensuring that there were few, if any, delays for either the Kiruna Pass, that fed the crusher passes, or the skips below. Delays cost no less than ten thousand dollars an hour. It was quite a balancing act.

We’d begin. I’d note what the skip ore bin levels were at, start the conveyor belts and the crusher, then open the gate for the pass we were pulling. If the ore did not hang up, life was good. If it did, the spare undercut the ore with either a blowpipe or a water hose. If neither worked, we had to blast. If he had to leave to take care of a hang up on 4600, I was alone for as long as he was gone. I’d open the gate, rush up the flight of stairs to the pass and wash the hang-up down, then slide back down the hand rails to the crusher to close the gate before the crusher bin was over full and hung it up. Repeat with each bowl full.
If the spare could not get the hang-up down on 4600, we’d have to shut down, take the cage up and blast. Repeat. Be quick. The Kiruna ramp had best not be idle. Therein lay the potential loss of ten thousand dollars an hour.

When our bins were full, we cleaned up. When we’d pulled the Kiruna ramp low, we cleaned up. We cut up scrap, placed it in rail cars, and pushed them to the station, calling the cage tender to come get them and bring us empty ones if we needed them.

The cage tender had to do two jobs, too. There was no yard man, anymore, not on night shift or weekends, so the cage tender had to collect the materials for transport underground and keep an ear out for shaft bells, in case there was an emergency. He had to troubleshoot the skips, he had to pick up full scrap bins and bring them to surface, returning the empty ones. All this had to be done between advertised cage times. You were never excused from doing those. Should you miss one, warning slips awaited.

It sounds busy, and it was; but keeping busy made long shifts short. And keeping busy and getting the job done made me a go-to man, and before long I was asked to be a hoist man, and in time, the spare shift boss.

Twelve-hour shifts were rough, though. I found it impossible to get enough sleep on night shift; and that began to creep into day shift, too.

But all in all, things were good; things were looking up.

At least until I feel asleep at the wheel and wrapped my Jimmy around a telephone pole.

Mining Games, Part 4

Two years after the Mine had broken up my crew, dividing it between Upper Mine and Lower Mine Production, I was ready for a change.

I was stuck at Code 4 and nothing I did seemed to change that. I had to chase after my boss to get the temporary codes due me paid to me; without them, I could not prove that I was worthy of the code increase and the raise that came with it. I found myself working side by side with people who were less trained than I was, who made more money than I did. And I was leading them. I’d had enough.
I saw a posting for people to apply to Oreflow. I knew people who’d already transferred to Oreflow years before and they were Code 6 now while I was still the same code I was when they had transferred. I filled out the transfer application. I even approached my partner, James, and said, “Come with me. We’re stuck. We’ll never get a raise if we stay where we are.”

“Why?” he asked. “I love backfill. You always get a vehicle; and no one ever bothers you.” (Untrue, we were always harassed about our inability to keep up with mucking, a physical impossibility, if you understand what the jobs entailed.)

James did not apply, no matter how much I reasoned with him. James was content where he was. James was never the ambitious sort.

But I applied. And I was accepted. And I began my training, doing some of the same jobs I did as a student, picking belt and clean-up. I began training as cage tender for 3 Shaft.

Things were good. Things were looking up. I bought a house.

Then the bottom fell out from under me. The commodity market was in the toilet, copper and zinc prices plummeted, and there was serious discussion about layoffs. The Mine decided to lay off contractors instead, opting to transfer those employees with the lowest seniority on each crew to Capital Development. I’d only been in Oreflow for three months, so that would be me. We were informed once we got there that we were lucky, that the mine had seriously considered laying us off but had decided on this course of action instead; but they also said that if the market did not improve that we would probably be the first to be let go.

My first shift on my new crew I discovered a note that Bev had put in my lunch pail: “I love you very much," It said, "I hope you have a good day on your new crew.” I almost wept.

I found myself driving a 30-ton truck up and down the ramp, hauling waste from capital development headings to fill stopes, essentially doing what I’d been doing for years, except not having to order slurry cement from surface. What was different was that we were driven like slaves, called the one-foot-out-the-door-crew, harassed by our supervisors and captains who had until recently been contract bosses. We were subjected to countless time-studies to prove that we were slacking, informed that we were not to use travel time and any other reasonable delays, like fuelling, as proper delays in a shift. Their expectations were unreasonable, if not impossible.

