Bellevue Underground Mine Tour
Crowsnest Pass, Alberta
www.bellevuemine.ca
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Capturing the Miner's Image
by John Kinnear
Forty years ago a geologist freshly graduated from the University of Alaska crawled into a 3-foot high underground roadway in a coal mine in Minto, New Brunswick and was forever transformed! That geologist's name as Lawrence Chrismas and that visit to a place where they had been mining an 18-inch coal seam for over 350 years was his introduction to the world of Canadian coal miners. Despite the overwhelming claustrophobia he experienced that day as he watched the miners lying on their sides digging coal, he realized that he wanted to see more.
From Minto, he toured mines like the now closed down "Princess" in Cape Breton, where he went underground five miles beneath the ocean floor. There he experienced a "bump" set off by a blast, and in a short order came to realize that there were hundreds of remarkable men who worked in coalmines across Canada, and their story should be documented.
It wasn't until he experienced first hand the numbing shock that Canmore residents endured during their mine closure in 1979 that he finally began his significant photo-documentary process. He spent a week photographing and interviewing miners there, some of whom owned "Napoleon mantle clocks" awarded them for 50 years of service to the Canmore Mines.
For more than 25 years Lawrence Chrismas traveled back and forth across Canada from Nanaimo, BC. to Glace Bay, Nova Scotia capturing images of Canadian coal miners on film and using his knowledge and respect for this unique breed of men to conduct invaluable interviews.
The Alberta side of the Crowsnest Pass with its rich coal mining history did not go unnoticed by Lawrence. Many trips were made here and its part in Canada's coal mining story was thoroughly documented. Ultimately Mr. Chrismas released his remarkable documentation in a 1998 award-winning book entitled Coal Dust Grins and a music CD of original mining songs of the same name.
It is 312 pages of commemoration to the industry that includes 280 beautifully printed photographs from the 5 coal producing provinces. 85 communities and 50 coalmines are artfully represented. It has captured the very essence of a world that my family has been a part of for 3 generations.
Lawrence Chrismas didn't just point a 35mm camera in miner's faces and flick on a tape recorder. His methodology was much more respectful and qualitative than that. He used a full portrait (view) camera for his image capturing. That tripod mounted camera uses 8 by 10-inch black and white negatives loaded onto removable reversible plates. He is principally a landscape photographer and his marvelous compositional ability was revealed over and over again in the book where photo after photo of Canada's coal mining finest, past and present, stand in sharp context.
In the book's Crowsnest Pass segment he reaffirms this masterful ability to blend subject and surroundings. In it is a classic photo of Jack Marconi standing in his yard in Coleman. He was the definitive coal miner, a man who worked underground for 43 years and who's deep, authoritative voice made this college-bound coal miner jump to attention every time! Alongside Jack, Lawrence documented wonderful characters like Ferucio Dececo who said: "If my father had been alive, he would have broken both my legs before he let me go underground. But I didn't mind it. Actually, there was a lot of friendship and fun down the mine. I think that's the one thing missing now in any job." Ferucio's dad came to the Pass from Italy in 1903, the year of the slide, and worked at Leitch Collieries as a stone mason. There are also profiles of Pass miners like Bill Bisztal, Chic Roughead, Ernie Montalbetti, Joe Beilan, Victor Belik as well as a man who survived 43 years at Bellevue and Vicary Mines. He went on to become an interpreter at Leitch Collieries and his name was Albert Goodwin. Their entertaining biographies are not only enlightening, but also profound, because the philosophies and off-the- cuff comments of these veteran survivors surely have a message for all of us. The Pass segment also profiles lots of "more modern" coal miners, most of which can be found in the BC section where they work.
Since 1998 Lawrence Chrismas has pursued other avenues of artistic expression and research including photographic studies of the fast disappearing old-time small town musicians and of some of the communities and marvelous people who live along the might Fraser River. Lawrence has become an accomplished storyteller, which gives him the opportunity to share his stories in the aural tradition about mining people from across Canada. He is a member of Storytellers of Canada.
Recently Lawrence has begun a new project of photographing and interviewing "Mining Women" including the wives of coal miners and to women who have worked or are working in the mining industry.
Lawrence was in the Crowsnest Pass in early August to begin his research and interviewing process here, where women connected to the rich and diverse coal mining story of the Pass will be invited to share their experiences and observations with him. He was the premier speaker at the annual Bellevue Miners' Memorial at the Bellevue Underground Mine at 11:00 am on Sunday, August 6th.