They had about five ADDs; they were 2 ½ yard machines, and that was big in those days.  They had one Corring, and a little Model 25 with a breaker ball on it for bashing the rocks. "The shovels were ADD Northwest, and they could tip over and go on their sides; I know that because I put one on its side. I think it was my first night on the night-shift, and somehow or other I came around with the bucket too far out and it overbalanced and flopped over.

One driver dumped a truck over the hill on Argonaut Road; that was one of the ore trucks that went to the Spit in Campbell River. A truck came right over the bank of the pit one time; the rocks caught in it and hoisted it up, and it went right over the edge, right over backwards. The driver baled; he had to jump probably twenty feet.

"Harry Grey was the Master Mechanic; a very nice fellow, and Wally Lewellyn was a welder;  I remember he had that little restaurant in Willow Point and the boys used to run it all the time, I forget what they called it. Anyway, he was up at the mine for a long time, too. I think he started around the same time I did, in 1951. He was a happy go lucky guy; every time he and Jack Knowles met they would wrestle. George Knowles worked up there; he was on the drilling and blasting quite a bit. Utah Construction owned the Argonaut, they were an American company.

 "There was a story on those Mac tractors with the belly-dump trailers, though I don't know what make the trailers were. They wanted to cut down their hauling costs so they pulled double-trailers, but they were way overloaded and didn't have enough traction for double-trailers, or even enough brakes. So they put a tank on the tractor and filled it with ore for more weight and they pulled that both ways. Of course that didn't work, so they eventually gave up on that idea, cut the trailers and put four feet in the guts, right in the middle of them, and settled for that.

"Just about every building up at the Argonaut had holes in the roof. The powerhouse roof got a dandy hole in it, one time. Another time, they took us all up the road about two miles in the bus. They took everybody out but the one blaster; he was taking shelter in a in a shovel bucket or something. The blast was a big one, and it froze. That's when a blast goes off and it almost goes back to solid rock. I don't understand it but, instead of moving out, it stayed in one place. It took them months to dig that one out!

"One night, a fellow hit dynamite with the bucket. The hinges on the bucket were about a foot deep and a foot wide, and that blast took the bucket clean off; it peeled it right off, and he ended up way in the back of the shovel behind his motor! They figured there were seven sticks of dynamite, two feet long and six inches around; they were good ones. They didn't know it hadn't gone off when it was supposed to, and he was digging away there and didn't see them, either. When they were digging iron ore, you could see the fire coming out from under the bucket all the time, it was actually sparking all the time and that set the dynamite off. The poor guy….he was back to work about 5 months later. He worked at Menzies with us too, in the shop there.

"A lot of the main mountain is still there; I think it was 1820 feet at the top and 1420 feet was the bottom when we left there. All the water that went in there came out with pumps, instead of putting a hole through the side of the pit for drainage. They started on a hill and just worked there way around, they call it terraced, going back and forth up there. The main road level was 1500 feet, and they went down after that to 1420 feet. If it really poured rain, they had trouble keeping the water out, boy! They had giant pumps, but they still couldn't keep it out. I'm sure there is still ore up there; I imagine they could re-open it, but they'd have to go down quite a ways.

"Halfway through 1956 I went over to the Hydro Dam, it was a lot closer! Harry Grey went there, too. We were building the Strathcona Dam; it took a few years to build that one. I think I got five years out of it. The Argonaut couldn't get along without me; they closed two years after I left! I'm just kidding. Most of the equipment went to Texada, and a lot of the guys went there with it.

"After the dam, I went to MacMillan Bloedel, Menzies Bay, and I was out there for thirty years, until I retired at 65. The manager wanted me to stay!"