Coalhurst praised for celebration of miners

The differences in attitudes and population in certain places is remarkable.

I’m speaking of the very impressive and very successful Coalhurst Miners Day and parade, as compared to the never mentioned nor celebrated lives of the Coalbanks mine pioneers in our Lethbridge area. Yet these two communities are literally just a coulee and a hill apart!

This phenomenon, as a miner and union representative in my youth, seemed strangely out of whack to me when we moved here from Drumheller, a multi-coal mine area, after my discharge from the RCAF after serving my country.

May I reiterate that to the best of my knowledge, from the Crowsnest Pass on to Estevan, Sask., all the mining communities enjoy their annual Miners Day celebrations, and I have been asked to speak at every one of them as a representative of the United Mine Workers Association.

Congratulations and plaudits to Mayor Dennis Cassie and his many happily engaged volunteers and townspeople of Coalhurst, who again served and fed hundreds of people with breakfast and with their gracious smiles and hospitality.

The people of Coalhurst paid homage to the memory of the “Men of the Deep” who toiled constantly in dangerous underground coal mines for the black gold that fuelled the locomotives, the electricity-generating plants, and the home heating and cooking of their food.

The Coalhurst populace remember their coal miners who perished in one of Canada's worst mine disasters in history. They pay their respects for some of the surviving family members. Bless the community leaders for their leadership in these annual celebrations

Plaudits to the politicians, including Rachael Harder and the local Fort Macleod riding MLA, and the RCMP, Police Sheriffs, the No. 8 Mine folks, and all the contributing personnel in the Coalhurst parade.

There seemed to be a lack of representation from the Lethbridge City Council despite the few miles of community separation, and the fact the Lethbridge Coalbanks mine’s union instilled the 48-hour work week into the Canadian labour agreement in the 1930s, when the federal labour minister of the day, Mackenzie King, came to Lethbridge to settle a long coal mine strike.

Frank J. Toth

Lethbridge