I could not believe my ears. My crewmates and I discussed our predicament and came to the conclusion that the Mine was trying to kill us or force us to quit, whichever came first. I dubbed my department “Capital Punishment.” I still call it that, even after all these years.

I got mad. We all did. We rebelled. We called the Ministry of Labour to complain that there was not enough ventilation in the down ramp, that the air was blue, that it burned our eyes and that we were suffocating. Our bosses threatened us. Had we been contractors they would have fired us on the spot; so said the contractors who worked with us. The Ministry investigated and found that there was about 80 cubic meters of equipment trying to inhale 2 cubic meters of airflow and it shut the down ramp down until the airflow could be rectified. That’s when the time studies began, people gathering data on how long it took to load us, how long it took for us to travel a length of ramp. We began noting all company policy delays we incurred. Our supervisors and captains told us that those delays did not apply to us. We complained to the Ministry. They agreed that we were to follow company policy and the Mining Act in the pursuit of our work. I could go on.

Then I had an injury. The ramp was rough. We all knew it. We’d complained about the lack of roadbed material many times, but the much-needed crushed rock failed to materialize. It was so rough in spots that I had to stand up when driving down ramp. But one can be distracted. One can lose one’s bearings as to where one might be from time to time. Boredom can do that. I drove over a rough patch while driving through a blind bend. The truck bounced, the truck leaped, my seat tossed me out of it and when I fell back into it, I landed so hard that I bottomed out. I blast of pain hit me, sending sparks from my pelvis to my teeth and toes. I saw stars. Tears rushed from my tightly pressed lids.

I was careful after that. I stood up from my seat, my knees bent to absorb the impact of each and every bump and hole. And I went up early to report the back pain to the nurse.

A month later, I was driving the same 30-ton truck down ramp again when I was forced to exit the ramp into a re-muck (a side alcove) to allow a Toyota pick-up to pass. My back had just begun to heal. It was still tender, but the daily chronic pain was subsiding. I drove over a piece of loose (rock on the ground). When the truck slipped off it my seat bottomed out again. The prior pain was dwarfed by what followed. I nearly passed out. I reported the incident again, and found that I could not move the next day. I made it to my doctor, who assessed me, prescribed Tylenol 3s and anti-inflammatory, suggesting that if my back did not improve, I might require surgery.

The Mine challenged my injury. The Ministry denied their challenge.

Bev had her own injury at exactly the same time. She fell down the stairs at work, giving herself a bruise from hip to knee. Her office did not challenge her injury. But we both did hobble about like arthritic octogenarians for a couple weeks, neither able to care for the other.

Seven months after I began with Capital Punishment, I had enough. I was angry. I was furious. I was depressed. I decided to quit. But I was going to make my bosses lives a living hell first. I complained daily to the Safety Department about infractions. I brought a list of complaints about a meter long to the next crew meeting. I called the Ministry to enquire about harassment charges and what I needed to do to pursue them.

A month later, my prior superintendent in Oreflow, Wayne David, approached me at my wicket and asked me if I’d like to come back to Oreflow. Coincidence? I don’t know. I didn’t care.

I could have dropped to my knees and kissed his feet.

Mining Games, Part 3, The Co-ed Edition

We didn’t have students in Backfill until Kidd began hiring girls specifically to work underground. The boys were reserved for the more manual labour positions, like production crews, where they usually employed at servicemen, and on Oreflow, manning picking belts and the loadout.

Girls weren’t considered strong enough for those positions. Depends on the girl. Some boys weren’t strong enough for those positions.

I was instructed by my shifter, Norm Bernier, when I was still a student, to train another student for another crew. I had my doubts he’d be able to do the job when I saw him. He was small. He had little definition. But, it was a simple enough job. All he had to do was keep the place clean and blow the chutes clean when they built up with muck. I gave him the guided tour of the transfer house and the belts he’d have to care for. We did our pre-check, called the hoistman to give him the all clear, and set to wait. The chute began to choke off, so I stopped the belt and showed him how to blow the chute clean using a blowpipe, giving him hints on how to hold on to it, how to let the pipe do the work. When I was finished, I reset the pull-cord, and we waited for the next plug. I told him to clean the chute, “just like I did.”

