Nova Scotia

PICTOU AND NEW GLASGOW

Old Scotland has no advantage over New Scotland in the matter of coal. My first introduction to Nova Scotia’s coal was made at Stellarton, in what are called the Pictou coal-fields. Coal has been mined hereabouts for upwards of a century, and one of the very earliest railways on the Continent was that built from the Albion mine to Pictou Landing, six miles away. That was in 1836-39. The promoters of this miniature line of rail showed considerable prescience in building it of a width then considered unusual, but which has since come to be the “standard gauge.” Stephenson’s rival, Hackworth, built the first engine used thereupon for over forty years, and now considered a great curiosity. It was shown at the World’s Fair, Chicago, and later at St. Louis.

About 1825 an English company received, under certain terms from the Crown, the right of working mines and minerals in Nova Scotia, and this company shortly thereafter commenced spirited operations both at Pictou and at Sydney in Cape Breton, restricting themselves to coal-mines and iron works from imported material. Previously coal came chiefly from surface pits, and was of inferior quality. “The principal shaft,” we read in the original prospectus of the company, “has been sunk to the depth of two hundred and fifty feet below the surface, and steam power has been applied for the usual purposes of draining and of raising minerals. The veins of coal laid open by this procedure are of a quality much superior to those formerly discovered. The coal is overlaid by a decayed blackish shale; it is of jet-black colour, and contains a large proportion of bitumen. Excellent coke is made from it, and for the furnace it is highly esteemed. The Cape Breton coal is preferred for household use on account of its producing less of the white or brown ashes than that of Pictou.”

The lease was granted to the company for sixty years to work all minerals belonging to the Crown, save in such tracks as had already been reserved to others. One of these was then worked by the Annapolis Iron Company, which was in fact the only competitor of the General Mining Association. It was then, eighty years ago, observed that the mining industry was proving of greater apparent benefit to the valley of the East River than upon Pictou Town. “Good roads, increase of settlement, numerous waggons and horses where none were previously kept, and a market well supplied where none formerly existed, are outward and visible signs indicative of the neighbourhood of two hundred well-paid beef-eating and porter-drinking operatives.”

The result being then foreshadowed, New Glasgow and Stellarton sprang into being formidable rivals to Pictou, which, from its marine situation, has been almost side-tracked by the railway. Other mines flourish in these parts, such as the Drummond and Acadia Collieries in Westville, and the Vale Colliery at Thorburn. But the character of the mines is the same here on this side of the Atlantic as that which depressed the soul of John Ruskin and gladdened the heart of Samuel Smiles.

Stay! I think this statement required some qualification. It would be manifestly unfair not to take notice of the system here inaugurated by which so many of the miners—nearly all the married ones—own their own homes. And there is even an effort, and by the miners themselves, that these homes shall be tasteful within and without, and that each shall have his garden. Nothing has ever struck me so forcibly when perambulating the mining districts of the Black Country of Wales as the indifference with which men, immured for at least a third of their lives in the darksome bowels of the earth, regard the amenities of the home and its surroundings of lawn and flower and vine. More passionately because of their long deprivation would one expect them to cling to the superterrene light and colour of life, and the res pulchra domi. Far otherwise is it, and all the more refreshing to see here a brawny Cornishman hurrying from the pit, and after washing the grime from his face and hands, employ the remaining hour of daylight in rolling his bit of turf and hoeing his patch of flower garden. Will a time come, we wonder, when no human occupation shall be too strenuous, too sordid, for a man to spend his leisured hours in decency and calm. No vain visions have I of pitmen and navvies reading Tennyson in velvet smoking jackets and slippers, or pit foremen in dress clothes sipping port wine; but I do look forward confidently to the time, in England, when a man may, without remark, boast the domestic virtues and enjoy the higher domestic comfort, even though he engage in an occupation in which for so many hours a day the wearing of a white shirt, or of any shirt at all, is totally dispensed with. Some steps towards the realisation of this I witnessed with my own eyes at New Glasgow, where a man who had been broiling half-naked before a fiery furnace all day, was at twilight seated in cool, clean raiment, in his own little parlour (very tastefully furnished, too), playing one of Sousa’s marches on a pianola!