POSTING # 17

Plastic Bags on Earth Day in Virgil; He had to Get Out of Tulsequah; Secretary Treasurer of the Tulsequah Local of the Miners Union; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

Plastic Bags on Earth Day in Virgil

On Earth Day, April 22, the Virgil supermarket stopped providing free plastic bags.

Many customers had been bringing in ‘green’ bags and bins well before Earth Day, motivated I suspect by a mix of altruism and guilt. I don’t think the small charge that is now being made for plastic bags was a consideration.

It reminded me of my experience in the first supermarket in Leeds, England back in 1962 (the advertising for the new store called it an authentic American Supermarket). Until the supermarket opened, we customers read or gave our list of groceries to a clerk who scurried around to get our items------just as we had done in Canada before the advent of supermarkets---and placed them in the string bags we had brought with us.

We had had supermarkets in Canada for 15 years or so before we went to England, and we now found it frustrating to wait for a clerk to fill an order.

Soon after the Leeds supermarket opened, I filled my cart and went to the check out. After ringing up my order, the cashier asked if he could have my bags.

I said that I had assumed that the supermarket would be providing paper bags as they did in America (plastic bags came later).

“Supermarkets don’t provide bags in America”, he said.

“Yes, they do”, I replied.

He shook his head.

I thought about the quip we used to hear in Yorkshire about people from Lancashire: ‘You can always tell a lad from Lancashire but you can’t tell him much’.

And then I thought about pots and kettles.

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Looking back, Britain in the 1960s was in many ways closer to the goals of Earth Day than we are today (except for the terrible smogs caused by open coal fireplaces---which were in the process of being phased out).

For example:

Petrol was expensive and as a result cars were small and fuel efficient.

Electricity was costly so home owners used it sparingly.

For short trips, most people walked or bicycled.

Many people grew vegetables in their own gardens or on allotments provided by the city.

But the search for the so-called ‘good life’ in both Britain and North America created trends that have been leading us astray.

A few years ago, a friend from London, England and I were talking about these trends. We agreed that they had to change and each of us could see some promising signs.

I said that some people in Canada were now ridiculing huge SUVs by, for example, referring to them as Mall Terrain Vehicles.

He said that there was an astonishing number of SUVs in crowded London.

The locals referred to them, disparagingly, as Chelsea Tractors.

I loved it!


He had to Get out of Tulsequah

I never learned why Larry (not his real name) wanted to get out of Tulsequah.

But he sure wanted out.

Perhaps he had a really severe case of ‘cabin fever’ from being cooped up in an isolated mining camp in the north-western corner of British Columbia. Or he may have had problems with a wife or girlfriend back in Vancouver---problems that he wanted to get home to try to sort out.

He wasn’t saying.

He was a truck driver, in his late 20s, stocky with a fixed sullenness about him. Like the other workers in the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company (COMINCO) mine, he had signed a contract with the company to stay for a set period of time. In return, the Company paid for his fare from Vancouver to Tulsequah and would pay for his fare back to Vancouver.

The routing was complicated and the fare was not cheap. Workers recruited in Vancouver had to fly first to Seattle, catch a plane to Ketchikan, Alaska, then a seaplane to Juneau, Alaska and finally a bush plane to Tulsequah.

The Company was prepared to let him break the contract, but if he did, he would have to pay the full cost of both the fare to Tulsequah and the fare home.

It was June 1957 and I was on the second summer with Frontier College (see Posting #9, March 1, 2009) for stories about my first summer).

The Company decided that I should join Larry and the other truck drivers who were bringing newly-mined ore from half-way up a mountain---via a gravel road with many switchbacks---to a mill in the valley below. (The mill pulverized the ore and using various chemicals concentrated the ore for shipment by barge to Vancouver and then to a smelter.)

Once up the mountain, we backed in under a hopper that contained the ore rocks that had been dumped by mine railway cars.

Then we pulled a lever that opened a door in the hopper, allowing the ore to flow into the back of the truck. Once the truck was full we closed the hopper door and started the trip down the mountain.

The driving, which went on 24 hours a day, was mainly boring---up and down, up and down---but there were a couple of dangers that could make life interesting.

First, the hopper door could jam if a large piece of ore got trapped in it. There were long steel rods that we had to use to push or pry the rock out of the way. If the door couldn’t be closed, the ore just kept coming, and coming….

The second danger was on the way down the mountain. The driver had to find a way to keep the heavily-loaded truck from running away. The secret was to find the right balance of engine braking and air brakes to control the descent down the switchback road. If one used too much engine braking, by using too low a gear, the engine would overheat. If one chose too high a gear, the airbrakes would have to be used too much--- the pressure would fall and the brakes would eventually fail.

