Bell Island miners at opening of No. 3 Slope, about to descend for the 6:00 p.m. shift.
Candles on hats are to light their way underground. Foreman Arthur House (extreme right)
later became manager of the Aguathuna limestone quarry. (V/2.)
[N.B. Gail Weir at the Centre for Newfoundland Studies Archives (CNS) argues this picture is not of Bell Island miners at the collar of No. 3 Slope at all, but of coal miners at the opening of #3 Colliery, Steels Hill at Glace Bay, NS, in 1901.
As evidence she uses a photographer named Owen Fitzgerald of Nova Scotia who submitted a manuscript of photos of Cape Breton to Breakwater Books some years ago in hopes of getting it published. The CNS later obtained Breakwater's papers including Fitzgerald's manuscript. Included in the manuscript is the above photograph which he credits to University College of Cape Breton. The caption reads, "opening of #3 Colliery, Glace Bay, Steels Hill, c. 1901."
Wendy Martin, the author of Once Upon a Mine, had obtained the picture from the widow of Arthur House. Arthur House had worked in Cape Breton and then on Bell Island before moving to Aguathuna to manage the operation there. Somewhere along the way, says Weir, the facts got confused.
Vince Walsh
coordinator
NL Heritage Web Site
Nov, 2004]