Interview with Willie The Piper Gillis

Q. How much was the equipment that you used in the mine?

A. #8 shovels was $1.25, pan shovel was $1.50. Clay shovels we didn't use underground. The radial machine was supplied by the company and this is what did the cutting, but not in the #1 mine, or on the back slope… just the #4 mine, #5 mine and in Port Hood. Two men had to operate the radial machines, one was the cutter the other was the helper. Sometimes the company didn't have sufficient machines to go every place. Therefore, when one place was cut and completed someone else would come and pick it up and take it to their section of the mine. The ambitions miner would stay until near the end of their shift and go to the last place that was completed and take the machines back to their place so it would be there in the morning when he'd go to work. The drilling equipment was supplied by the company there were three types of drilling equipment in #1 mine there was bowing gear, hand bowing gear. They consisted of a small auger which made a little hole in order to put the stay bar in. The starter auger would be put on the stay bar and a larger handle would be used, the starter auger would be completed, you'd out the larger one on 2ft, 3ft, or whatever and until the bore at least 5 ft. deep. The other was a jack hammer, where there was only 1 steel used and it was a full length. It was operated by air and two men would have to operate it. One man would push the jack hammer; the other fellow would guide it. It was heavy, and clumsy. The third type of drilling was electric. It had an auger, a bit inserted on the end and these bits could be removed and re sharpened. In #1 mine, even at the very end when equipment had been unvented to cut coal, the most efficient way was still with handpicks. In the #1 mine, the pressure on the coal was so great that when you'd peck it, it would start coming out as you were picking. It was dangerous you had to know what you were doing. The radial machine wasn't feasible in that case. Hand pecks in the #1 mine and the back slope was still the most efficient. In later years, when J.K. MacDonald started running the mines, they starting using in # 3 level on the old back slope the most efficient way to cut the coal was with a radial machine because there was no pressure on the coal and the coal was too hard to pick with handpicks. #4 mine had a parting of approximately 4 ½ to 6 of white clay, between the bench coal and the roof coal. As the mine deepened this parting of white clay got thicker. It was just right for the machine picks. You'd just get over a box of this white clay from a cut that 13ft wide by 5 ft deep.

There are two types of mining at number 4, there was cutting, chuting and loading. Now cutting was when you'd set up your radial machine and you cut. You blasted your own coal and you'd load you own coal. There was another type when cutters came in and cut the place on night shift and the miners went in on day shift and blasted and loaded it. The same thing applied in #5 mine. I worked at #3 mine first with John Eddy MacKay. In the 38 level there was 9ft of this white clay and there was a splint between where you cut. We had to have a modified coil bar for the machine which was only about 2'6 and even at that you had to pick the bottom and the top to allow that to in to that coil bar. You'd tighten the coil bar and you'd insert your machine to start cutting. When the booms were put in place the only way that you could get up to the face was by crawling up, no other way… not on your hands and knees on your full length. There wasn't enough room in the wall that we were cutting. You could go on your knees up at the face of the mine but really no where else. All the work that was done in the mine, maintenance for example, was done on graveyard shift that was in all of the mines. The crew consisted of experts in their own field… track layers, timber man, people who were experts in re=moving falls quickly re-timbering it. Where timbers had to be replaced there was also had to be cribbing above that timber. There were pumps men at #3 level on the old angle slope, #6 level and then one down at the bottom. Each pump pumped up to the other one and for instance from #9 to #6, #6 to #3, and #3 to the surface. There was also a maintenance crew there for the pumps men. The pumps men did nothing else but look after the pumps, then there was a maintenance crew. The foreman of the maintenance crew was Joe Beaton at the corner. They did all the maintenance, all the mechanical in and around the pumps. Periodically, throughout the year the pumps where the water was going would have to be cleaned out because of the sludge that would gather in the water during the time of the pumping. All the work on the surface, particularly on the Bankhead was done by people who had been there for years. A young fellow now and then would get hired on, but he was trained by experienced people. It was on the job training. The box car had been for many years run by a loader, a mechanical loader. The last years of its operation it was breaking down more than it was working. So, they had to take miners from underground who were good to load. The first crew to come up was John Alex Smith, John Angus Smith, John Archie Smith, and myself (Willie Gillis). We didn't fancy the thing too much because we only made #3.10 a day… we were rearing to get back underground to make more money. They started to take in the odd person for on the job training. One of these men that came into the boxcar to relieve us was Charlie Campbell who ran a store and never worked in the mine before that time. He became one of the best loaders we ever had in the boxcar during the time he worked there.

