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Three Dollar Dreams
YOU CAN'T DIG MUCH DEEPER INTO B.C. history than Lynne Bowen. Boss Whistle (Oolichan $12.95), her first book, was a major oral history of Vancouver Island colliers and their families. Sponsored by Nanaimo's Coal Tyee Society and culled from the late Myrtle Bergren's 130 hours of interviews with ex-miners, Boss Whistle earned the Eatons B.C. Book Award in 1983.
Now comes Three Dollar Dreams (Oolichan $29.95), her second book, detailing the frequently violent labour history of south Island coal mining from 1848 to 1900. "I didn't have a living memory to guide me this time," she says.
After delving into the archives of 1850, Bowen has reconstructed the West Coast's first coal miner's strike. Marooned in miserable working conditions at the Hudson Bay Company's failed Fort Rupert mine, two Scottish born protesters were fined, fed on bread and water, and clapped in leg irons.
Just over a century ago, when an explosion ripped through Nanaimo's 1 mine, 148 workers died. Bowen has found a handwritten copy of the 1887 inquest which reveals the tragedy was caused by coal dust exploding not by unsafe Chinese labourers as was widely suggested at the time.
"Since the explosion Oriental labour remained a large issue in British Columbia," says Bowen, "right up to the second World War." The Coal Tyee Society, which also commissioned Bowen's second work, derives its name from the original discovery of coal on Vancouver Island in 1852 by an Indian from Winthuysen Inlet 60 miles north of Fort Victoria. After a blacksmith transmitted this coal report of the Indian coal chief of 'Coal Tyee' to James Douglas, the Hudson Bay Company established a mining settlement called Colviletown.
Colviletown later became Nanaimo. Hosting the celebratory Malaspina book launch for Three Dollar Dreams, local MLA Dale Lovick called the event, "an important night in Nanaimo's history and an important evening in labour history beyond what the bigshots did and beyond what the politicians did." The Coal Tyee is also sponsoring a video project, produced by playwright Rod Langley, to capture the faces and recollections of early B.C. coal miners who are still living. Coal Tyee members have also been meeting with Lynne Bowen once a month for the past seven years.
"The Coal Tyee Society gave this history book flesh n' blood," said publisher Ron Smith, "and most importantly they've given it heart."
[BCBW 1988] "Mining";
Now comes Three Dollar Dreams (Oolichan $29.95), her second book, detailing the frequently violent labour history of south Island coal mining from 1848 to 1900. "I didn't have a living memory to guide me this time," she says.
After delving into the archives of 1850, Bowen has reconstructed the West Coast's first coal miner's strike. Marooned in miserable working conditions at the Hudson Bay Company's failed Fort Rupert mine, two Scottish born protesters were fined, fed on bread and water, and clapped in leg irons.
Just over a century ago, when an explosion ripped through Nanaimo's 1 mine, 148 workers died. Bowen has found a handwritten copy of the 1887 inquest which reveals the tragedy was caused by coal dust exploding not by unsafe Chinese labourers as was widely suggested at the time.
"Since the explosion Oriental labour remained a large issue in British Columbia," says Bowen, "right up to the second World War." The Coal Tyee Society, which also commissioned Bowen's second work, derives its name from the original discovery of coal on Vancouver Island in 1852 by an Indian from Winthuysen Inlet 60 miles north of Fort Victoria. After a blacksmith transmitted this coal report of the Indian coal chief of 'Coal Tyee' to James Douglas, the Hudson Bay Company established a mining settlement called Colviletown.
Colviletown later became Nanaimo. Hosting the celebratory Malaspina book launch for Three Dollar Dreams, local MLA Dale Lovick called the event, "an important night in Nanaimo's history and an important evening in labour history beyond what the bigshots did and beyond what the politicians did." The Coal Tyee is also sponsoring a video project, produced by playwright Rod Langley, to capture the faces and recollections of early B.C. coal miners who are still living. Coal Tyee members have also been meeting with Lynne Bowen once a month for the past seven years.
"The Coal Tyee Society gave this history book flesh n' blood," said publisher Ron Smith, "and most importantly they've given it heart."
[BCBW 1988] "Mining";
Submitted on October 25, 2004 in By David.