It wasn’t always easy to get the right balance. One night, my airbrake pressure got too low and I had to steer the truck into the bank on one of the switchbacks. I waited there until the pressure had come back up, then carried on down the mountain.

Reporting for work one morning, I was told there would be no driving for a few days. Larry had had a problem during the night. He claimed that while he was loading his truck, the hopper door jammed. He said he hadn’t been able to dislodge the rock. The ore poured down on the truck, burying it. The truck was a write-off.

It was treated as an accident and when the mess was cleaned away Larry was given a new truck, a brand new Autocar, which had just arrived by barge from Vancouver. We were told that it cost $150,000 (that’s about $1.2 million in 2009 dollars!)

It was a beautiful looking truck, with a luxurious cab. It had 18 speeds and something I really liked, an RPM gauge. The ore trucks had to be double-clutched to shift gears and this was tough when one was going up or down the mountain. Unless one got the RPM just right there would be a damaging (and embarrassing) grinding of gears. The old trucks didn’t have an RPM gauge and one just had to develop a feel for the speed of the engine. With the Autocar, you just waited until the RPM gauge was in the green zone and every shift was perfect.

We were all envious of Larry’s new truck.

I hoped the Autocar would improve Larry’s disposition---which, perhaps, was the Company’s hope as well.

Two days later, as I was having breakfast in the cookhouse one of the other drivers asked if I had heard about Larry. He said that during the night Larry’s new truck had gone off the road as he was coming down the mountain. Larry claimed, apparently, that the brakes had failed. He was just able to get out of the truck before it crashed down into a deep gully.

It was another write-off.

As I started to look around the cookhouse for Larry, my friend said that I wouldn’t be able to find him. A bush plane had been called and Larry was on his way to meet it. The Company had decided that enough was enough.

Larry had finally got his wish--- he was on his way home.

Secretary Treasurer of the Tulsequah Local of the Miners Union

In July of 1957, the Company announced that it would be mothballing Tulsequah in September---until the price of base metals picked up. Everyone would be laid off except for two watchmen who would stay on-site.

One of the early layoffs was a fellow who was Secretary Treasurer of the Tulsequah local of the union. Knowing that I would be around until almost the end, some workers nominated me to be Secretary Treasurer.

Normally, I wouldn’t have thought twice about accepting. I was paying dues to the Union and had always been a supporter of unions. The problem was that it was the International Mine and Mill and Smelter Union, a union that had alleged links with the Communist Party or at least with Communist sympathizers.

In the end, I decided to accept the post.

After I took over the Secretary Treasurer’s role, one of the workers said that if I didn’t run off with the local’s bank account I would be first one who hadn’t.

I asked him if the police had ever recovered the funds. He said the union never called the police.

“We’ve all been in jail---we would never send anyone there.”

As September approached, I closed out the bank accounts and arranged for all the funds---every last penny--- to be sent to the Union’s regional office in Vancouver.

In agreeing to take on the job, I had not thought that in a couple of years the RCMP would be conducting security checks on me as I applied for entry into the Foreign Service. I had written the Foreign Service exams and had done well enough to be offered a job, subject to background checks.

I don’t know whether my brief stint with the union’s local executive ever came to the RCMP’s attention. If it did, it was obviously---and properly--- treated as something of no security significance.

Still, although I knew I had done nothing wrong I was a bit apprehensive until the Government confirmed the job offer----meaning that I had passed the security check.


Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)


One evening during a holiday in France, we were driving in Paris trying to find our hotel and trying not to hit, or be hit, by aggressive Parisian drivers. Our child was in the backseat.

In the era before children’s car seats, our child wore a harness that was attached to the frame of the car. Believe or not, the harness was a state-of-the-art safety feature at that time, a safety feature that had not yet been adopted by most motorists. It allowed children to stand up and look out the windows but constrained them somewhat if there were a sudden stop or an accident.

As we navigated through the traffic, we heard a little voice from the backseat, “It’s gorgeous!”

A little later, a louder voice, “It’s gorgeous”.

At a traffic stop, we turned around and saw that our child was looking out the back window---at the Eiffel Tower.

And gorgeous, it was--- illuminated against the darkening sky!

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On the same trip, we had to use an elevator and we wondered how our child would react to its first elevator ride. We watched as the door shut and the elevator started to rise.

The child’s face grew puzzled, and then relaxed.

Looking up at us, the child said reassuringly, “Ride in a cupboard”.



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See you next Sunday for Posting #18 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or you can email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.