Allan Shaft, 1931
A reporter toured Stellarton’s Allan coal mine in 1931 and the article he wrote after offered interesting details about what working in the mine was like in that era.
Today, the mine is the site of Sobeys’ headquarters, an example of how former mines and quarries go on to serve communities other ways after extraction is done.
The reporter, identified only as “A Staff Representative” in the Halifax Mail, toured the mine in August 1931 for a series of articles the newspaper published about the state of the province’s coal mines during the Great Depression. At that time, coal mining was “An industry on which one-quarter of the people of Nova Scotia are directly or indirectly dependent for their livelihood….”
The reporter wrote, “The entrance to some mines is a slope like a toboggan slide but the Allan goes down straight like an elevator in a sky-scraper of New York. With a great rush of air to our ears, the cage shot down through the darkness to the bottom, 1200 feet below. the shaft actually goes down 1500 feet but 300 is full of water and debris.”
When the cage (elevator) stopped, a miner tested the reporter’s light “thoroughly and well, for the Allan Shaft is gaseous and the strictest precautions must be observed.”
The pump room, from which water was pumped out of the mine to surface, “was ornamented with pictures. A Scotsman evidently held way over the destines of the pumps for the pictures on the wall all appertained to that renowned nation.”
To his surprise, the reporter found a plant hanging from the ceiling. “It’s a money plant,” one of the pumpmen told him. “I didn’t think it would grow down here. It was three inches long when I brought it down two months ago, Now, you see, the vines are hanging two feet down.”
Coal was hauled out of the mine in small rail cars, or tubs, that were sometimes pulled by engines and ropes, and sometimes by horse. There were about 40 miles of track in the mine, which operated from 1904 to 1951.
Duncan Fraser worked with a white horse named King and said, “King’s a great horse. The name’s a favorite one for white horses because King William rode the white horse.”
King was popular with the miners. He came when called but they were careful to hide their lunch pails from him because, according to the reporter, King had “an uncanny but inconvenient habit of getting at them.”
To show off how smart King was, Fraser asked the horse, “How old are you, King?”
The reporter wrote that “King mendaciously pawed six strokes with his hoof on the ground.”
“You’re older than that, King, and you know it,” said Fraser. “Don’t do like the women and try to make yourself out younger than you are by taking years off your age.” According to the article, King then pawed the ground another six times, revealing his age to be 12 years.
Some of the challenges of extracting the Allan’s coal were discussed. For example, the mine’s tunnels “due to side pressure and roof pressure and also the pavement [floor] heaving, ‘narrow up.’ They have to be continually reopened or widened. This work is done on the ‘back shift,’ from eleven to seven by the repair crews.”
In other words, the pressure in the rock surrounding the tunnels pushed the rock in and narrowed the tunnels. As cavities are hollowed out by mining, the surrounding rock sometimes shifts or falls in order to accommodate the added stress created by the removal of the rock. This is a natural and common adjustment of the geology in underground mines.
Today, sophisticated technology is used to monitor for shifts and roofs falls and a variety of tools are used to prevent them, such as roof supports, steel netting that prevents rock from falling, and roof bolts which are huge (often 4-8 feet long) metal rods driven into the rock to hold it together.
The reporter also commented on the fact that the Foord coal seam, Nova Scotia’s largest seam, “is tilted up at the most appalling and irregular angles, ranging all the way from ten to eighty-two degrees. It is a revelation to see some of the places here where the coal is being mined. They are so steep the wonder is that the timber could be put in the places to hold the roofs [mine ceiling]. It requires great skill to retimber the steep balances [tunnels] and sinkings that were damaged in the explosion….”
This last comment was a reference to just the most recent explosions in the Allan Mine, which had taken place two years earlier. The Allan was known for having spontaneous fires and a total of eight explosions in its lifetime.
On Sunday, February 10, 1929, at 9:00 p.m., three men who were working around the bottom of the shaft at the 1200-foot landing came up to surface and reported that there was smoke and dust in the mine.
The mine manager, L. H. McKenzie, was sent for. He inspected the mine and quickly concluded that an explosion had occurred.
Twelve horses were stabled near the shaft at the 1200-foot landing and men were sent to retrieve hem. Six more horses were deeper in the mine, on the 1500-foot level, but it was not considered advisable to risk men’s lives to take them out.
With at least one, and perhaps several, significant fires burning, the decision was made to seal the mine at the surface to prevent oxygen feeding the flames. This was completed at 9:00 a.m. on February 11.
At 3:00 p.m. that day, a second explosion blew the covers off both mine shafts and allowed a large amount of black smoke to escape. The covers were quickly replaced, and 2-3 feet of sand was placed over them to prevent air entering the mine.
Over the next month and a half, air samples were taken through pipes and analysed to monitor what was happening in the sealed mine. On March 27, the mine was reopened, and an airlock was built around the shaft at surface to have greater control over air flow.
Also, draegermen (rescue miners) wearing self-contained breathing apparatus were lowered down into the mine and spent ten days building stoppings (walls made of brick or wood) to help control air flow. This was difficult work due to the equipment they wore and the smoky air. Also, the airway on the north side of the mine had an incline of 80 degrees and a mess of timber, rock and coal had to be hauled out of it to clear the passage.
When this was done, the shafts were opened, and ventilation was restarted to empty the working areas of remaining smoke and gas.
Despite the dangers, the 1929 explosions did not cause any fatalities.
Two years later, clean up work was ongoing. The reporter spoke to Joseph Gass and his son James who were building a stopping to close a tunnel and prevent air circulating into the damaged area. They told him there were 110 emergency stoppings throughout the mine that could be closed off quickly in the event of an emergency.
Further along, Robert Young, who had worked at the Allan for 25 years, was removing destroyed tracks, rail cars, timbers and other debris caused by the 1929 explosions.
Despite its history of dangers, “Miners like to work in the Allan Shaft,” according to one of the miners interviewed, and miners who moved to other mines often returned to the Allan. The reporter noted that, “There are practically no labor troubles here. The best of spirit prevails between the Company and the men.”
Still, the mine’s tragedies could not be forgotten. The reporter visited Stellarton’s miners’ memorial, which is dedicated to men killed in local mines.
He also spoke to Charlotte McInnes, who was likely the last surviving widow of the 44 miners killed in the Foord Pit’s November 12, 1880, explosion. According to family lore, Charlotte, pregnant at the time, had reoccurring nightmares of a headless horseman telling her that her husband died in the mines. Her doctor warned that if she did not reduce her anxiety, she could lose the baby. At her urging, her husband, John, lined up a new job but made one final trip into the mine to collect his tools.
She told the reporter, “I’ve every reason to remember the Foord explosion. People talk of being forewarned. Never was a woman more forewarned nor more foretold than I was. I pleaded and begged with my husband not to go to the pit that day. He felt he should go as usual; but it was to be his last shift. He never returned and I was left with my ten small children.”
Today, Nova Scotia’s mining and quarrying industry believes the most important thing to come out of a mine is the miner, and our modern safety record reflects this. Injury rates in the province’s mining and quarrying industry have been reduced 90% since the 1997 Westray public inquiry.
The Allan Mine.
Sobeys' headquarters, on the site of the reclaimed Allan Mine.
