After spending a couple of weeks driving almost 2,500 miles across Newfoundland to explore its nooks and crannies from one coast to the other, Steven and I were excited to tour more of Nova Scotia, or New Scotland. After a 16-hour overnight ferry ride from Argentia, we arrived back in North Sydney's ferry terminal, which had also been our departure point for the shorter ferry to Newfoundland's southwest coast.
It was less than a half-hour's drive along the Peacekeepers' Highway to Sydney, the only city on Cape Breton Island, where my parents began their married lives in 1946. My mother was an English war bride from Bedford, and my father was from Saint John, New Brunswick.
Field after field of lovely lupines greeted us along the roadside. Coincidentally, they were the last flowers we had also seen in Newfoundland.
My three older brothers, Andrew, John, and Paul, were born in Sydney and lived in this home at 98 George St. until the family moved about 1,000 miles west to Ottawa in early 1954. My younger brother, Keith, and I were born in Canada's capital city.
As Steven and I hadn't walked around Sydney on our previous trips to this part of Nova Scotia, we took the time to do it now, figuring we'd never likely return. A couple of blocks from my family's home stood Cossit House, built in 1787, one of the oldest surviving houses in Sydney. It was named for its original owner, Reverend Ranna Cossit, who, after the American Revolution, was assigned to the British colony in Cape Breton, then separate from mainland Nova Scotia. The Anglican minister later assumed a key role in Sydney’s social and political development.
When the ship Northern Friends arrived in Sydney Harbour with 415 Scottish settlers in early August 1802, it marked the first emigration directly from Scotland to Cape Breton. It was the vanguard of the Great Migration, which gave the island its Scottish character. In Canada, we're used to seeing signs in both English and French. The sign on the monument by the harbor, however, was in English and Gaelic!
Across from the monument stood St. Patrick's Church Museum, the oldest remaining Roman Catholic church on Cape Breton Island, with construction beginning in 1828 and featuring hand-hewn stone and wood. It served as a place of worship until 1950, and in 1966, the Old Sydney Society converted it into a museum to preserve its history.
The bronze A Land of Our Own statue portrayed a man and his son arriving in a new land, symbolizing the immigrants who settled in Cape Breton.
In front of the Visitors' Centre, the delightful Big Fiddle celebrated the importance that fiddlers and their music have played in the island's Celtic heritage. First brought to Cape Breton Island by Scottish immigrants, contemporary fiddle music is influenced by Acadian, Irish, and Mi'kmaq Indigenous sounds. The almost 56-foot-tall monument, the world's tallest fiddle, weighed 8 tons and was made of painted steel.
Chairs were also oversized!
It was a quiet time for a stroll along the city's boardwalk.
There was extensive signage about the city's contributions during the Second World War. Coal, steel, and other critical war materials for the Allied war effort in Europe were shipped from Sydney. At the beginning of the war, the city became the assembly port for convoys, which were often described as Europe's lifeline. The convoys most often consisted of old, dilapidated merchant ships never intended for the open sea.
Because of the demand for manpower in the armed forces and industry, it wasn't uncommon to see men in their 40s and 50s serving alongside teenage boys on merchant ships. I hadn't known that some women also joined the merchant navy and served throughout the war.
During the Battle of the Atlantic, which raged from 1939 to 1945, there was a constant danger of a merchant ship being torpedoed or bombed, often without any warning. On every ship but a tanker, sailors slept with a life preserver on; there was no point on a tanker. Those who survived being attacked faced hours, even days, on an open raft or a small boat. Those left in the water didn't survive long, as a convoy couldn't rescue survivors. Thousands went to their deaths in the "eternal sea." Of the 177 convoys, most averaging more than 14 ships per convoy, that sailed from Sydney during the Battle of the Atlantic, 48 convoys were successfully attacked by German U-Boats, resulting in the loss of 226 ships. While larger ports such as New York and Halifax were also well-known assembly points for convoys, Sydney played an equally important and significant role in securing Europe's victory.