He stepped up to the platform, opened the door, and pointed the pipe at the muck. When he turned on the valve, the pressure lifted him off his feet and off the platform. I leapt up behind him, took hold of the pipe and set him back on his feet. I turned the valve off. I tried to show him again, and this time standing directly behind him instructed him to try again. The pressure lifted him off the platform regardless whether he turned the valve on quickly or not. He was too light and not nearly strong enough to control the blowpipe. I had to tell the kid to go sit in the booth and called my shifter on another phone.

“He can’t do the job,” I told him, explaining why. Norm collected the boy and that was the last time I saw him. He was given a job in the yard, mowing the lawn, picking up litter. It was a job better suited for him. Had he been settled on the other crew he’d have been seriously hurt.

So, when girls were assigned to underground crews, they were handed off to Backfill, as if that were an easier job. It wasn’t that easy. There were those same high-pressure blowpipes, high pressure water hoses, and hours of manual labour like shovelling to do.

Karen Chieu joined our crew. She was an engineering student, and although not as strong as a boy, she was capable. And eager to pull her wait. We were of a similar age, the closest I’d ever be in age to a student ever again. And she was cute. If you’ve been keeping up with these missives you may have noticed that I was inclined towards Asian girls. But she was my partner and I thought it a dereliction of decorum to make a pass at her. Besides, she had a boyfriend named Andy, also working in Timmins, if not at Kidd. And I was a little older, my hair thinning. I thought it unlikely that she’d be interested, so I kept my crush to myself. That said, I had a suspicion that over the course of the summer she may have developed feelings for me. Maybe that’s just vanity, but I believe she made a few moves that I only became aware of after the fact. She’d sit close, once with our thighs touching. I harboured fantasies. I didn’t act on them. Maybe I should have. I did ask her out for a beer at the end of afternoon shift once. I thought she might be interested, but I’d met her boyfriend by then, and she declined, saying she ought to get home. I let it slide after that, never presuming to make moves again.

She called me once. Their car had broken down and they were due to leave to a weekend rock festival down south. I was groggy. I’d been awakened from a deep sleep. I told her no, she couldn’t use my car for a road trip I’d have loved to be on (although I didn’t put it that way). I told her that her boyfriend would have to rent one. I apologized, but when I told her I was going back to sleep (I’d just finished my last nightshift, a shift she’d not taken, as they ought to have been on the road all night to get to the festival that morning) she took the hint. That was her one and only summer in Timmins. I’ve no idea what became of her. She most likely married Andy.

The next couple years our student was Mia Sweet. The first summer she worked with Jim Imhoff; I rarely saw her. She did not take to me, nor me to her. But the next year she WAS paired with me. My stomach dropped. I had to work with her? Jesus, I thought, we hate each other. I was premature. Tension was high our first shift together, but I told her to take the booth, and I’d work in the field, explaining that were anything to go wrong, I’d have to walk in to fix it anyway. She was a little surprised at that. She had been the one in the field when she worked with Jim. I told her it wasn’t that hard, and sat with her for a few minutes, writing out the pertinent numbers she’d need, and the step by step instructions on what to do. I also told her that I was on the other end of the pager line if she needed me. In time the animosity cooled, then faded, then disappeared altogether. In time, we were amicable, maybe even friends, but our acquaintance was too short for anything lasting.

Mia was a fast learner. She was also a pretty girl. Half the crew had a crush on her, so much so that one day our shifter, Fern Carriere, found another of our crew who was supposedly working four levels away in the booth with her, and another who also ought to have been working on the phone with her. Fern was furious! He’d been trying to get in touch with us for over an hour. Fern stormed in to give me shit too after laying into the other parties before walking in to where I was.

He began. “Why aren’t you controlling what’s going on in the booth?”

I was perplexed. “What the fuck are you talking about?” I asked him.

He explained what he’d just walked in on.

“You explain to me how I’m supposed to know what’s going on over there when I’m out here?” I asked. It was my turn to get mad, “Are you going to run a camera out here so I can keep tabs on her? And do you think I can control those dogs when they smell a bitch in heat?”

He cooled down.

“It’s not my fault they all want to get in her pants. Jesus,” I said, “half the goddamned Mine drives to wherever she is to sniff her up! It’s up to her to hose them down!”

Fern never bitched to me about Mia again.

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.

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.

