Not Your Grandfathers Mining Industry, Nova Scotia, Canada

Thomas J. Brown

Thomas J. Brown rose from child miner to the top of his profession and the senior levels of the provincial government. One newspaper described him as “one of the most interesting and romantic figures in the life of his native province.” Here is his story.

Brown was born in 1867 in Sydney Mines, Cape Breton. At the age of 12, he followed generations of his family into coal mining when he became an office boy with the General Mining Association (GMA), which had a monopoly on most of Nova Scotia’s minerals from 1827-57.

He soon went underground as a fan boy (aka trapper), a role commonly filled by children in historical mines. A fan boy facilitated the mine’s ventilation system by opening and closing doors to control air flow.

He then became paymaster in Lingan, a position he held until 1894 when he became the mine’s manager. He later managed mines in Victoria Mines, Glace Bay (Caledonia Colliery) and Sydney Mines’ Princess mine.

In 1901, at just 34 years of age, he became resident manager of the Nova Scotia Steel and Coal Company’s mines in Sydney Mines.

At that time, the Halifax herald wrote, “The new manager of the Sydney mines is one of the most interesting personalities in the galaxy of able men who are developing Cape Breton. He is a busy man, and is not otherwise hard to see, but he is politeness itself to visitors when they obtain an audience, and each brief remark contains something new. The listener is impressed with the speaker’s keen observation and grasp of principles and his strength of character and intellect. At the time of the recent disaster at Caledonia mines Thomas J. Brown was among the foremost in the work of rescue, and nearly lost his life in trying to save the imprisoned miners in the pit’s dark depths.” (Brown and his deputies were the first to enter the mine in search of survivors following explosions in 1899.)

In 1902, he became general manager of all the Nova Scotia Steel and Coal Company’s mines.

After the 1911 explosion at the Florence mine, then called the Sydney No. 3, Brown ensured the company paid for the funerals of men killed in the tragedy, including sending the bodies of five Newfoundlanders back home to their families. The Evening Mail wrote, “The people are outspoken in their thanks to Mr. Brown, who has not only proved a hero by going down in the mine but by his generosity has tried to remove the pangs of distress by doing all in his power to relieve the sufferings of the widows and orphans.”

When the Nova Scotia Steel and Coal Company merged with the Dominion Iron and Steel Company in 1920 to form BESCO (the British Empire Steel Corporation), Brown left to become president of the Indian Cove Coal Company.

In 1922, he became deputy minister of the provincial government’s Department of Mines.

He also published a book that year called “Place Names of the Province of Nova Scotia.” Brown wrote in the book, “The towns, villages, capes, coves, hills, valleys, rivers, lakes and harbors of this, our glorious province by the sea, have many strange and beautiful names…Often have we heard the ‘stranger within our gates’ exclaim: ‘What an odd [or pretty] name!’ ‘What does it mean?’ ‘And why was it so named?’ This little book is intended to furnish, to a limited extent, the answers to these questions.”

The book was well received and the Evening Mail said he “displayed a literary style that won for him the praise of some of Canada’s most distinguished literary critics.”

In his new role as deputy minister of the Department of Mines, Brown faced many challenges, including a drop in demand for steel and coal after World War One. Labour unrest in the province’s coal mines was also causing significant harm to the industry and the province’s economy, largely as a result of BESCO’s attempts to reduce miners’ wages and its general poor treatment of its employees. A series of strikes took place in the 1920s, including a total of 58 between 1920 and 1925 in the Cape Breton coalfields alone.

Highly-respected by both miners and company management, Brown tried to find solutions acceptable to both sides. The Evening Mail later wrote, “His long tenure of office at Sydney Mines was marked by most harmonious and friendly association between the operators and the miners and as a result, when he became Deputy Minister of Works and Mines, Mr. Brown’s services were of unusual value in straightening out the difficulties that arose from time to time in the coal mining sections of the Province.”

Another article offered this anecdote from Brown’s time as a mine manager to illustrate his credibility with miners: “When he went to the men and told them, ‘I can pay you so much,’ they believed him, for they had confidence in him.”

Brown encouraged Nova Scotians to buy coal locally, calling people using foreign coal “unpatriotic” - “What more practical way could be suggested to help our province and its citizens than the suggestion to burn Nova Scotia coke and coal?...As Nova Scotians we should furnish more employment for other Nova Scotians by using Nova Scotian products.”

In a 1924 speech, he said, “Be fair in your criticism respecting the miner. He represents a high class of skilled labor that is absolutely necessary to our [well] being as communities and our welfare as citizens.” He was referring specifically to coal and the fact that it provided most of Nova Scotia’s power and was a major part of the province’s economy. However, the same basic point is true today – mining contributes to everything in our daily lives by providing the minerals that most things are made of.

Brown served as deputy minister for several years. He wanted to resign in 1924 to work for the company running the Inverness coal mine, the site of which is now the world-famous golf course, Cabot Links, an example of how reclaimed mines and quarries can go on to serve communities other ways after extraction is complete.

However, Premier Ernest Howard Armstrong asked Brown to stay on until a replacement could be chosen. Brown agreed, perhaps thinking that would not take very long, but Norman McKenzie was not announced as Brown’s successor until April 1926.

Sadly, Brown died in May 1926, one month later. He was 59 years old.

In eulogizing him, the Evening Mail said Brown was “one of the most interesting and romantic figures in the life of his native province. ‘Tom’ Brown was a coal miner with the soul of a poet. He could not say or write anything that was not colorful and original.”

Brown was known for the “remarkable hold he had upon the affections of the men who worked for him. For ‘Tom’ Brown could ‘handle men.’ It was one of his strongest points as a mine manager. He could talk with them in the language of their fathers. He knew every coal seam and coal opening in Nova Scotia, and could relate something interesting about all of them. For that was the real ‘Tom’ Brown. When one passed a coal mine in his company, one was certain to hear, not technicalities, but very interesting bits of history. The man’s mind was a prefect treasure-house of the lore of the mining villages.”

The newspaper concluded: “There was only one ‘Tom’ Brown; he is gone; and we are all the poorer.”

Brown was survived by his wife, Matilda, seven sons and two daughters.