Founded as a site for a colonial capital in 1785, Sydney was chosen by Loyalists, American colonists who maintained allegiance to the British Crown during the Revolutionary War. They were referred to in the U.S. as turncoats, however, for abandoning the U.S.
The area that later became Sydney was home to the Mi'kmaq people, a refuge for Basque fishermen in the 16th century, and was known to 17th-century European visitors as Spanish Bay. As we had already discovered, it became the port of entry for 50,000 Scottish immigrants who settled Cape Breton Island in the early 19th century.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Sydney was transformed from a quiet little town into a major industrial center, becoming one of North America's leading producers of steel and coal. 
Back in the car, we drove toward Fort Petrie, one of seven World War II era fortifications, built in 1939 at a time when the threat of German invasion was high, and it was vital to defend Sydney Harbour. It was also essential to protect not only departing convoys but also local industry, which was vital to the war effort, and naval ships at nearby Point Edward Naval Base. German submarines patrolled the waters surrounding eastern Canada.
The fort was the last of the Sydney Harbour fortifications to be decommissioned in 1956, and the communication tower was demolished in 1968. In 1991, the Sydney Harbour Fortification Society purchased the fort, and in 1998, the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada chose the site to place a plaque commemorating the ‘Atlantic Bulwark‘.
When we visited almost four years ago, several parts of Fort Petrie remained, including an observation tower, subterranean fortifications, gun placements, and other buildings.
Bull wheels were used in shaft mining to hoist cages up and down the shaft. Men or coal would be lifted out or lowered down the shaft in cages using a balance system. The wheels would be attached to the cage with a steel rope, suspended high above the shaft.
A plaque outside the museum credited the Cape Breton coal miners for striking the British Steel Corporation from 1922 to 1925 in resistance to drastic wage restrictions. Despite desperate living conditions and pressure from company police and the military, they drew on community ties to "stand the gaff." The miners' union's success in defending collective bargaining rights marked the beginning of a new era in Canadian labor relations. It also contributed to a strong sense of shared identity in Cape Breton's mining communities.
Inside, plaques memorialized miners who died, mostly from explosions, in Cape Breton coal mines. We joined a tour only minutes later, given by a former miner. First, though, listening to the initial animated film presentation, we learned that for 300 years, coal mining was the backbone of Cape Breton's industrial economy. There were coal seams from here all the way to Newfoundland. Deep below the waves were the remains of one of the most extensive undersea mine workings in the world. The mine engineers designing the collieries faced extraordinary challenges to minimize the risk of the sea breaching the mine workings and to keep the miners safe.
Coal was extracted from exposed seams along the cliffs in this area and then shipped by boat to fuel the construction and operation of the nearby Fortress of Louisbourg, a French fortress established in 1713. Coal warmed the gentry in Halifax, drove the furnaces in the Sydney steel makers, and the factories in the northeast U.S. For most of those years, it was an extremely physically demanding job in squalid conditions that was often passed down from father to son for many generations.
At the beginning of World War I, there were 12,000 miners in Cape Breton to keep home fires burning. Miners had to get up in the early hours when it was dark, worked underground in the dark, and return home in the dark. Sadly, there were few other choices for other jobs.
Men were paid only a few pennies a ton in the "old days." The company could charge whatever it wanted for food, shelter, and other necessities, so miners often owed more than they earned each week.
During their half-hour ride down into the pits, men played cards or rested. The pits were one mile deep and five miles out, buried beneath the ocean floor.
Before receiving mandatory vacations, the pit ponies spent their entire working lives in total darkness, hauling one-ton coal cars from the mine's face to the landing, often making 40 trips per day. Pit ponies were used until the 1980s to haul coal in the mines. Miners were devoted to their ponies, often telling stories of losing their headlamps but being guided to safety by holding onto their pony's tail.
Before miners went underground, they changed out of their street clothes into their pit clothes, which had been hanging to dry from the ceiling since their last shift. Once dressed in their pit clothes, they hung their street clothes on the same hooks. At the end of each shift, they showered in the Washouse and changed back into their street clothes.
