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Nanaimo Historical Society Fonds
Series 2. Sound Recordings

Tape 72 - Folder 11
Transcribed by Lois Park, February - March - April 2008
Nelson Dean who is joined by Alex Dean

2. Hardcastle: The date is 25th of November 1978, I have with me Nelson Dean [who?] is a lawyer in Nanaimo.

Nelson Dean: Right

2. Hardcastle: When were you born?

Nelson Dean: 1907

2. Hardcastle: 1907 in Nanaimo?

Nelson Dean: In Nanaimo

2. Hardcastle: Your parents, where were they born?

Nelson Dean: My mother was born in Ontario and my father was born Scotland.

2. Hardcastle: They came out to Nanaimo when he came to Canada?

Nelson Dean: To Fernie in 1904, my father went to Fernie and my Mother she came out here to Vancouver and worked in the Hudson’s Bay. That’s where my Father met her in Vancouver and they went to Richmond and got married. And then they came back to Nanaimo and my Father was in the mines all the time.

2. Hardcastle: What mines did your father work in?

Nelson Dean: No. 1, mostly on Protection.

2. Hardcastle: So he would have remembered the strike?

Nelson Dean: The big strike in 1913, yeah, we moved to Victoria and he got working on the City of Esquimalt and when the strike was over he came back to Nanaimo.

2. Hardcastle: Did many of the miners leave town?

Nelson Dean: Oh yes, quite a few of them.

2. Hardcastle: So it was pretty bad times then.

Nelson Dean: Yeah, they brought in the solders from Victoria. [inaudible 1912?] I saw them come along Main Street on horseback. And they stayed in the barracks; where it, I think it is the Kiwanis playground way up on Franklyn Street, I think it is the playground and that’s where the barracks was.

2. Hardcastle: You hear a lot of stories, about those times during the strike, etc. were there really riots and things like everyone says or was it all blown up?

Nelson Dean: No, they had a lot of trouble all right. Scabs going to work and then union men trying to beat up on them and all this kind of trouble. Things that happen every day when there is a strike on.

2. Hardcastle: Getting back to your part - what sort of things do remember as a young boy in Nanaimo. What was there for young children to do in those days?

Nelson Dean: Well, sleigh riding in the winter, in the summer time we played ball just the same as they do here now. But the winter seemed to be a lot different then they are today. I’ve seen four feet of snow on the ground in the winter and you don’t see that here anymore.

2. Hardcastle: Some people would tell us that the harbour was often frozen over. Do you ever remember it frozen?

Nelson Dean: Oh yes, but I never skated in those days. I hadn’t learned to skate then.

2. Hardcastle: When did you go to school first?

Nelson Dean: Well, I guess I would have been six years old when I went to school. Mrs. [Pritchard?] taught school, [Mr. Irvine?] and Miss Brown. The only one I remember being alive now is Mrs. [Pritchard?] and she is in the complex [inaudible]

2. Hardcastle: Which school is this?

Nelson Dean: The Middle Ward and it is up here on Victoria Road where we use to pay our phone bill. I forget what is in there now.

2. Hardcastle: What sort of things do your remember about school? Did the kids play [inaudible]?

Nelson Dean: No, no they played a drum to march the kids in and had a big coal stove in the middle of the floor, they had to stoke it up every once in a while to keep warm.

2. Hardcastle: Were there more than one grade together?

Nelson Dean: Oh yes, there was, in the school up here there was four I think. And two grades in each room, I think, baby class and then there would be mixed grades up.

2. Hardcastle: Do you think the school in the old days was any better for the students, got more out of school?

Nelson Dean: It may have been, I think the teachers seemed to have more time with the students. Today the students seem to think about pressure too much as far as studying is concerned.

2. Hardcastle: At what age did you leave school?

Nelson Dean: Oh, I guess I would be seventeen.

2. Hardcastle: Did you get a job in the mines straight away?

Nelson Dean: Oh yes

2. Hardcastle: Which mine did you work in?

Nelson Dean: Cassidy first.

