July 10, 2016
In college, Jane had been moved by the song The Ballad of Springhill which she heard on a Peter, Paul and Mary album. It tells the story of miners trapped after an explosion. The route from Prince Edward Island to Hilden, Nova Scotia took us very near the coal mine where the song was set. The travel day was only 153 miles, so we stopped in at the mine where a non-profit organization maintains a small museum and offers a tour of a shaft.
The museum included a letter from Peggy Seeger, the song’s author, to one of the miners featured in the song.
As the workday started, miners would hang up their street clothes and hang a brass tag with their unique number on it on a board at the entrance to the mine. We donned hard hats, and jackets and were given our own tags to hang up.
At the conclusion of the tour, we were told what had happened to the miner who had been assigned that tag. We knew of six people who took the tour; five of the six miners represented died in accidents or as a result of illness contracted in the mine. The mine had a history of accidents and other explosions, and, after the 1958 explosion, the mine closed.
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