Tunnel Vision

I had no clue about the passage of time until I’d begun to work for a living. Time was neatly compartmentalized up till then, giving time set markers to place my memories: the start of a school year, Christmas vacations, winter breaks, and later, the start of summer jobs. There was grade school, middle school, high school and post-secondary. Years had titles: grade 1, grade 12, first year, third year, freshman year. Once I began work, these neat compartments fell away. Days became weeks, weeks became months, and months became years. There’s little to differentiate a 5^th year of work from a 10th or 20th year of work. It's almost like having tunnel vision. I’d changed jobs on occasion, crews, and departments, so there were a few markers here and there, but for the most part, one year’s memories bleed into another.

I’d also measured the time by a span of years’ end, as well. Grade school ended, high school ended, college ended. Work would not; until it did; but that would be decades away. Decades! I came to that realization early on. Black Paul Guenette (there are those nicknames again) and Rick Picotte had been working at Kidd for 8 years and 5 years respectively when I joined their crew. They were relatively young by my reckoning, so I was shocked to hear how long they’d already been working. “Holy crap,” I thought, “you’ve been here forever!” Not so, but I hadn’t had to count higher than 4 years for some time before something ended and another something began.

That’s when it hit me. I’d be working for a decades to come.

I didn’t know how monotonous work would be, then. But I soon discovered that work was endless repetition. One task led to another, then to another, and once that cycle of work was done, a new cycle of almost identical tasks began until they too were done.

I was always pleased when the cycle of repletion was broken. Any break, regardless how short, was a reprieve from monotony, a blessing. Most reprieves were broken with clean-up. On rare occasions I helped construct conveyors and build bulkheads. I had little experience with that work so I always had to wait for instructions. The others knew what they were about; and they knew what their partners were about as well. Good thing, because it was all a mystery to me.

It didn’t help that the construction guys on my crew were all French. Being French, they spoke French. I did not. They must have known that, but I don’t think I ever crossed their minds at first. So when the “team” planning was wrapped up, I’d still be in the dark (that was a double entendre, by the way, a little mining pun). As they were set to begin work, I’d have to ask, “What are we doing?” That’s when they would be reminded of my existence.

It was mainly a question of experience. I had none to start. When we were building a bulkhead at the base of a stope, they were working, but they were also listening. They may have been talking, but they were listening, too. They were also attuned to air currents. The slightest noise, the slightest shift in air might warn of a fall of ground within the stope, and of the danger they were in, just then.

One shift, I was building a wall with Lorne Blais and Jim Imhoff. Lorne was hammering boards, I was helping Jim measure and cut. Jim didn’t really need any help, but as I’d never framed a cement wall bulkhead before, I was as useful as expected. There was a clatter of rocks within the stope, not very loud, but a waft of air blew into us along with it. Lorne leapt from the staging and he and Jim were off like a shot. I was left holding a board, watching them race back up the draw-point.

Lorne stuck his head back around the corner, and yelled, “What are you doing?! Get out of there!”
I was confused. I was stuck in place. Lorne had to yell at me again before I joined them around the corner. My continued confusion was apparent, so it was explained to me that if a lot of rock fell, the wall could be reduced to splinters and matchsticks, us with it.

We do not build walls like that anymore. If someone was ever to wander that close to the brow of an open stope today, he’d be handed his walking papers.

I was of even less use at constructing conveyors. I spent a great deal of time holding pieces in place, or with my back to the flash of a welding bead, watching the arc dance across the wall.

I discovered soon on that I’d been labeled a dog-fucker. I could not believe my ears. Those I worked with on a daily basis knew differently, but I didn’t need to prove myself to them if I ever wished to get off the belts. Nothing I did seemed to matter, though; so I gave up trying. It was a waste of energy.
Others saw the truth. On occasion.

One day I overfilled a waste pass. The muck filled the pass, and the chute, and had spilled out overtop, some of it falling to the floor. This could happen if an oversized chunk jammed in the chute, but that was not the case, then. Had I looked more carefully I’d have seen the truth of it, but I did a stupid. I opened the inspection hatch. The rocks within shifted, and try as I might, I could not close that door again. There was nothing to be done but to open it fully, let the contents spill out, and clean it up.
I was mad. A rage boiled up at my stupidity. I grabbed a bar and screamed as I hammered the shit out of the transfer chute. I didn’t damage anything, I didn’t even scratch it. I did tire myself out. And my hands stung from the bar’s vibrations.

