June 6

Bellevue Mine and Leitch Collieries

Our classes spent Tuesday, June 5th learning about what life was like for coal miners in the early days.  At Leitch Collieries, we earned our “license” to mine, completing an obstacle course that required us to crawl in small spaces, feel our way to a location in the dark, sort coal into lump, nut and slack by size, haul buckets of water, hammer nails, hand drill and dig. Students even had to complete a written test.  We learned that miners had to be very strong!  They had to be very careful, too.  At the Bellevue Mine we suited up with ponchos and hard hats with lights and actually went underground.  We walked about 300 m into the shaft, experiencing the cold and the darkness.  It was fun for us but we can imagine what it must have been like to work underground in very difficult conditions every single day.  Check out some pictures from our experience below.


Posted June 6, 2012 by darlenehubber in category 1913-2013

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