Page 79 Page 78 Fire in the Hole Cobalt, known as the most historical little town in Ontario, has produced some of the greatest names in the min - ing history; not only in Ontario, but across Canada and around the world. It doesn’ t matt er which minin g camp you visit, if you talk to the miners you will inevitably talk to someone who has worked with somebody from Cobalt or knows someone who came from that famous little town. They always tend to be characters of the packsack-miner class, not much for sitti ng around discussing what to do, but getting the job done. In Cobalt, learning the trade of a miner to a min - er ’ s level pay was developed from a sense of independence acquired work - ing in the narrow shrinkage stopes, following the narrow veins of silver , cobalt and nickel arsenides of sulphur . There was not a lot of detail ed plan - ning for the design of the stope. Nor did you have mounds of paper show - ing every single hole, stull, spragge or bulkhead that had to be considered to successfully mine these veins. A geologist, of the Haileybury School of Mines (HSM) variety , would lay- out a diamond drill program, knowing that the upper and lower contacts of the famous Cobalt diabase provided the best tar get zones to fnd the high grade silver veins. If the drilling en - countered a silver -rich calcite-quartz vein of signifcance, then a develop - ment cross-cut would be driven to where the drill encountered the vein and if it showed enough continuity of length with width, a decision to mine the vein would be made by the mine manager . Some old timers would not consider starting a caree r in mining at the be - ginning of the sixties, that’ s ffty years ago, as real, hard-rock times to have gotten into mining. And I would have to generally agree with them. The old L yner -type machine had been re - placed with jacklegs, through the steel water systems for dust suppression had been incorporated, the beginnings of serious mine safety metho ds were introduced, thermo-lite had been in - vented to ignite the fuse tapes instead of individual lighting of the fuse tapes in the round, slash or breast. The big labour strikes in Cobalt, T im - mins and Kirkland Lake had been fought for work place conditions, hours of work, rates of pay , and use of proper safety procedure required safety toed boots, protective glasses and gloves. The lamps used for un - der ground lighting became more de - pendable and there were also ef forts to install proper ventilation in the work areas. When I starte d mining, indeed, the under ground work place had become a safer , better controlled environ - ment, but the business of hard manual labour had not been replaced . I look back and remember my struggles getting a handle on the jack-leg, the stoper , slushing machines, the Eimco Model 12B rocker loaders and lifting the side-dump mucking cars at the ore passes. After this there is the process of learn - ing the drill patterns of the cuts, drift rounds, the setting-up for taking raise rounds, both open and timbe red rais - es, whether to mine a stope section by breasting or drilling uppers depending on how the stope was initiated and the type of mining in progress. After completion of a shrinkage stope, there was the job of pulling down the broken muck to empty the stope that required the installation of timber stulls for ground support of the open area above the mucking leve l of the slusher and this was only to work in a small Cobalt shrinkage stope mine. I did manage to work at L ynn Lake in northern Manitoba and Manitou - wadge in western Ontario before I was able to get back to college in Hai - leybury , then known as the Provincial Institute of Mining. Y es, there was a lot to becom e aware of for one’ s own well-being under - ground and today , as I look back nostalgically , I remember some of the incredibly interesting characters I met and worked with along with other events, some funny , some seri - ous, some tragic, and certain ly , some fortunate. I’ll tell you these stories in upcoming issues of Mining Life. By: Ron Cook, April 2013 Mining illustrations fr om a Cobalt Lad Page 78