When my rage was spent, Black Paul wandered past.

“So,” he asked, without stopping, “did it learn its lesson? Is it going to do what you want, now?”
I took his meaning. My fit was stupid. My fit was pointless. I'd had my little tantrum, and I was right back where I’d begun, with a job to do. Just as Bob Saumur had taught me years before, you fucked it, you fix it.

I began to clean it up, walking each shovelful to where I could hoist it onto the conveyor belt. It took a long time, but I kept at it, wanting to get it done before my shift boss could see my fuck-up. I was hoping that the raise would drop; that would have made my task easier, but it didn’t, so, I kept keeping on. Until it was clean. Then I collapsed in my booth to rest.

The millwrights noticed my extended labour. They didn’t help; I didn’t expect them to. It wasn’t their job to help. But they noticed.

“Holy shit,” they said to Black Paul, later, “that Leonard; he’s a machine! He never stops!” I felt vindicated.

Did it help my reputation? It might have. But I never did join our construction crew.
And I was stuck at code 4 for years to come.

Prolonged Drudgery

My first year of work seemed to take forever. A new employee at Kidd received one week’s holidays, regardless when he began. Had I begun in December, I’d have received one week’s vacation, but as I began my employment in January, one week’s holiday was all I got, and that single week was hardly enough. That year seemed interminable.

There was much to learn, as well; when I was working the construction end of Backfill, erecting walls and constructing conveyors. But I didn’t do that often. I spent the lion’s share of my time tending conveyors and cleaning up under said conveyors. There was a lot of clean-up too. I was used to that, having spent years in Oreflow, where ore and waste was moved from bin to bin by conveyors, and conveyors invariably left piles of fines beneath them in need of a shovel. Backfill wasn’t that different, in that regard.

For the most part, I worked with Jim Imoff, Norm Cheff, and Danut Ungureanu (Donut, for short; a Romanian immigrant who was hired the same day I was, who completed his common-core alongside mine, who landed on the same crew as me). That first year, there was Dan Zanchetta, too; but Dan quit before the year was done, moving back to Sudbury, eventually landing in sales. I don’t blame him, knowing what I know now. But before he left, he told me, “What do I have to put on a resume? I watched conveyors and I shovelled under conveyors. I can’t see myself doing that for the next thirty years.”

Neither could I. But back then, I believed that there was a need for technologists, and that within a couple years I’d be in the engineering office and away from underground labour, once and for all.
Little did I know then what the future had in store for me.

What did I do when I wasn’t shovelling? I transferred waste rock from bin to bin, and I filled enormous holes, so that the stopes adjacent to those empty holes could be mined. One thing I can say about it: there was a rhythm to my work. Each week, I would man a different conveyor, working from top to bottom, week after week, until my turn came to backfill a stope. There were a number of transfer conveyors, so it took a few weeks to get to the bottom: 8-2A, 8-1A, 8-1B, 1200, and 16-2-19. Below them were the fill levels. Fill levels were the top of empty stopes. When filling, I’d sit at the head-end of the conveyor system, adjusting the amount of cement added to the aggregate, the next I’d sit in the control booth, operating the conveyors, and ordering the batches of cement from surface.

Sound boring? You’ve no idea. It did allot a lot of time to reading. I burned through hundreds of books tending those conveyors, waiting for something to happen, for anything to happen. Sometimes it did. Sometimes I’d have to pick some scrap out of the muck, or out of a transfer chute, sometimes I’d have to reset a pull-cord or breaker. A few times I’d have to clean up a spill. But mostly I read. Feet up, eyes snapping up and down from book to monitor to monitor. Waiting for something to happen.

What it didn’t allot a lot of time to was companionship. There were some weeks I didn’t see a soul for the entire shift except for when my shift boss came to call. I was sequestered to an isolation booth for so long that it was a pleasure to be released into the company of others, even if it meant weeks of shovelling.

Don’t get me wrong. Boredom and routine are good underground. So is company. Excitement is something to be avoided at all costs.

You don’t believe me?

Donut and I were filling on 1600. I was Operator that week, comfortable in the isolation booth, whereas Donut was at the headend, freezing his ass off. 1600 was always cold; briskly air-conditioned in the summer, frigid in the winter, owing to it being exposed to the bottom of the pit. I did not witness what occurred, but I was a party to its aftermath.

