Chapter VII: Buchans: Company Town in Transition  (continued)

Government opposition to the railway arose at its inception in the spring of 1927. At first Members of the House of Assembly grumbled about the railway competing with the government's own Newfoundland Railway.⁽¹⁷⁾ As the line progressed the grumblings grew louder. Indignant politicians complained that the company was running the track through granted and ungranted land alike without applying for permission, and-insult upon injury-was building the line with materials imported duty-free under the Buchans Mine Bill. Calmer and more far-sighted members expressed concern that a private railway leading into Buchans would make the community become a 'closed town'.⁽¹⁸⁾ ASARCO assured the government that this would not happen, but time showed the members' fears to be well-grounded.

The A.N.D. Co. and ASARCO simply ignored all government protestations. They knew, as did the government, that both the 1905 Act and the Buchans Mine Bill clearly permitted the railway construction. The Buchans Mining Company completed the railway in November 1927 and in the following summer opened up the Lucky Strike orebody.

Nature initially seemed to conspire against the Buchans Mining Company. Barely had excavations started than the Buchans River burst through the hydroelectric dam, washing away the railway trestle and flooding the barracks. The company learned its lesson and laid new transmission lines to a more reliable power source at Deer Lake. In September 1928, the first lead and zinc concentrates emerged from the mill and travelled by gondola cars along the Buchans and Newfoundland railways to Botwood. Buchans Mining Company representatives supervised the concentrates passing from the train to the S.S. Kiruna. They watched proudly as the ship departed on December 1 for Europe; and they reacted with disbelief when she limped back into port a few hours later, listing severely from a shifted cargo. The encroaching winter prevented the ship from leaving again that season, but in the spring of 1929 she reached her destination.

Buchans mine: the boys, c. 1930. (VII/2.) (29Kb)

From these inauspicious beginnings Buchans quickly grew into a proper mining town. The original church-a canvas tent shared on successive Sundays by the Anglican, United and Roman Catholic congregations-gave way to more permanent structures. The town hall doubled on Saturday nights as a movie hall. As the lead and zinc concentrates won markets in France, Belgium, Germany, Britain and the United States, the Lucky Strike profits began to rival those of the Wabana operations.

Buchans, Wabana and Aguathuna were the only Newfoundland mines to work through the Depression. Three changes in mining strategy enabled the Buchans Mining Company to survive the slump in world metal prices. In 1931 it enlarged its concentrating mill, making production and profits double. In 1935 it increased production further by opening up the Oriental orebody. Also in 1935 it began to extract copper as well as zinc and lead from its ore.⁽¹⁹⁾ These advances allowed the company not only to weather the Depression, but actually to recoup its $7 million capital outlay by 1936.⁽²⁰⁾

However, there was another side to the story. Had the company paid the Buchans miners salaries equivalent to those received by their American ASARCO counterparts, its rate of recuperation would have been slower; and had the Buchans miners been less hungry for jobs, they might have rebelled sooner than they did. Instead, they waited until 1941, the height of World War II, to launch a protest against the Buchans Mining Company.

It is no coincidence that both the St. Lawrence and the Buchans mines experienced their first strikes in 1941. Miners from the two communities had laboured throughout the 'Dirty Thirties' for minimal wages and under depressing working conditions. When the frustrated men became intoxicated by the effervescence of the war-rejuvenated economy, they roused up and confronted their employers with grievances that had been a decade in the brewing.

The first Buchans Workmen's Protective Union strike began on 1 August 1941 and was branded at once as being unpatriotic. "The dispute," said the accusers, "will diminish lead and zinc production and jeopardise the Imperial war effort." "The miners," said the government, "must return to work," and it prohibited the strike. It then tried to appease the union by appointment a tribunal investigation of the dispute, but the gesture failed. The miners refused to budge unless the tribunal came to Buchans.

At this, the government dispatched 70 members of the Newfoundland constabulary to Buchans to quell the rebellious miners. Eyewitnesses related that the union's ire upon the constables' arrival was matched only by the constables' reluctance to leave the safety of the train when it came to a halt in Buchans before a mob of miners. Fury dissolved into friendliness, however, and before long both sides were happily sharing liquid refreshments.