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"There was a big iron heater in the central part of this office and in the winter of 1910 it got so cold at night that even with the bedroom doors open and the stove red hot, we couldn't get much sleep. We had to move our cots out alongside the heater. Even at that, although the side of the body next to the heater would get warm the side away from it would get cold. This necessitated several reverses during the night not to mention getting up occasionally to put more coal on the heater. There were also pack rats which came down during the night from their hide-outs in the logs, and made a racket. They would make off with the soap or any other small article that they could handle that was left around."

"In the spring and summer of 1911 a number of new company buildings had been erected on the Hillcrest townsite. These included a two-storey general office, a two-story general manager's house and another smaller two-storey house, all on the one side of main street. In addition, on the adjacent street, three two bedroom cottages for the accommodation of the mine manager and other officials were completed. My office in the main building was a large room, fitted up with drafting tables, filing cabinets, blue printing facilities, etc."

"In the summer of 1911 my brother David, also a trained engineer, joined me. Much construction was underway. The new power house had been erected and equipped in 1911 and was now supplying power for all our mining and other operations. In 1912 the new steel tipple was completed by a firm of American contractors. It didn't take them long to get the steel erected and the retaining flight conveyor installed."

"The structure was wide enough to include a timber walk-way on one side all the way up. It had cross cleats to prevent slipping. Windows were provided through the sheathing on both sides and electric lights installed. The new tipple was a very substantial structure and able to handle all the coal we could put out. We were fast approaching our objective of 2000 tonnes a day when a major disaster occurred."

Continuing Mr. Wm. Hutchinson's Memoirs:

"Being mine surveyor and one of the few mine officials left alive I got out the blue prints of the mine workings and was in demand to go with rescue squads to locate bodies. I lived at the mine for days after the explosion, slept on the power-house floor and lived principally on coffee and sandwiches brought up from town."

"At the time of the Hillcrest explosion and for a number of years afterward, safety lamps were used by everyone entering a coal mine. These lamps were kept in a lamp cabin in charge of a lamp man whose duty it was to see they were kept in shape and examined before being issued to the men going on shift. These lamps were replaced by electric headlights, a very great advance in illumination. These lamps received their current from an electric battery in a metal case, carried on a waist-belt by the wearer. A rubber covered cable connected the lamp to the battery. The firebosses, who were responsible for examining the gas, carried the old safety lamp as well as wearing the headlights."

Mr. Hutchinson was assistant general manager and chief engineer at Hillcrest Mine when war was declared in August 1914. He enlisted on September 1 that year, served on the European battlefields, received his discharge in April, 1919, and returned to Hillcrest. He picked up his former position at the mine.

This article is extracted from Crowsnest and its People: Millennium Edition (Coleman, Alberta, Crowsnest Pass Historical Society, 2000) .  The Heritage Community Foundation and the Year of the Coal Miner Consortium would like to thank the authors and the Crowsnest Pass Historical Society for permission to reprint this material.

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