There was a block-hole driller across the stope from the headend. Donut caught sight of him once or twice early on, but the block-holer was drilling oversized muck for blasting, and was retreating backwards, around a bend. Before long, all Donut could see of him was a flicker of light on the walls. Then nothing at all. The flickering began again, this time faster than before, a frantic scintillating flash. Donut took note of it, but thought nothing of it. Donut thought that someone was welding over there. Time passed. We had lunch. But we didn’t go to the lunchroom, opting to eat in the booth, instead. It had all the fixin’s a refuge station had, and the refuge station was further on, and we were too lazy to walk all the way there. Lunch complete, Donut went back to the headend. There was no more flashing, so he thought the welding complete.

About an hour later, a few lamps appeared across the stope, their beams dancing here and there, finally settling on Donut, across the stope. They left.

And appeared again on our side of the open hole. White hats. A production shifter, his crew rep and a Captain (general foreman).

“What did you see?” they asked.

“Why didn’t you call for help?”

“Why didn’t you go see what was going on?”

Donut was beaten with dozens of questions and angry accusations.

“What?” was all he could think to ask of each of them.

An investigation was called for. Our shift boss arrived, our crew rep in tow. Donut was questioned again. So was I, for that matter, but not for long, as I was not a witness or a party to the proceedings.
In case you’re wondering, Donut was completely exonerated from blame after the heat of the moment was spent. He was neither found stupid, or negligent. He was found ignorant, for lack of experience.
What happened, you ask?

Slimer, the production block-holer, had set up across the stope from our headend (where we come up with these nicknames is beyond me). He saw Donut across the stope, waved hello. Donut waved back. The Slimer retreated to the extent of Donut’s rang of sight and began drilling short holes in the oversize muck. With each rock drilled, he was a little more out of view, until neither could see the other at all.
Slimer’s drill steel jammed, so he reached across the chuck to hammer it some. His hammering did the trick, but the drill had snagged the tattered cuff of Slimer’s parka. It caught it, twisted it, drew it in, and began to pull and wrap Slimer’s sleeve round the action. Slimer pulled hard on his sleeve, but it was stuck fast. He reached for the controls, but they were just out of reach. He tried to take off his coat, but the zipper had stuck.

Slimer felt his arm twist and then bend and then snap. His arm snapped again, and again, and again, and again, his bones crackling until his arm was a link of sausages.

Slimer screamed, but the drill’s exhaust drowned him out. He screamed and screamed until his voice too cracked, rasping to a harsh whisper.

Slimer began to shake his headlamp against the wall, begging Donut to see and to help. But Donut didn’t see the cap lamp’s frantic flickering for what it was. So, no help came. And Slimer surrendered to the agony that must have driven out conscious thought before it had consciousness.

Thankfully, the drill stalled. The parka twisted so tight that the drill could twist no more, and it stalled. Had it not, the drill would have torn his arm off.

Slimer’s shifter arrived and found him in that state. He shut the drill off and released him. 8111 (our emergence number) was called, and the wheels of rescue began to turn. They saved the arm, but it was reduced to a construction of pins and rods.

Slimer never worked a day underground ever again.

I’ll take boring over excitement, any day.

The Working Man

My life had taken a turn. I was no longer a student. I was a working man. That first year would be a long one. Until then, life had a certain rhythm. I’d move to where I was attending school, I would attend classes from Monday to Friday, and party Friday and Saturday nights. Recover Sundays. There was homework, there were essays, midterms and winter Finals. Then Christmas Break. There was an altogether new course load after Christmas Break, there was Reading Week, and more long weekends. And of course, there was homework, essays, mid-terms and Finals. Then summer employment. The next year the cycle began anew. Now, there were workweeks and weekends, with little variation. Each workweek varied, but after a month, I’d look back and not see any markers that set one week apart from another. And that first year I had only one week’s holiday, the other paid out. I would not see four weeks’ holiday for another five years. That year seemed especially long for that.

I look back on it and see little.

I remember those first six weeks of common-core training. I remember its completion and my joining my crew on a night shift. I was attached to George Miller’s crew, and although George was no longer shifting it, he set me up in a car pool.

Rick Croussette picked me up at 11pm, and owing to its being graveyard, the guys weren’t especially talkative. There was a faint smell of the weekend spent much as mine was, in a bar. Hi’s, were exchanged, and not much more. Almost everyone slept. A couple muffled conversations were whispered, lost beneath the drone of snores.