2. Hardcastle: What was your first job in the mine?

Nelson Dean: Hoist man, and I got paid $4.19 a day.

2. Hardcastle: What year would that be?

Nelson Dean: That would be around 1924 or 25.

2. Hardcastle: Did you work at other jobs around the mines and so on and so forth?

Nelson Dean: Oh, yes.

2. Hardcastle: Can you tell us a bit about it?

Nelson Dean: Well, from hoist man, you went to rope rider and from rope rider you went into digging coal.

2. Hardcastle: What exactly is a rope rider?

Nelson Dean: A rope rider is much as a switchman is on the railroad, you just, it was on a slope and they had a hoist man at the top and he shunted the cars in and out with a miners [?], things like that

2. Hardcastle: And when you were mining coal, so drilling and blasting? What sort of work did you do?

Nelson Dean: Well, we’d get a face two of yous [sic], just working in the face we’d say it is maybe nine or ten feet high, you had to pay $1.10 for powder, blasting powder, then when the fire boss came around you’d drill the holes and fire boss came around you tapped up the holes ready standing looking at you. He wasn’t suppose to fire anymore than one shot at a time but in a lot of cases that rule was broken. And the caps, they charged you .10 cents for every cap you used. And then you had to timber the place up and you got a $1.05 for a set of timber under nine feet. Over nine feet I think it was $1.25. And then you got so much, if you had to move rock, you got I think, we called it the brushing, you got $1.25 a yard for brushing. Or a $1.10, whatever it was.

2. Hardcastle: So were you on a set wage and this was extra or was this how?

Nelson Dean: No, we were working under contract.

2. Hardcastle: Would it be a crew?

Nelson Dean: No, it would it was just two men working together and then you had the fire boss come in everyday and he would mark down how many sets of timber you put up and then measuring day came along and the manager would come in and you had so many sets, he’d mark off where the last one was and then they would start counting out what you had.

2. Hardcastle: Then you got so much for?

Nelson Dean: So much for each set of timber, so much for brushing, brushing was lifting up the rock so the tracklayer could lay the track and get the car into the face.

2. Hardcastle: And did you get so much for the coal you took out?

Nelson Dean: Oh yes, on contract it was .91 cents.

2. Hardcastle: A ton?

Nelson Dean: Yeah, by the time you got to the surface, the company charged you $22.50 a ton.

2. Hardcastle: The company?

Nelson Dean: No, to sell it to outside.

2. Hardcastle: Oh, I see.

Nelson Dean: Outside, that price of that coal that $22.50 a ton but the miner got for a long time for $3.00 a ton but he spoiled his own, he started to the beer parlors and things like that in the summer time. You were allowed a ton a month.

2. Hardcastle: Of coal

Nelson Dean: And you got it for $3.00 but then when the company found out that, they didn’t altogether stop it but they checked some.

2. Hardcastle: What did you, how many hours a day would you work?

Nelson Dean: Eight hours.

2. Hardcastle: A day.

Nelson Dean: And that was from surface to surface, that wasn’t eight hours in the mine.

2. Hardcastle: And breaks? Lunch breaks and things?

Nelson Dean: Oh, you took that yourself.

2. Hardcastle: On the sly?

Nelson Dean: Oh, whenever you felt like taking your lunch, you took it.

2. Hardcastle: When was the mine [?]

Nelson Dean: From Little Ladysmith, Saltair, I believe we called it, yeah and [?]

2. Hardcastle: Did you work in any of the other mines in town?

Nelson Dean: Yes, I worked in [inaudible] and I worked in [inaudible] for a very short space of time.

2. Hardcastle: [inaudible] a wet mine with all the seepage?

Nelson Dean: Yes, I guess it was, I never found it too bad though in the places I was working in.

2. Hardcastle: And that was generally for a different company?

Nelson Dean: Oh, yes, that would be the Canadian Collieries, then.

2. Hardcastle: And they would ship?

Nelson Dean: All from Nanaimo here to anywhere they sold it I guess.

2. Hardcastle: Were the working conditions very much different from one company to another?

Nelson Dean: No, very little.