Not Your Grandfathers Mining Industry, Nova Scotia, Canada

Mine Apprentice Project

A program to train gold miners and reinvigorate Nova Scotia’s gold sector was going pretty well until World War Two brought it to an end.

In 1937, Nova Scotia’s mining industry faced significant challenges. Mechanization in coal mines and a downturn in coal markets had left many coal miners unemployed. At the same time, an increase in the price of gold had triggered the province’s third historical gold rush. However, many companies were struggling to make a profit, partly due to a lack of skilled gold miners caused by the province’s gold sector having been depressed since the early 1900s.

A plan was conceived to try to solve both problems at the same time by training unemployed coal miners to work in gold mines.

A provincial government mining engineer, A. R. Lawrence, wrote a memo in February 1937 explaining how it would work: “The present proposal calls for the equipping and operating of six dormant gold mines in the Province…Each year the mine will provide employment for over fifty apprentices per year in addition to twenty skilled operators per mine. The apprentices or trainees will learn enough in one year to qualify them to obtain employment in the regular gold mines of Nova Scotia or in Northern Canada. The apprentices will receive free board, free instruction, free equipment and Two Hundred Dollars per year wages.”

The apprentices would be drawn from “fourteen colliery towns in all of which there has been little opportunity for the boys who have come to maturity during the depression to find gainful employment…The introduction of the longwall system and new machinery and also the decreasing demand for coal tends to make their hopes for employment still more remote. The plan to be outlined in the following is designed to train young unemployed men from these colliery towns in the various skilled occupations connected with gold mining so that they may fit themselves for satisfactory employment. It is considered that these boys and young men who have grown up in the environment of a coal mine should readily adapt themselves to the requirements of successful workers in a gold mine and be quickly absorbed in this expanding industry. It is estimated that there are about 2,500 youths of this category without employment in the colliery districts of the Province.”

Lawrence’s plan was to train a total of 1320 apprentices over five years. The cost would be $1,835,000 but Lawrence estimated that $1,265,000 would be generated from the gold mining, leaving a total of $570,000 for the federal and provincial governments to cover.

As the program grew the pool of skilled labour and proved that the mines could be profitable, the mines would be sold to mining companies to operate on an ongoing basis.

The Mine Apprentice Project was launched in 1937 by the provincial Department of Labour, with the technical supervision of the Department of Mines. The federal government’s labour department was also a partner.

Lawrence was appointed the program’s director. His first step was to have the Nova Scotia government take over the inactive Lacey mine in Gold River, Lunenburg County, to use as a training site.

The program was limited to men aged 19 to 25 who passed a physical exam, which included an X-ray to check for susceptibility for silicosis, a lung disease caused by breathing in tiny bits of silica.

The men were also given “moral” instruction, according to the Department of Mines’ 1937 annual report, but the report contains no details about what exactly that covered.

The apprentices were paid 50 cents per day. As Lawrence had suggested, they received free board, training, equipment and transportation from their hometowns to the mine.

The 1937 annual report said 100 men were employed at the Lacey mine. It predicted “The result of this great increase in activity has been to again bring the gold mining industry of Nova Scotia into prominence. It is conceivable that at the present rate of increase in gold production Nova Scotia next year will surpass its highest peak which was reached in 1898 and once again assume a prominent position in Canada’s gold mining industry.”

The excitement over the launch of the program was likely somewhat marred by an accident that occurred on December 18. Apprentice Anthony McNeil, 19 years old, was using a pickaxe in the mine at 10:40 a.m. when “he encountered a small amount of explosive which was detonated either by direct impact of the pick or from sparks made between the pick and quartz which was directly under the spot where the dynamite was lodged. He received injuries to both eyes, lacerations on face, mouth and right forearm,” according to a government memo about the accident. Another apprentice, named Cote, received “slight injuries to one hand.”

A. Ballong, an instructor in the program, told the Deputy Minister of Mines, J. P. Messervey, that he and six apprentices were in the shaft at the time. The concussion from the explosion extinguished all their lamps. McNeil was “staggering around” in the darkness and Ballong took him to the surface.

“Upon further questioning Mr. Ballong stated that he frequently cautioned the trainees regarding the danger in connection with explosives, unexploded powder or missed holes,” wrote Messervey.

Messervey tried to interview the apprentices but “Mr. Cote due to shock was unable to appear.” Apprentice W. Power confirmed that the trainees were repeatedly instructed about safety with explosives.

Messervey found that a considerable amount of water had been seeping into the mine that day from the surrounding rock, which likely made it “more difficult to discern unexploded dynamite which may be lodged in the muck.”

He concluded that “The accident was apparently one of an unforeseen nature. All precautions were being taken by the officials in charge of the work and no blame can be attributed to any one.”

In 1938, 100 men continued to be employed in the program, all still at the Lacey mine despite the intention to grow the program to other sites.

In 1939, the decision was made to close the program. The Department of Mines’ annual report said, “With the outbreak of war, a number of trainees left to join the Army and, on instructions from Ottawa, no new trainees have been enrolled. The war situation has definitely changed the youths’ training schemes, throughout Canada, and this project will close with the end of the Dominion fiscal year, March 31, 1940. That the project has definitely proved its own worth is shown by the records of wages obtained by trainees since they left the school. Incomplete records show that over $400,000 in wages have already been earned by the 350 youths who have passed through the school.”

A memo Messervey wrote in October 1939 after visiting the Lacy mine said, “Very little work was going on underground at the time of my visit due to the shortage of apprentices.”

The apprenticeship program was shut down in March 1940 and its equipment and supplies were transferred to the Fifteen Mile Stream gold district.

Program director A. R. Lawrence “resigned to take up war work on October 1st,” according to the 1940 annual report.

A memo Messervey wrote in 1941 said, “On May 4th I called in the Gold River District and found that all the buildings at the Lacey Mine were open. The locks or bars on the doors have been removed and some of the doors were swinging on their hinges. A few windows have also been broken.”

The Mine Apprenticeship Project, started with such high hopes, did not succeed in reinvigorating Nova Scotia’s gold sector. While exploration for gold would take place intermittently in the following decades, it was not until the modern Moose River gold mine started in 2017 that the province’s fourth gold rush would begin.

The Gold River gold district was very active historically, but it is mostly beautiful greenspace today. See its story at https://notyourgrandfathersmining.ca/gold-river