We spilled out, I found my wicket, and Fern Carriere welcomed me to the crew. He introduced me to Big Jim Imoff, an old salt in his early 50s, my partner for the shift, and for the next little while. Jim was big, hence the nickname. He wasn’t tall, no more than an inch or two taller than me, but Jim had more than a couple pounds on him. Jim was not a particularly talkative sort with strangers. Not particularly good at planning out his shift. Not particularly communitive as to what we were about, either. It wasn’t until we were a couple hours into our eight-hour shift that I knew what we were doing and why. Jim had to collect his tools, and Jim, being a curious sort, had to stop off at almost every job in-between where he’d pack-ratted his tools and where we were working. I stood around while he chatted my crewmates up, no clue what they were doing, too exhausted to absorb much, somewhat lost as I’d never worked in 1 Mine yet, and was still gaining my bearings. When we finally got to our worksite, Jim remained seated on the tractor, contemplating a pitted, cracked half-wall leading into a doored chamber, next to a conveyor system. He sat still for a while massaging his chin with a dirty glove, deliberated with himself for some time as to how to carry out our task. I watched. I waited for instructions. None were forthcoming.

“Jim,” I asked, “what are we doing?”

We were there to take down the inconvenient concrete half wall. I looked at the wall. It was a sturdy one by the look of it, about a foot and a half thick, reinforced with rebar. The prior shift had been at it before us. There were drill holes and collar-marks peppering the broad side, numerous sledge impacts scarring its now rounded edge. There was a ring of bit-sized holes punched through it, most following the rock wall it was boarded on, and more than a few following the floor, half stopped short by the rebar reinforcing it. At the open end, there were a couple more small holes through it, only one large enough to pass a chain through, the other blocked by a partially exposed rebar.

I asked Jim what he thought we should do. He rambled on about drilling more holes, and then how it would break apart when we hit it with a sledgehammer. Considering how it had held up to the assault thus far, I had my doubts as to what our chances of success were. I asked him if it needed to be in pieces. He shrugged, not committing to it, either way. He didn’t know. He’d been told to demolish the wall, not how to go about it.

We dismounted and Jim set about setting up and drilling. I watched him for a while. Each attempted hole was stopped short by yet another rebar. After each attempt, we took turns battering the wall with the sledge. More chips and bruises joined those already there, but not one new crack formed. But with each new blow, the wall shivered and shook. I noticed hairline cracks along the floor. We beat on the wall some more, to no effect other than to tire ourselves out.

After an hour of this, exhausted by our repeated and ineffectual blows, and dead tired from lack of sleep, I’d had enough. Jim had not, apparently, but Jim was a lot stronger than I was.

I smoked, he didn’t, but he was open to taking as many breaks as I needed. I asked him how the wall was built. He told me with concrete and rebar. That much was obvious.

“Is it anchored to the floor?” I asked, pointing out the cracks at the floor. He didn’t remember, but he didn’t think so.

“Do you think it’ll break apart if we pulled on it with the tractor?”

We weren’t going to bust the wall up anytime soon, so Jim agreed. He backed the tractor up to the wall, we tied the chain up to it, and taking up the slack gently, the tractor then snapped the wall off the wall and floor in one piece, all the holes in it undisturbed. Not one rebar had been anchored in the wall or floor.

“Good idea, partner,” Jim beamed.

I worked with Jim for about a month before Fern passed me onto another. Jim was a nice guy. I liked Jim, but I would never accuse Jim of being bright. I wouldn’t call him stupid, either. Bull-headed? Yes. Open to suggestion after a time? That too. Before long, I was expressing my opinion earlier on than I had, and somehow, the Code 2 mine-helper began to direct and, as time passed, lead my Code 6 partner. I never liked bull-work.

Three months after starting work at Kidd, my probation period over, I was Code 3. Four months later, I was Code 4.

Where I would remain for another 12 years.

A Beginning

January 1989

I discovered upon leaving school that a recession was in full swing. The economy was improving, but it was slow going, 1980’s 21% interest rates relaxing to 12% by the time I left school. Luckily, I had a job. The commodity markets were set to tank. Hard times were ahead.