The goal of our tour of the 1967 Ocean Deeps Colliery was to give us a sense of what it was like to be a coal miner in 1932. Though we were told many changes had been made since then, much remained the same. We donned hard hats where miners had once done the same. A sign above the hats read, "Your wife and children expect you home this evening. Don't disappoint them. Be careful."
Eric Spencer, our guide and a former miner for 30 years, said the miners' favorite part of summer was feeling the sun on their faces as they emerged from the mine after a shift. They often feared they would never see daylight again. Eric said that after four years in a mine just 42 inches high, he moved to one 7 feet high. The difference was huge, he said. He worked with over 12,000 men in his career, and the most popular name in the mine was Buddy, aka buddy. There was no reason to know names to this day. The men who worked in the mines still call each other Buddy.
Eric noted that the British Steel Company held a 99-year lease on the coal mines in Sydney. Everything the miners wanted had to be purchased from the coal company store, since it was the only place available, and it supplied everything. The miner's contract with the company included housing, on the condition that a male member of the household worked each day. If not, the family was evicted right away. It was common to have large families, sometimes as many as 21 children.
When the coal miners struck in 1924, Eric said the company complained to the provincial government. Six hundred mounted police and 1,000 federal officers were sent as "goons" in Eric's telling, against the striking miners. As the officers stood on the steps of the city's now-closed Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church, the priests supported the company, urging the miners to return to work and support their families. In a dark time for the miners, Eric told us that some miners were shot by the police on horseback.
The Travelling Road sign marked the beginning of one coal seam. The seam was 52 inches high, which dictated the amount of the coal.
Eric said he was 78 and that, before working as a guide for 16 years, he had mined three tons of coal daily. He added that, unfortunately, he and his fellow miners worked themselves out of a job eventually when all the coal mines around Sydney closed in 2001, as they were no longer economically viable. It seemed sad that a man of his age, presumably still working for financial reasons, was paid only the minimum wage as a tour guide.
Ducking our heads, we walked to a second mine.
Eric mentioned that because the rats kept the mines clean, the "boys" wouldn't kill them. In fact, the rats became the miners' only friends.
In the next area, Eric discussed Room-and-Pillar mining, in which coal was removed in a checkerboard pattern, leaving square pillars to support the rock strata or roof above the coal seam. The area where the coal had been removed was called the room. It had to be supported with pit props, as the roof might collapse.
When coal is mined, dangerous gases are released and must be vented. Surface air was directed into the mine workings through trapdoors, much like the one we'd just walked through below. An entry-level job for 9- and 10-year-old boys was to work as a trapper boy, which meant posting them at the busier trapdoors in the ventilation system and opening them to let coal, materials, and men pass through.
A display in the mine indicated that, depending on the height of the coal seam, pit ponies or horses were used to haul the coal. Eric said the animals were generally well cared for because they were expensive to train and of little use unless healthy. But he estimated that few of them came out of the mine alive. Miners were fined immediately if the animals were mistreated. Eric declared that the animals were treated better than the miners!
By the mid-1950s, the ponies were replaced by diesel or electric locomotives. After Fraser, a pony who had worked at Dominion Number 1B for 20 years, retired, he spent the rest of his life as a pensioner, like many of his human coworkers! Young boys working in the pit often looked after the pit ponies. Eric stressed that no education was required to be a miner, Eric said, just a strong back.
We hoped we wouldn't have to rely on this mine phone!
Eric explained that creating a new 'room' involved removing coal from the face by first undercutting it and then blasting it free. Undercutting was performed on a radial cutting machine powered by compressed air. The men operating the cutters used three steel picks, which made a deafening din. I wonder if they were paid the most in the mine because they became deaf at a young age.
You no doubt know the expression about canaries in a coal mine. Eric, standing by a canary holder, said it was real to these miners. As a dead canary meant the miners needed to get out immediately, canaries were also the miners' best friends. The only thing that miners got free from the company was a canary each day, and they took them home each night!
As of 1989, miners were required to carry self-recussitators or be fined $1000. This was Eric's.
A longish walk led us to a room where we found a recreation of the garden Krause, a German immigrant, had planted. His garden was fertilized with horse manure to bring a little bit of life and color to the coal pits, Eric said our tour of 24 people was his biggest since pre- Covid. He led three tours a day. He began working in the mine when he was 19, because his girlfriend "wanted the finer things in life."
