ODDS `N’ SODS/ROGER LAFRANCE — A hazardous exit

Rio Algom’s Quirke uranium mine was originally developed, along with the Panel mine and 10 other Elliot Lake operations, between 1955 and 1958.

Back in the late 1950s, I was an underground worker at the Quirke, and my partner and I had a unique setup for getting to our workplace at a production stope on the first level.

The Quirke was on the tail-end of the saucer-shaped uranium orebody that made up the Elliot Lake camp. Because of this location, some of the stopes on the first level of the mine broke out into an adit driven into the side of a mountain for purposes of safety as well as ventilation.

At 2 o’clock on one particularly warm summer morning, my partner and I had just completed our shift and decided pick a few blueberries, which were abundant that particular summer, on our way to the shaft house and the dry facilities.

I had just climbed off the short raise ladder and started to walk out of the adit when my miner’s lamp illuminated something blocking my path — a large, black, furry mass was laying peacefully in the middle of the narrow passage.

The light from my lamp and the noise I was making awakened the mass just as I recognized it for what it really was.

To this day, I don’t know if that bear made it out of the adit before I was back down the stope; nor do I know if I touched any of the rungs of the ladder on the way down.

Needless to say, for the next month, my partner and I used the conventional mine exit.

— The author, a mining consultant, resides in Beloeil, Que.