Chapter V: Isle of Iron, Men of Steel  (continued)

The Aguathuna management survived the worst years of the recession with the aid of the King of Clubs, a private club organized in 1912 by Arthur House and others. The club still exists today and is filled with memorabilia. An old carbide lamp movie projector that once displayed the latest silent films now sits in state in the storeroom. Photographs of ship captains, quarry managers and other venerated individuals line the club walls. Hidden carefully away are two sets of playing cards-one gigantic, the other minuscule-designed to fool intoxicated guests. A card game would begin with a normal-sized pack until a guest became tipsy enough for a club member to substitute one of the abnormal packs. The game would then continue as before with everyone pretending that nothing was amiss. The guest would consequently come to the silent conclusion that he had rather exceeded his capacity for alcoholic drink.

The 1920s and early '30s were bleak years for both Aguathuna and Wabana; and yet the two towns supported the only consistently active mining operations in Newfoundland between 1923 and 1932. Conditions improved after 1935, and Aguathuna began to modernize its facilities. Horses and hand shovels gave way to coal-fired steam locomotives and shovels; these in turn disappeared with the advent of diesel machines. The original pier was replaced in 1947 by a more compact version. Ironically, the first pier having survived its unorthodox method of construction, it was this second pier which collapsed in a storm in 1948.

As the decades slipped by, familiar faces also vanished from the Aguathuna quarry. Some died, some retired and others lost jobs because of mechanization. In 1956, J.N. Gillis replaced Arthur House around the time that Dr. Thomas Farrell took a post as the town physician. Dr. Farrell and J.N. Gillis later became the subjects of publicity: the former as an accused (and acquitted) in an arson case in St. John's; and the latter as the manager of the St. Lawrence fluorspar mines at the time of their shutdown in 1978.

Coincidentally, Gillis was also managing the Aguathuna quarry up to its closure in September 1964. It is just as well that House was not manager at the time, for it would have distressed him greatly to have been forced to terminate its life.

Why did the Aguathuna quarry close down? The most commonly cited reasons that the Dominion Steel and Coal Company found a suitable limestone deposit in Cape Breton near the Sydney steel mill and calculated that it would be more economical to truck limestone from the new site than to ship it from the Port au Port Peninsula. Possibly the company also anticipated its withdrawal from Bell Island and wished to sever all Newfoundland ties. Whatever the reason, the closure of the Aguathuna quarry put some 70 men out of work and left Corner Brook's Bowater's Newfoundland Pulp and Paper Mills Limited (which had been buying Aguathuna limestone since 1957) in search of an alternative supplier.⁽³³⁾ Arthur House's son, Leonard, opened up a small limestone quarry at Humbermouth near Corner Brook to fill Bowater requirements and operated it until about 1968.