Rob-n-Hild, oot and aboot eh? Sorry - 2022

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Fun in Val-d'Or

We had booked a 4-hour tour of an underground gold mine that was operational from 1935 until 1985: Lamaque Mine. In 1995 they opened up the tourist attraction.

After some introductory notes about the mine, they brought us to the dry room. At first it looked like people were strung up and dangling from the ceiling! In fact it was the overalls we were to put on with helmets and head-lamps. Then Hild was happy to learn that they were going to transport us underground 91 metres in a tractor-contraption and not in an elevator. Somehow her claustrophobia is more intense in a small elevator compared to an open carriage with rock face flying by your head/helmet! Go figure. Claustrophobia never makes sense...

Underground we were met with various displays showing what it was like to work there: blasting and digging for ore in gold veins set in quartz, moving up and down between levels and daylight. Happy to be in a carriage and not on ladders.

We learnt about:

Room-and-pillar extraction techniques used mainly in horizontal veins with a scraper to remove the broken ore.
Cut-and-fill where stopes are filled in when the ore has been extracted, then move on to the next area.
Excavating a rise either by hand or by machine to follow a vein, access to upper stopes, or to create an emergency exit.
Broken ore has to be sprayed down with water and compressed air to control the ammonia gas, otherwise... boom next time you drill!

We learnt about:

The need to secure all the ceilings from caving in because 50% of all fatal accidents have been caused by rock-falls.
A very handy (but leaky-looking) survival tent with compressed air when someone is in trouble.
The detonators are stored far away from the actual explosives.
The ore was dropped 1,600 feet down to the primary crusher before it was brought to the surface.

The "Much-Machine" was a favourite 1931 invention for the miners: running on compressed air and batteries this scoop-type loader made their lives so much easier.

Back above ground went through the assay office and learnt about the various machines that grind the samples, run the assays, analyze the results and figure out the grade of the ore. Rob even caught some photos of the assay protocol. We loved the scales where all the weights were in a glass box so you couldn't touch them and affect the accuracy.

The mill building and equipment are no longer there, so we had to settle for studying a model in the assay office.

We went to see the top of the lift shaft. Again, Hild was happy not to have used this one - a tiny cage to hold 14 people! I think not! It was also a relief to see that the shaft has been filled in with cement.

Following a very thick cable - we found the hoist room. A very important man would sit there and lift 28 men in two cages at 500 metres per minute up and down the mine shaft all day. One trip would take 3 minutes...

The tour also let us rent a couple of audio-guides to take a self-guided tour around the mine-town Bourlamaque. That was so much fun too. We learnt how Bourlamaque was very carefully planned to house everyone from the manager, important visitors, to mine workers. The log-style houses were very familiar and looked like Norwegian cottages except they were painted really nicely: Dark brown with white and red trim. Life as a mine worker was definitely better than being a farmer at the time. In comparison, there was no planning involved when they established and grew Val d-Or.

A fun bit of trivia said that people had tables where they could gamble and have fun, and quickly flip them over when the police decided to drop by. Sneaky!

Of peculiar items today we had:

A never-before-seen road sign - to warn us of a drain grid below... (?!)
A Canada Post mailbox deep down in a gold mine!
Someone's lawn ornament with gold set into the quartz - or maybe fool's gold? Looks nice anyway.
The use of gold in 1982: 55% for jewellery, 28% stockpiled, 6% in electronics, 4% in dentistry, 5% for decoration, and 2 % for medals.
The use of gold in 2020: 38% jewellery, 47% investment, 8% in technology, 7% central bank purchase (As per NRCAN)

May/June 2022

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