Come Underground

Same old breakfast — corn flakes and powdered milk, eggs and bacon, thick toast, browned hastily on top of the stove, hotcakes and syrup, black coffee. I gulp down the coffee, take a farewell forkful of hotcake, grab from a bench enrolee to the door my dirty old waterproof jacket, and dinner pail in hand, join the passing stream of miners headed towards the mine portal. Here, in an open-fronted part of the warehouse building, I become a link in the chain of men passing a wicket. As I pass the small window I call out my identifying number to the clerk within. When the shift comes out of the mine the numbers are checked to ensure that no men are missing. I take a time-card, and carbide for my lamp, and join the other men waiting outside for the train that will take us nearly a mile underground to the main shaft.

The miners stand in small groups, smoking, passing around a salty joke, or hailing a late-comer. Their work-clothes, stained a greyish-black with the mixture of oil and rock-dust from the drilling machines, distinguish the miners from “non-producers” — track-layers, timber men, electricians, mechanics. With the arrival of the train, the office is besieged by the out coming crew, the “graveyard” shift, dirty, tired but still vociferous, grinning, glad to be out, ready for breakfast and bed.

We climb on to the rough cars, leaving a seat at the end of each car for the bosses, who emerge from the office stowing papers in their pockets. As the big whistle on the powerhouse nearby blows seven o’clock we start into the tunnel. The air is cold and dank, musty and sulphurous. At about ten miles an hour we trundle along in semi-darkness; the roof, illumined faintly by an occasional lamp to one side, seems low enough to touch. After the early morning rush I can now relax. The dim figures around me are silenced by the noise of the wheels, and sit hunched up against the cold draught. It is true that the imagination is most active when the senses have least to do.

Cut off from companions by the noise and darkness, I compose a fiery speech, or explain to an imaginary and dumb disciple the cause of economic depressions. Almost immediately, it seems, we arrive at the shaft station, brightly lit, blasted from the living rock, with the marks of the drills on walls and roof. Underfoot is heavy planking. The roof is about four feet from our heads and carries a maze of compressed air pipes, flumes carrying drainage water, of power lines and light and telephone wires, the nervous system and sap stream of this dendritic growth reaching into the heart of the mountain. At the far side of the station, heavy timbering and extensible iron gates mark the foot of the shaft; a short ladder and a platform give access to the top deck of the cage, which now stands waiting.

The cage carries 20 men, ten on a deck. I join the general movement towards the gates, which close behind us. With his hand on the bellhop the cage handler waits to signal the hoist man 1200 feet above us.”All clear” comes from the top deck, the bell rings, we rise slowly from the light into sudden darkness and feel the speed increase until the cage with its freight of 20 men is rushing upwards at a 1000 feet a minute. The movement is steady, powerful and silent but for the sigh of the shoes on the guides, and the rhythmical drumming of air on the shaft timbers, passed by the cage with little more than an inch to spare. Cold draughts of air blow about erratically. A leap into light, and again into darkness; we have passed the first level, 200 feet from the bottom. The flashes come at 200 foot intervals every 12 or 15 seconds. With the swiftly increasing altitude my ear-drums respond to the lessened pressure and crackle uncomfortably. I swallow hard in the darkness, hold on to my dinner pail, and listen to the shiftless in his easy confident tone giving the men their instructions for the day. He says nothing to me. I think, that’s all right; I’ll be working in the same place.

The cage slackens speed, slows down, slides upwards into the lighted station, and stops with nice exactness. The iron gates fold and swing before us. We have climbed 1250 feet in less than a miniute and a half and are not even out of breath. I look out for my partner, light my lamp, and walk gingerly in my worn rubber boots on the muddy planks between the tracks, start out along the level for out working-place.

Address: PO Box 176, Tunnel Camp, Britannia Beach, BC