Riding the rake
Funding will allow miners’ museum to simulate underground tour experience above ground
Officials with the Cape Breton Miners’ Museum say new federal funding will allow them to bring their underground coal mine experience to the surface.
On Wednesday, Cape BretonCanso MP Rodger Cuzner was at the museum to announce $1.5 million in funding for thematic and orientation displays to depict a coal miner’s daily reality, including an immersive simulator that mimics traveling underground in a rake car.
“We’re over the moon,” said Mary Pat Mombourquette, executive director.
“This is going to help us create a vital dynamic museum that will immerse our visitors in the coal mining experience. I can’t wait to start making it happen.”
Mombourquette said some people are timid about going underground, while some older people
— include a number of cruise ship visitors — have mobility issues and can’t go down into the mine yet still want that experience.
“For people who are scared to go down in the mine, with mobility issues (and) all that sort of thing, this simulator will allow them to have that experience.”
The funding will also allow for a briefing room and lamp house to recreate the miners’ journey to and from the mines.
Cuzner, making the announcement on behalf of Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Navdeep
Bains, also minister for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA), and Minister of Canadian Heritage Melanie Joly, said the funding was to create an enhanced experiential-based visitor experience at the museum.
During the summer months, Cuzner said his wife has nieces and nephews who have visited and gone to miners’ museum, wanting to understand more about their roots and where they came from.
“Having had grandparents who worked in the mines that raised families in this community, this is the place to do it,” he said.
“To come in and experience the miners’ museum just tells us so much about ourselves. The artifacts are incredible, the presentations are incredible and obviously the richest part of this is having the opportunity to go underground with the miners and hear those stories and connect with those stories.”
Cuzner said for visitors still nervous about going underground, this will open up that experience for them.
“The scenery is great but tourists want to find out about the community, they want to listen to our music and hear our stories and that’s where they come, to the miners’ museum.
“That’s why today’s announcement is so important.”
Cuzner commended the board of directors for understanding the role the museum plays in the broader community.
“You’ve got a crackerjack in Mary Pat (Mombourquette), she has done a tremendous job here,” he said, to thunderous.
Mombourquette said once work was done to the interior of the museum and it was safe they looked at what they could do to better enhance the visitor’s experience with the coal mining culture and how they could use media to immerse visitors into their story.
“This is the first step in making that dream a reality,” she said.
The visitor will get into the rake cart, what the miners used to take to go down the slope of the mine. The cart will have 15 seats on benches.
“Each seat will go up and down and back and forth, it will give you the feeling that you are moving,” she said.
“For 360 degrees around you will be media film that will make you feel like you are going down into the mine. You are going to see men digging, coal cars coming up the mine. We’re even playing around with ‘should we do an explosion?’”
Mombourquette said excavation and construction will take place in the spring. The simulator will be built off site and then moved inside the museum. It is expected to be up and running this fall.
“It’s going to be a once-in-alifetime experience.”
Mombourquette praised ACOA during the announcement, saying they’ve been there for the museum when the village was falling apart and are there for them again now.
As well, Mombourquette said, she was pleased to see CBRM Mayor Cecil Clarke and Glace Bay MLA Geoff MacLellan at the funding announcement, even though they didn’t have any money for the museum.
“They came to show support for the museum and that really meant the world to me to see them here.”