Dawson College, McGill's Annex 1948-50

Chapter I - Oh What a Beautiful Campus for Study and Play!

What a shock when I first  set my eyes on Dawson College in September 1948.. Before me, as far as the eye could see, was a flat treeless and silent landscape only disturbed by a cluster of barn like two storied buildings covered with drab grey shingles and bordering roads with open ditches leading up to a very large flag pole with Red Ensign fluttering at its top. My view of this bleak landscape was only disturbed by my observing some tumbleweeds passing aimlessly by. Later when winter finally came the tumbleweeds gave way to drifting snow drifts that gathered around the buildings. With the first sign of spring this white mass melted into a grey slush thus harmonizing with the rest of the landscape. The students quickly nicknamed the college Lower Slobbovia after a faraway and desolate country invented by Al Capp for his popular cartoon, Li'l Abner.

to quote from Wikipedia:

As wretched as existence was in Dogpatch (the home of Li'l Abner), there was one place even worse: faraway Lower Slobbovia. The hapless residents of frigid Lower Slobbovia were perpetually covered with several feet of snow. Icicles hung from every nose. Polar bears stalked the homeless. There was no visible civilization, no money, no hope. Conditions couldn't be worse. Astute readers knew that Capp's Slobbovia was a thinly disguised Siberia.


Actually it was a fair description of Dawson College although I have to admit I don't recall encountering any polar bears. I did however observe from time to time vultures hovering about.



A bit of history:  Dawson College was opened in 1945 to accommodate the greatly increased enrolment due to the return of students from the armed services and was housed at the R.C.A.F. base at St-Jean, Quebec. All first year science and engineering students were transfered there. The number of students enrolled, both veterans and recent graduates, reached a peak of 1687 in January 1947. The College was closed in 1950
 

As for the flagpole I should add that some inebriated persons returning from a night of celebration in the nearby town of St John's decided that the flag pole had to be cut down. It's fall made a thunderous sound. The next morning as it lay on the ground with it's sad Red Ensign lying in the slush, several professors called a snap meeting in an auditorium to find out who had done this dreadful deed. We learned later that these same professors were the culprits and they must have been thoroughly hung over as they stood on that stage.The secret was kept so nothing came of it except the pole was gone.


The war was over and the troops had returned home. For thousands of them, ably supported by Government grants, their immediate gaol was to complete their education. The universities could not handle this huge additional influx so temporary emergency facilities had to be found. Now empty military barracks provided an answer: Dawson College for McGill and Ajax for the U of T

As you will read in the chapters that follow I recall that studying and playing in these bleak and spartan surroundings represented some of the happiest and carefree moments in my life.



*Special thanks is due to a friend and fellow student, Don Beauprie, who supplied these photos

Working in the Mines - Summers 1948/49/50

 Chapter IV - When I wasn't working

 

Sudbury

Sudbury was still a sort of frontier town in 1948. It had wooden sidewalks along the main street and the landscape looked like a moonscape because of the poisonous fumes emanating from the smelters' chimneys killing all vegetation and covering the area with a continuous rain of sulfurous dust that turned to acid when it rained. The area was a Moonscape, in fact astronauts came there to test some of their space vehicles.  A few caring citizens carted in fresh earth from miles away to enjoy a brief season of flowers and greenness for the season. My boarding house was directly across from the jail so my view from the porch was the men walking about in the yard in their pyjama like suits.  

 There was a lot of racial tension at the time because newcomers were arriving from northern and eastern Europe. Many came with good a education but at that time were required by the Canadian Government to serve time in remote parts of Canada before going down to the cities, My three Finnish friends were a good example; two would work for a year in the mines on a rotational basis to finance the university education of the other. They didn't much care for the work rules set by the the militant Communist Union ( Int'l Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers) , and they had a reputation for working harder to maximize their bonuses. The company naturally took advantage of this by raising bonus standards thus angering the mining population. Some fighting took place in town over this.

My main meal each day was at a large workman's restaurant on the main street. I recall its name was something like Klutajats. It had two or three long tables, and no menu. We jammed in one of the long rows of settings and ate the meal they served, and it changed every day. I recall the food was always fresh and tasty with plenty of meat, potatoes and vegetables, lots of bread and usually a pie or cake. The restaurant was always packed so they were doing a good business. 

