LETTER TO THE EDITOR — Experience the glue binding mining industry together

I have worked in the mining industry for the past 27 years on a full-time basis.

Preceding this, I worked for three years with Coleman Collieries at its Tent Mountain operation. Those were the days of roughing it. I was a bulldozer operator and we breathed dust and fumes until we were dizzy. I finally made pit foreman the last year I was there.

In 1969, I was hired on with Kaiser Resources as a shovel operator. I eventually made it to the lofty position of assistant superintendent. By this time (it was 1984), the mine was being operated by Westar Mining.

I then left Canada and went to work for Exxon at its El Cerrejon project in Colombia. I spent five years there as a senior supervisor working with one of the four shovel-and-truck crews.

Back in in this country, I did some consulting work for Byron Creek Collieries and Westar Mining.

I then went to work in India for four years as a general foreman with Met-Chem Canada. Back in Canada, I took a position with Anvil Range Mining in the Yukon, where I worked for

two years as superintendent of operations.

The point of this letter is that during all of my working years in mining, I always seemed to be teaching someone the practical side — managing people, machinery and production.

These people are normally professional engineers. They have the smarts to be engineers, but, in nine out of 10 cases, they have no experience in managing a mining operation. Yet companies starting a new operation invariably want only engineers. This leads to many problems with workers and makes it difficult to achieve production targets. I’m wondering when someone will realize that the old farts, with all their practical exposure, are still needed to keep an operation together?

Orval C. Walmsley, Lethbridge, Alta.