Was it the job I wanted? Not particularly. Was it a job that I’d prepared for in school? Not at all. Was this what I wanted out of life? Not a chance. I was hired as an underground labourer, a position I’d find a lot of my former college classmates had been forced to settle for after leaving school. It turns out that Technology courses were not what they were cracked up to be; we were sold a bill that declared that technologists were essential to the engineering process, the hands-on, go-to data collectors of the industrial world, but the world had moved on, opting for Engineers and only Engineers. If you think on it, I could have applied to the mine five years before and saved myself the fuss. But had I, I would have missed out on an awakening, one I would never have experienced had I not gone to post-secondary education.

How’d I feel about my working as a labourer? Resigned, I suppose. I expected that I’d have to work a couple years before a better, more suitable position arose, one where I’d get to exercise my education; until then, I’d work, I’d save, I’d buy a car and get an apartment, and life would be as life was, rising for work, collecting a paycheck, getting on with getting on. I had no clue what that all was, but I was sure I’d find out in the course of time. But with the prime lending rate at 10.5%, and the interest rate at 12%, I didn’t expect that to happen in the coming year. Until then, there was getting on to get on about.

This is not to say that I didn’t have ideas and aspirations. This is not to say that in the long run techs didn’t have a leg up on the competition. Most of us did finally settle into tech or supervisory or safety positions. But not to start with.

I began my career in training, as everyone in mining does. Six weeks of common core in 2 Mine, my old stomping ground, where I would learn to scale, to muck, to blast, and do perform all variety of mine service.

I paid scant attention to the early introduction to mining. I’d been through this before and had it all down to memory. We got our orders at the wicket, collected our lamps, and settled into the waiting room for the cage. A cloud of cigarette smoke pressed against the walls. Spitz cracked underfoot. The din echoed off the poured concrete, the bare metal bit racks. Sweat, diesel and oxides rose from the men. The newest of the newbies caught their breath at its sharp reek. I didn’t recoil from it. I’d grown used to it over the years. It smelled of Mine.

A cackle from a mine pager announced our destination and we rose with those others headed for the bottom of the mine. I shuffled along with the rest, hanging back with Don Johnson, our trainer, while the top deck was loaded, the decks were changed and we final 60 were herded in. The cage door crashed down through its guides, landing hard with a rattle. Bells were rung and we dropped down into the cooler depths of the lower floors, then through the bone-chilling icy blast of the fresh air rushing into the shaft. When I say dropped, I mean dropped. Butterflies took hold of my gut and lifted it up.

The light failed, plunging the cage into an inky black broken by the beams of a cap lamp here and there, their lights writhing and dancing across the walls. The deep freeze faded after 800 feet, became a coolness at 1600, and then began to heat up, becoming hot by 4000. It caught in my throat as we slowed and then inched to 4600.

2 Mine had changed a lot since I’d been there last. 4600 Level had been a circle loop for ore pass blasting above the 4700 crusher when I’d been there last. It was a hot, stagnant, dusty place. It was now an access level, connected to the ramp, a hive of activity, overflowing with workers. And it was hot. Sauna hot, hotter than it had ever been, were that possible. I was overdressed. It was January, after all. I had worn long-johns and a flannel shirt under my coveralls, and had already sweat through them by the time I reached the refuge station. Twenty guys piled into that tiny space that was designed to fit six.

Instant coffee was prepped and tossed back. I began to chafe. “Where are we working?” I asked Don. “Are we staying here?” meaning in that stagnant heat, or were we to work in a highly ventilated area. I knew the difference, if the other newbies didn’t. Let’s not forget, I’d actually been in this gig for five years, already.  He said it was going to be hot everywhere we worked over the next couple weeks. Although that was helpful, it wasn’t exactly what I was fishing for, so I asked, “Are we having lunch here?” When he said yes, I began to peel off my sodden layers.

The old salts laughed when they saw the long johns left after all that undressing.

“What the fuck,” I said, taking their humour in stride. “I dressed in layers. I had no clue where we were working.” Had we been in 1 Mine, I’d have frozen my ass off in some headings.

Those first two shifts, I was to bolt the first rounds of the 4600 mechanical shop, and the 4700 down-ramp. Equipment rushed past us throughout, belching suffocating exhaust and smothering heat into our already deathly hot stub.

My throat closed off to it, refusing to inhale when they did.

I drank about six liters of water each day. I didn’t piss once.

It was like being thrown into a furnace.