How I used my leisure time depended on the shift I was working, The day shift left me with the normal late afternoon when I often went to the beach at Ramsay Lake that bordered the town and where I could swim and meet some friends. I also remember endless walks back and forth along the main street mostly for watching and often saying hello to girls who were doing the same thing. We didn't spend much money because we had to save up enough for our school tuition and books. On a few occasions I took my landlady's daughter, Iris or a girl I met on my walks to a movie and then ended up having a few beers or a stop at a soda fountain  before heading back to the boarding house. Iris was a bit dull but a convenient friend to pass a limited amount of time with. Her mom was always there at the door waiting for her when we returned,

On the afternoon shift, work finished at midnight and I didn't go right to bed but went out with friends for something to eat till about two in the morning before going off to sleep until about 9 AM. A big lunch at Klutajats and then off to work again, The grave yard shift from midnight to early morning was better because I could sleep to about two in the afternoon and then had the rest of the day free until midnight. I'm not sure how years of facing weekly rotations like this affects the health of these shift workers. It ransacks your bodily functions, disrupts the rhythm of sleeping and your meals.  

 

  Rouyn-Noranda

In Noranda the following year the shift changes were much the same as in Sudbury. It is always night in the mine so down there it didn't make much difference. Working days left the evening free and it was quite different than in Sudbury. Noranda was more of a middle class town with many miners having modest homes and invariably a summer camp by a lake not too far away. I soon met up with friends from the town at the tennis club. I played regularly with Dollard St Laurent whose brother was the coach there. He was just learning tennis for the first time but was soon beating me regularly, The second year I was in Noranda he joined the the Montreal Canadians and became a star defense man between 1950 and 1958. I also met with many student friends working in the mines and girls that were home for the summer from universities and nursing schools.

 

One girl that I met at the club, Lenore McLean, became a steady friend that I subsequently dated off and on later in Montreal up until I finished university.  Her father had come to Noranda in 1923 as a canoe man for Ed Horne who played an important role in in the discovery and formation of the Horne Mine that later became Noranda Mines. Mr Mclean had the first dollar he was paid by Horne in a frame on his living room wall. He was by then a very rich man and co-owner of a heating and ventilating company that was dominant in Northern Quebec and Ontario at the time.  He and his wife treated me like family and seemed pleased that I was spending time with their oldest daughter who was about my age. He generously offered to have a select number of young university students who worked in the mines to feel free to enjoy Sundays at his summer home by Lake Dufault. a few kilometers away. A similar number of the young women from the tennis club arrived as well so every Sunday a good time of swimming, canoeing and barbecuing was had by all. Students were generally welcomed in the homes of many families of the business and professional class who had daughters home from school for the summer.

Marriages and engagements resulted from theses events including three eventual marriages I recall between three mining engineering students and the Mayor, Mine Manager Mine Superintendent's daughters. Clearly the managers and business owners and their wives in the town engineered and kept a watchful eye on these events to ensure that their eligible daughters would meet acceptable suitors. 

 Looking back on it you can say that this was a snooty way to isolate the daughters of professional and managerial families from the sons of the common miners. you might say a mining town parallel of the coming out parties of the wealthy families in large cities. I was always contemptuous of those events among the rich in Montreal but most of the young students I worked with were broke like I was and saving every penny to go back to school, so we set aside our conscious and enjoyed this generosity.

 

 

In Noranda the students and many of the foreign workers (we called them DP's meaning displaced persons) boarded in the company bunkhouse, an ugly barracks with a canteen with tolerable food. I made many friends with the DP's and learned a lot about their terrible lives during the war, particularly in Eastern Europe. Surprisingly to me at the time these men took pride in their musical ability and could form instant choirs often accompanied by one or more accordions. When there was a marriage their wedding celebrations went on for days. Everyone was welcome  and it was a rotation from the ceremonies to work and then back to the party again. The bride and groom were soon long gone but that didn't stop anything.

We led a double social life! There was the social life I described in the above and then there were those visits to the hotel bars late in the evening in Rouyn, the adjacent town. We sometimes went there with our student friends to have a few beers and to watch the lively action in progress. The bar was always filled at that hour with many single men from the town and from the remote and isolated lumber and mining camps in the region.

 

The 'ladies of the night' were waiting for them and a thriving business was taking place with the stairs and elevators kept very busy. These ladies knew we had no interest or need for their services and some viewed us as friends to sit and chat with while taking a tea break from their strenuous activities. My observation was that most of them had little education, came from an unsettled background  and had made a choice to escape unemployment or a lowly paid job in a laundry or diner by working as prostitutes in the hotel either full or part time. For most it was just a job until something better came along or until they were too old to continue. Some ending up marrying one of their clients and I often saw them accompanied going to the movies or out dining somewhere. Frankly I saw them as providing a much needed service to the many lonely single men working throughout the region. It wasn't legal but it was run like a legal business in the hotel and the police stayed away if there wasn't any trouble from drunken behaviour. The Salvation Army volunteers were always silently there and the ladies and their patrons knowing the help they had given to less fortunate friends, gave generously.  

