The Greener Grass

For 18 years Raymond Cameron, 39, had dug coal in Cape Breton's pits. Last February, along with 13,000 other Maritime miners, he went on strike for more pay. Out of the 99-day strike, the miners got a basic $1-a-day pay boost, bringing the day's average to $12. But Miner Cameron was not satisfied with working conditions.

He had heard of greener pastures in Alberta, where the coal mines needed men. One day last month, with five fellow miners, he piled into a prewar Ford and headed west.

Nine days later, the six reached Lethbridge, 3,600 miles away, where they heard that miners could earn $15 a day. Within an hour, Cameron and four of his friends had jobs at a Lethbridge Collieries Ltd. mine. The sixth had a job near by.

After three days they had had enough. They were good miners, said their boss, but they were soft-coal miners in a hard-coal mine and they seemed "as lost as a lobster in an Alberta lake." Said one of the Capemen: "We want no more of it. It's too hard work."

Last week, Miner Cameron was back with the Dominion Coal Co., Ltd., at New Waterford, N.S. He explained:

"In Cape Breton we just dig a hole in the coal face, put in the powder, and the coal is blown out for us. All we have to do is shovel it. Out there you have to use a jackhammer to pry the coal off the face, and even after that you have to dig the rocks out. That kind of mining isn't easy.

"Besides, I don't like that dust that blows down off the mountains. Some people may think the mountains are beautiful, but once you have seen a mountain out there you've seen 'em all, and that's too many. Why, there's mountains out there that grass doesn't even grow on. Anybody who calls that beauty is nuts. We went West to find out for ourselves which was the best place. We soon found out. Nova Scotia is best."

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