He added that after explosions, methane was the second deadliest killer of miners because they couldn't see it, smell it, or taste it. The next big killer was black lung disease, but breathing in coal dust wasn't recognized as being so dangerous until 1968.
Once the coal was blasted free of the face, it was loaded by hand into coal boxes, with tallies specific to each miner identifying each box so the miner responsible for filling it would receive the proper pay based on the amount loaded. Eric stated that the miners were paid $3 a ton, but if there was no coal, there was no money. On a good day, four to five tons of coal were extracted.
In the early 20th century, miners traveled to work 6.5 miles under the ocean in open wooden cars called rake boxes, which were pulled up and down the slope by a continuous cable attached to a hoist on the surface. At the end of the century, rakes were much larger steel cars with enclosed seating and automatic braking systems.
Eric's tour was hands down one of the best I'd ever experienced. He provided a wealth of knowledge, delivered with emotion and drawn from decades of working the mines, not from a textbook. Though his life in the mines had to have been unbelievably difficult day in and day out, there wasn't one iota of woe-is-me.
Steven and I then entered the attached museum. There, we learned that coal has been called black gold for its importance as a resource. It literally drove the world's industrialization and was prized as a commodity for transportation, steel, and home heating. Coal deposits are classified according to their intended use: metallurgical coal is used to make steel; thermal coal is used to generate electricity; and bituminous coal, the most versatile type, can be used for both purposes.
Coal facts: All types of coal do not create the same amount of heat, nor is coal found in different countries of the same type. The types and amounts of plant matter and minerals that formed the coal account for the differences among coal deposits. Plus, the pressure and temperature over millions of years can affect coal quality.
One way of classifying coal is by rank, which refers to the amount of carbon, or more or less energy, in the coal. Low-rank coals are typically softer, with a dull, earthy appearance and low carbon content, which means low energy content. Higher-rank coals are generally harder and stronger, often with a black, glass-like surface. They have more carbon and energy content.
Coal has been valued as a source of energy for thousands of years. This 'buried sunshine' was pivotal in the expansion of the Roman Empire, fueled the Industrial Revolution, and warmed my ancestors' homes and those of others. The term 'buried sunshine' refers to the energy that prehistoric plants absorbed before they were turned into coal. As a result of photosynthesis, plants that existed millions of years ago became the energy of today.
The origin of coal mining: The first people to mine coal in any organized way were the Chinese almost two thousand years ago, who worked the coal underground. Records show that in Europe, coal use steadily increased from the 12th century, particularly in England. At the beginning of the 17th century, miners in the larger European collieries were gradually digging deeper to meet the growing demand. However, the limited technology of drainage, hauling, and raising curtailed mines' full potential. Demand for coal production increased dramatically in the early 17th century with the invention of steam power, and more advanced mining techniques helped propel the Industrial Revolution.
1920 saw the establishment of the largest corporation in Canada by a British syndicate known as the British Empire Steel Corporation, BESCO. Before entering the museum, I wrote about the long coal miners' strike and also included Eric's comments on the strike that followed BESCO's application for an over 33% wage cut in 1922. I urge you to click the following to more easily read the miners' automatic deductions and the factors that made their lives almost intolerable.
We then walked to the nearby Miners' Memorial Park.
Until our visit, I never knew that William Davis Miners' Memorial Day is an annual day of remembrance held on June 11 in Nova Scotia, specifically honoring miners who died in mining accidents or during labor disputes. Named for William Davis, a 37-year-old striking miner shot and killed by company police during a protest over working conditions, wage cuts, and the closure of company stores on June 11, 1925, it was a key moment in labor history. I read that his death became a turning point "in the struggle for labor rights and safety, often cited as a moment when miners stood against corporate prioritisation of profit over life."
Next post: Taking the Marconi Trail toward the Fortress of Louisbourg later that day.
Posted on February 15th, 2026, from our home in Denver. Please take care of yourself and your loved ones.
