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

In the end the miners had their way. The tribunal left for Buchans in mid-August, the miners returned to work and the constables went home.

On August 16, the tribunal began to review the miners' list of grievances. They ranged from wages through public health to dissatisfaction with the bunkhouses and the mess hall. Curiously, the union did not mention the problem of the rockfalls that plagued the mines' underground reaches. Several men had been killed already by what the miners called a 'fall of ground'. The ghosts of the victims, it was said, sometimes appeared to men working alone.

Some of the strike issues were petty: "At Oriental Mine men have to boil their own kettles for lunch; at Lucky Strike hot water is provided,"⁽²¹⁾ but others deserved serious consideration, more serious than the tribunal was equipped or prepared to give. The tribunal adopted a cavalier attitude toward impure air in the mill. It admitted that the flotation tank chemicals endangered miners, health, but pleaded an ignorance of the details without suggesting the appointment of a more competent body to study the matter. It said that the company probably could not prevent sulphur dioxide-a deadly gas- from passing through the mill. It also dismissed charges that the shaft elevator had at times been left unattended, saying: "No present ground of complaint was proved."⁽²²⁾

The original Buchans gloryhole. (VII/3.) (31Kb)

The tribunal recommended that the company raise the miners' average hourly salary from 42 cents to 47½ cents, but tempered the recommendation with the opinion that the Buchans miners were far better off than the majority of Canadian workers. Perhaps the most revealing statement in the report, and one which shed light upon the tribunal's attitude and also upon an underlying reason for the union's dissatisfaction, was the following: "As this is a mining town centered around a short-lived mine, the Company can not be asked to do too much."⁽²³⁾

As the years passed by, the difference of opinion over what defined 'short-lived' and 'too much' was to become a highly contentious issue between the company and the union.

What was the live expectancy of the Buchans mines? The estimate changed almost annually, a phenomenon comprehensible to men in the mineral exploration business, but puzzling to the miners. When gradual depletion of the high-grade ore in the Lucky Strike mine forced the company to reopen the old Buchans river mine in 1943 and to announce that total ore reserves would last only five years longer, some workers accused the management of deliberately understating ore estimates to avoid community responsibility. When diamond drilling conducted in the last 1940s revealed a new group of orebodies, a few suspicious miners assured their companions that the company had 'known all along'. Such was the trust between the company and its employees at that time.

The new deposits gave rise to the Rothermere mine (named after the A.N.D. Co. director, Lord Rothermere) and the MacLean mine (named after a Buchans Mining Company geologist, H.J. MacLean, who perished in a plane crash) in 1952 and 1962 respectively. The orebodies lay much deeper than the previously mined Buchans deposits and required more elaborate mining preparation, but their large tonnage excused the added expense: the Rothermere and MacLean mines between them contained enough ore to keep the Buchans mining operation alive for at least another 15 years.

While Buchans Mining Company geologists and drillers busily sought new orebodies in the 1940s and '50s, the company management, stung by the 1941 strike, set out to amend its image by subsidizing a number of sport and recreational facilities for the town. The skating arena, fashioned from a converted ore storage shed, was the most popular of these and served as the home rink of the Buchans Miners hockey team. In the winter the team formed the focal point of Buchans. Residents still talk about the parties held aboard crowded and well-lubricated railway cars as the team and its supporters head out to combat the Grand Falls Andcos or the Bell Island Miners. They recall with glee how in home games the local Buchans populous strongly urged supporters of the visiting team to sit in a corner and cheer discreetly.