Q. When you worked in the mine, how far under the ocean did you go?

A. According to the law each lift was supposed to be 1000ft. a part. In other words 1300 levels should have been 13,000 ft from the surface, but this was not so. Mackenzie and Mann being the company wanted to make money in a hurry and the quicker they got the coal the more money the made. They didn't develop the mine as well as it could have been. They took coal from the easiest route they could get. That is when the mine went down 1300ft. That mine, after it had been completed, Eastern Trust Company took it over and worked it. Years after the lower end of #1 mind had been completed J.K. MacDonald worked ten complete years on the upper part of that mine extracting coal that had been left there by Mackenzie and Mann. Little Allan MacMillan was MacDonald's manager. He also worked in the #2 mine. Shortly Campbell he sunk on the top of the hill there, going down to the bridge. He took out 50,000 tons of coal that was left there. Then there was Big Hughie MacLennan on #2. He took out something like 100,000 to 150,000 tons of coal during the length of time he was there. Then Jimmy Taylor sunk into a pillar and took out several tons of coal that was left and the same thing up at #2 when they sunk down into the pillars. All that coal was left behind which should have been taken out in the first place. Had the mine been worked properly we'd probably be down ¾ of a mile now or at a mile at the most.

Q. Was there very much trouble with the gas?

A. In the history of the mines here in Inverness there was only the one explosion. One explosion of methane gas, it cost the life of Peter MacDougall, Joe MacDonnell was burnt slightly. John Angus MacIsaac from the tressel had second degree burns and there were about three more involved.. There names I don't remember.

Q. What is Brattis or Brattish?

A. A treated potato sack bag… the smell was very strong and we couldn't go through it. This was used to brush out gas if found where men were working. Some places used the brattish to split the center of the place and put a fan on one end blowing the air around and then out the other way. This was used in some places. It could have been used here, but I've never seen it. There was no methane gas in #4 mine, #5 mine, anywhere up in the #2 mine or any of the bootleg mines on this side of the pond. The only place known that there was methane was the #1 mine itself and the methane was well below #6 levels before they detected it. The back slope and the bootleg mines at broad cove banks. There were three kinds of gas, 1) methane gas which exploded between 5 - 12%, 12% or above it would burn. 2) Carbon monoxide or after damp which is the gas formed after an explosion. The explosion eliminates all the oxygen and what is left is carbon monoxide. 3) Black damp was in old working places where air wasn't getting in. It would have killed you if you stayed long enough because there wasn;t sufficient oxygen to maintain you for any length of time. The black damp would force oxygen out of these old workings and some fellows actually passed out and were lucky enough to be taken out of there before they died. One man comes to mind is Joe Jim MacKinnon from across the river. He was up in one of these old workings and you could guess what he was there for. When they found him he was almost dead, just from the lack of Oxygen. This is what black damp is all about. In our local paper H2S eh. That was an odour of something like rotten eggs. That gas in my memory was never here in the mines, because it is only found in hard rock mines. It's colorless and odourless. Hard rock mines because of their timber they use BC fir, there's something in this fir that allows the gas to mix into other various gases to make H2S. The terms used here by the Inverness miners was different than that of the coal miners on the other side of the island. The terms here were high side, low side, low river, high river. The sinking here were called deeps on the other side of the island.