 

My Great Victory

Nothern Quebec held a track meet in Noranda during the second summer I was there. Aspiring athletes arrived from the surrounding area dressed in their shorts, running shoes and numbered sweat shirts. I came with friends from the tennis club just to watch. I was particularly interested in watching the high jump. I quickly observed while they practiced that despite their fancy outfits  they were a lousy bunch of jumpers using the scissor kick so I asked an official if I could participate. He said yes but they were about to start so I had no time to change and get my running shoes. I simply kicked off my shoes, rolled up my pant legs and to my surprise in my bare feet won the event. I recall using the Western Roll. I only jumped 5 feet 6 inches but that was enough. My inspiration came from my cheering section from the tennis club. A happy moment.

 

 

 

Working in the Mines - Summers 1948/49/50

Chapter III At Work in the Mines

  

  


Murray Mine, Sudbury(left) and bunkhouse by the mineshaft, Noranda (right)

What's it like in a mine? 

The mines I worked in (Murray Mine in Sudbury and Noranda Mine) are called drift mines. Think of a high rise office building with many floors with corridors leading off from the elevator and leading to rooms where people work, In a mine its the same but the elevator takes you down instead of up and when you get to your level the drifts (corridors/tunnels) lead to the places where the men work. The mines I worked in were much bigger than any office building. I recall working over a kilometre and a half down in the Murray mine (that's a depth equal to three times the height of the CN tower) and the network of tunnels could go on for miles so you sometimes took a train to the cave where you work. For your interest the deepest mines in Canada take men down over two kilometres and the deepest is in South Africa at just under four kilometres.  

The minerals in these mines included mainly nickel and copper but with small amounts of gold, platinum and other precious metals. When you shone your lamp on the walls you could vividly see the colourful veins of these minerals and chunks lying on the ground. It was referred to as "fools gold" because the chunks looked just like gold nuggets. We would encourage newcomers with visions of great wealth to fill their lunch bucket with them and some did.  In reality it is just a pyrite mineral and worthless before being melted down in the furnaces of the company's smelter. 

Here is a picture of me black and sweaty after a day's work.

As a place to work mines are dark, dirty, and dangerous and the farther down you go the hotter, more humid and unhealthy the air gets. Years ago miners took canaries in cages with them because if there wasn't enough oxygen in the air the canaries would be the first to die and the miners had time to leave, Its always night down there and if your lamp goes out its just black; there is no moon to guide you. And when you are deep in the mine your sweat soaks you from the Caribbean temperatures. I drank at least three litres of water a day and took salt tablets to avoid dehydration. As for danger the wall and part of the loose rock ceiling in my work area collapsed one day and luckily we were working on the other side of the cave or I would have been crushed or killed. Two young miner a few days later stepped to the side of the drift as a train approached and fell down an ore pass (a hole where the ore is dumped before being carried to the surface). Every seasoned miner can tell you stories about friends who had died or severely injured in terrible accidents such as being,trapped in a cave in, suffocated in an airless pocket. or having a wall collapse on them. Also many miners had their health destroyed and their lives shortened by silicosis, a terrible lung disease caused by breathing in the rock dust in the air. 

The Big Hole:I could read blueprints so I was selected over more seasoned miners to work in a large cavern where the ore was delivered by train to be dropped down a hole that went to the bottom of the mine. A big crushing station  was at the bottom where the ore was broken up into smaller pieces before being raised to the surface. This hole was at the 2200 foot level and dropped to the crushing station another 1600 feet (or about the height of the CN tower). In other words I was fastened to safety harness and had to scramble part way down the hole to feed feeding drilling rods and bits and later dynamite to the men working the drills to widen the hole. Once I slipped and dropped a drill rod down the hole - just imagine the clanging noise that sounded just like a church bell as it gradually faded in the distance down the great distance to the bottom of that hole.  I am terrified of heights but because it was so black I didn't have any fear of falling. At lunch time we would toss rocks down the hole just to listen to that sound fading in the distance.

