Odds ‘n’ sods: A multi-purpose shaft

The late, great prospector John “Scotty” Skodusky of Margaree of Cape Breton Island, N.S., was a dreamer.

The first day I met Skodusky, in 1961, I was still a geological sprout. I phoned him and mentioned that I’d like to meet with him and talk about some of his prospects near Cheticamp, on the west side of the island. He agreed, and instucted me to proceed to his shaft-sinking operation on Pulp Road, in the hills near Margaree Valley. He said he would be down the shaft in the inside of his cabin and warned me that when I entered, I should watch my step. I then asked him what he was sinking the shaft on, and he said “I really don’t know, maybe you can tell me when you get here.” Puzzling.

The next day I drove to his camp, which was an old, tar-papered shack with a high-peaked roof containing a trestle that extended out from the front of the cabin. Below the trestle was a muck pile.

While walking toward an open door at the side of the shack, I was startled by a small wooden bucket that shot out from the trestle, tipped over and dumped its load of muck and then rapidly disappeared back inside the camp — all this in the blink of an eye. I timidly entered the shack and spied another door at the rear where I could hear muffled clinking sounds. A sign by the door read: “Beware of open hole, miner below.”

I entered the small room, looked down into the a twenty-five-foot hole and noticed a man hunched over and hand-drilling the base of the hole. “Hello below,” I shouted, and up the ladder came a grimey, short yet powerfully built fellow with a wide grin on his kind but rugged face.

He grabbed my hand, placed it in his huge paw and quipped, “Dr. Livingstone I presume.” He then scampered back down the ladder, only to return a few seconds later with an earthware jug and a rock sample.

We proceeded to a table outside, where he poured us two glasses of home-made beer and handed me the rock sample.

I really did not know what to say. The rock was barren red granite, but I was reluctant to rain on his parade.

I meekly asked him what the rock had assayed. He replied, “I’ve never done any assaying because the good stuff won’t be encountered until the shaft is down to 60 ft.” I then quietly asked him what he expected to find at that depth.

“A large blob of some sort of precious metal at the intersection of the two fractures.” I wanted to laugh but didn’t dare!

After another glass of beer, I got up enough courage to ask him how he knew the “blob” was exactly at 60 ft. He looked at me knowingly and replied, “Because I have had many dreams here in this cabin, and my dreams tell me that the ore is at that depth.” In the same breath, he added that if the zone were not there, it wouldn’t bother him too much, because he needed something to do, and besides, the shaft was great place to keep his beer cold.

He then demonstrated his ingenious method of muck removal, which consisted of a wooden bucket moving on a number of rails; the whole contraption manipulated by a series ropes and pulleys down in the shaft. I asked him how he thought of this idea, and he told me that this, too, had come to him in a dream.

I left in a hurry.

Several days later, I met a geologist who knew Skodusky, and I asked him why he was sinking a shaft into barren granite.

“Scotty was unemployed and bored-stiff, so he decided to sink the shaft to keep in shape,” he said. I decided not to tell him about Skodusky’s dreams.

Later, Skodusky and I became friends when I hired him to prospect several promising mineral properties I had optioned from him in the Cheticamp area. He only talked about the shaft once. He said that when he made enough money, he would drill two inclined holes reaching 60 ft. “to see what’s down there.”

Several months later, he called me. After making some money in the stock market, Skodusky drilled those holes and found nothing.

“I’ll sleep better knowing what’s down there,” he told me, and then suggested we meet at the Keltic Lodge for the upcoming convention of the Nova Scotia Mining Society, noting that he would have a surprise for me from the shaft.

When he approached me at the lodge, he was carrying two bottles of moonshine. He then told me he had dreamt that the shaft would make a great place for a still. He said it was fun to build the still but even more fun to drink the ‘shine.

— The author is the president of Nova Scotia-based Ecum Secum Enterprises.