ODDS’N’SODS — In praise of recreation

Production of silver has been almost continuous from the ground high above the village of Beaverdell, B.C., since 1898. Many veins of limited individual extent were mined over nearly 100 years prior to closure in 1991.

Following the Second World War, claim ownership over the outcroppings had been largely settled and, for the first time in some years, ample labor (mostly European immigrants) became available. During the late 1950s, the manager, concerned about sustaining morale among the workers, decided that some recreation was in order. What induced him to think that the favorite pastime of Germans and Ukrainians was tennis, it has never been clear. Nevertheless, some nearly flat ground close to the bunkhouse was to be cleared and leveled.

Eventually the bulldozer arrived, was unloaded and shortly began to bite into the surface talus. Later, the manager arrived at this novel operation to see what was going on. He couldn’t believe his eyes when he espied a relatively wide vein exposed on the hillside, bearing the typical silver-rich lead and zinc minerals of the local ore.

The dozer operator was immediately ordered to clean off the strike extensions of this new find and excavate stream diversions. He never did get back to leveling ground in the designated area, and left on completion of the contracted period.

Consequently, the would-be tennis players of the company never received their court. But the mine added to its always-slim ore reserve — with not just a numbered orebody but a name: the “Tennis Court Vein,” which eventually proved to be a senior producer.

It is still difficult to trace a moral to the story. Personally, I would judge the manager a little short on elemental gratitude. He already had approval for recreation expenses. Now, he had improved the ore reserve picture for nothing. The least he could have done was to have had the dozer level another piece of ground to establish another vein — er, tennis court — for the recreational benefit of his crew.

(The late Bruno Goetting, who had arrived on the property in 1952 and was later promoted to manager, told me the preceding story during a visit to the mine in the 1980s.)

— Ken Hymas is a consulting mining engineer in Toronto.