Music: It was a great cavern and I got into the habit of bringing my chromatic harmonica with me to play at lunch time as we sat there with our lunch buckets. the roar of the drills had stopped and there was a silence only broken by the constant dripping of underground water.  It was like playing in a cathedral and the sound reverberating off those walls made the harmonica sound like a pipe organ.  I remember playing songs like "Peg O of my Heart, Blue Moon, Stardust and my terrible versions of parts of the William Tell Overture and Rhapsody in Blue" The men sure liked it and soon asked me to play some of their favourite sing-a-long songs, so we all got into singing as well.

 

The Changing Room: When you arrive at the mine to start your shift you first enter a changing room where you take off all your clothes and then put on your work clothes that you take down from a hook where they have been hanging from your last shift to dry out the sweat.They are stiff like boards from the salt in your sweat. Once a week you took them home to a laundromat to wash for the following week.That clothing included long underwear, jeans, socks and a long work shirt to keep you body covered. From your locker you took out your special steel-toed boots, glasses, gloves and a metal helmet. On the way out to the lift a man handed you a battery to fasten to your belt which had a wire leading to a lamp fixed onto your helmet.

From the changing room you enter a steel cage which is like a big elevator - along with about 20 other men. It can be a long way down. The lowest level I worked at was 4500 feet down – that’s like three time the height of the CN Tower in Toronto. The farther down you go the hotter it gets and even if it is sub zero on the surface it can be like a hot day on a Caribbean beach at the lowest level. 

At the end of the day you returned covered in dust mixed with oil from the pneumatic drills.Your exposed parts of your body, like your face and neck, are black. It was everything in reverse in the changing room including taking a big communal shower where you had to scrub every part of your body before changing back into your street clothes. Some men didn.t shower and just washed their hands and face before going home. they had their shower once a week on Saturday night. I wonder how their wives and kids felt about that?

The Main Work that I did in the Mine

Before talking about my main work in the mine here is a picture of the Swedish inventor, Alfred Nobel who in 1846 invented dynamite and blasting caps. Many years later he made it into a gelatinous substance that looks just like Silly Putty. Those inventions made modern mining methods possible. The Nobel Prize was named after him.

Most of my time in both the Murray Mine and Noranda Mine was spent in a cave that you climbed up to on ladders from the tunnel below. Two men worked in the cave, a certified miner and his apprentice helper. I was the helper with a lot to learn. The equipment we used in the cave included:

• a large pneumatic drill that we lifted in place on a platform facing the wall we intended to drill in,
• A smaller plugger drill for breaking up some bigger rocks left after the big blast. 
• a pneumatic slusher machine that was used to drag the broken rocks after the blast from the wall to a hole that descended out of the cave
• long crow bars to pry away loose rocks from the walls and ceiling before starting work each shift
• shovels and sledgehammers to clean up after the work done by the equipment,
• and dynamite and blasting caps and fuses when we were ready for them. 

The cycle of work basically involved first entering and inspecting the cave to see it was safe and prying off any loose rock, then deciding where to drill the holes in the wall, usually about 12 of them each about 3 or more metres feet deep, then when the holes were drilled loading them with dynamite sticks and a blasting cap with wires going to a detonator and then going off shift. At midnight all the dynamite was exploded in the mine when the miners had gone home. The houses would shake in town and you would hear a muffled boom. When you returned to your cave you cautiously entered to inspect the results of the blast and after scaling the cave to make it safe again you used the slushing machine, pluggers and shovels to clear out the loose rock. Sometime we had to place some dynamite again on a big rock in the pile of rubble, set a fuse to it and go down to the tunnel to wait for the blast and the air to clear. 

Nine hours a day and a six day week, it was hard backbreaking manual work. Their were few miners that were able to keep working after age 55. I remember an older muscular miner I worked with who complained that I was to skinny to work along with him. For the first two or three days he was right about that, but being young I quickly picked up speed and within a week I was telling him to get off his ass when he wanted to rest. He was a nice man and we got along very well after that.

Attempts to answer questions asked by readers: 

• Wages - I recall it was about $1,13/hour for a 48 hour week. Certified miners earned about $1.23/hour which wasn't much more but they could earn an additional bonus for exceeding production quotas. It was enough to rent a place and support a small family. 
• Lunchroom - Just a cave on each level with a few benches and some water available.You were expected to pack your own lunch bucket.  Many men ate at their workplace.
• Toilets - You generally peed near where you worked or donated to the channel of acid water flowing by in the drift(tunnel). I don't remember much about the toilets but they were probably dry odorless chemical toilets commonly used in mines