Miners in 1958 Spring Hill No.2 Mine Faced Hard and Dangerous Conditions
“Miners Who worked in the Spring Hill No.2 Mine in 1958 had one of the hardest and most dangerous jobs in Canada. He worked almost 4,600 ft underground cutting coal out of rocks in small dark tunnels with a bunch of dust gas and Heat. they wore light clothing like pants and a T-shirt and a headlamp and they got paid for how much cold they dug up, not by the hour the job was super tiring and risky because there was A chance of the cave collapsing or getting stuck in different areas and it's even scarier when you're that far Underground. A normal day for minors they are started early. they'd ride an elevator almost a mile down to get to the tunnels the air was super thick and hard to breathe and sometimes rats ran around the tunnels so it wasn't the best environment. the miners were super long hours in small groups digging and loading coal into carts. even though it was risky my name was one of the few jobs that paid enough to support a family in Spring Hill so most men kept going even if they didn't like the job.”
Summary
Miners in Springhill No. 2 Mine in 1958 worked at roughly 4,400‑4,600 ft underground, using elevators that descended nearly a mile, in dark, dusty, gas‑filled tunnels where collapses and the deadly 1958 “bump” (which killed 75 workers) were real hazards. The job was indeed extremely hard and dangerous, confirming the main description, though specifics such as light clothing and piece‑rate pay are not documented in the available sources.
Sources 60 searched
- Historical Mining Claim Maps
Ministry of Energy and Mines · Home » Mining Lands Administration System (MLAS) – Map Viewer » Historical Mining Claim Maps
- Up from the mine, 52 years ago - CNN.com
Each of the leaders (the researchers later concluded) was a man short on words and poorly educated, handy with equipment, with a good navigational sense but poor interpersonal skills, confident that he would find or chop a way out. Following his lead, the other miners jury-rigged tools from broken pieces, chipped at the walls, hungrily ate leftover dinners and drank from canteens.
- Rock mechanics analysis of the Springhill mine disaster (October 23, 1958) - ADS
Factors contributing to bumping are discussed and a theory of bump mechanism is developed in the light of descriptions of earlier bumps at Springhill and literature from other bump and rock burst prone areas of the world. Bumping in coal mines appears to be inevitable under certain conditions of depth and geology.
- Springhill mining disasters - Wikipedia
Springhill mining disaster may ... mines within the Springhill coalfield, near the town of Springhill in Cumberland County, Nova Scotia. In the 1891 accident, 125 died; in 1956, 39 were killed; and in 1958, 75 miners were killed....
- Springhill Coal Mining National Historic Site - Wikipedia
Mining operations depended heavily ... the mine and resulted in many fatalities; in 1958 an underground earthquake, or "bump", caused sections of the mine to collapse....
- Springhill, 1958 | Byron Christopher
Not until I was 74 did I connect the Springhill miners with the coal in the basement of my childhood home. That’s three-quarters of a century! Guess I’m a slow learner. Now that I’m older, I’ve become more reflective of the sacrifices workers endure so we can have more comfortable lives. I’m talking about oil and gas workers killed on the job, fishermen lost at sea, electricians and utility workers electrocuted, all the farmers who have killed and injured — even children who mine toxic material so we can enjoy vehicles powered by batteries …
- OneMine | Deep Coal Mining In Springhill No. 2 Mine
2 mine of Cumberland Railway & Coal Co., subsidiary of Dominion Coal Co. Ltd. Mining is now conducted at a slope distance of 14,000 ft, with 4400 vertical ft of cover. The record of Springhill No.
- Down Below Ground: Research, Memory, and Place at Springhill Mine – NiCHE
He also served on the mine rescue team during the 1958 bump. He noted in his book that Springhill medical centers rarely dealt with brain or lung related cases, instead such cases were sent to Halifax for diagnosis or treatment.3 While we didn’t get the black lung interviews we hoped for, we did get another clue in the ongoing wild goose chase of locating documentation of black lung.
- Charlton 1 Catherine Charlton Ms. Crooks History 2272 25 October 2019
At 8:06 p.m. on Thursday, October 23, 1958, the small coal-mining town of Springhill, Nova Scotia, convulsed. Buildings shook, telephones went dead, and seventy-three miles away · seismographs at Dalhousie University registered the movement as a small earthquake (Lerner · 24).
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