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PERSONAL EXPERIENCE STORIES
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE STORIES
"A ROUGH DAY AT THE OFFICE"
by
Dave Careless
September 2024
by
Dave Careless
September 2024
About the author: Dave Careless was born in 1948 in Rotherham, in the coal-mining district of South Yorkshire, England. His father, Tom Careless, was working in the wages office of the National Coal Board at Aldwarke and Silverwood pits when he received a job offer in the autumn of 1957 to come to Bell Island to work at DOSCO's Main Office in charge of production and projections, determining how much ore was being produced and how much was required to fill the order books. Tom came on his own to get the lay of the land and was quickly promoted to Assistant to the General Manager (a position he held until the mines closed in 1966). In March of 1958, 10-year-old Dave and his mother, Jennie, arrived in Newfoundland. This is the story of how Tom Careless was recruited to work in the Dominion Wabana Ore Limited mining operation on Bell Island and how, not long after settling in, he thought he'd screwed up so badly, that he was about to lose his new job. (You can read more about Tom Careless in the "C" section of the "People" page on this website. You can see more Careless photos on the "Photo Gallery" page.)
A New Job at Wabana and the Start of a New Life
It would have been sometime during October or November of 1957 when my father, Tom Careless, received a letter, completely out of the blue, from the Dominion Steel and Coal Corporation offering him a job at their iron ore mining operation on Bell Island, in Newfoundland. I'm quite certain that up until that point, my father would have had no idea where Bell Island was, or Newfoundland particularly, for that matter! I think the letter had come from H.S. Haslam, who was Superintendent of Mining Operations at Wabana at the time, as he must have crossed paths with my father at some point when they were both in the employ of the National Coal Board. This Board was set up in the United Kingdom after the war years when the coal industry, which consisted of privately owned colliery operations throughout the country, was nationalised by the government of the day, similar to the way that the private rail companies throughout Britain were all brought together in 1948 under the umbrella of British Railways.
Anyway, needless to say, my father was intrigued by the letter offering him a job, particularly as it happened to come at a time when he was rather disillusioned with his position at a local colliery in the town of Rotherham, and was looking for a change of scenery. My mother worked part-time at a local grocery store at the top of our street, and it was the ‘Brooke Bond Tea’ salesman who mentioned to my mother that one night the following week they were going to be showing a film about Canada at the local Methodist Chapel. After seeing the film showing the delights of the Rockies and the Prairies, and plenty of coverage of Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa, (oddly enough, no scenes of an ice-covered Conception Bay or the unpaved muddy roads of Bell Island!) father was more determined than ever to leave Rotherham behind. Within a few short weeks, we'd gotten passports and been to Leeds for an in-depth medical examination, and the stage was more or less set. The plan was that my dad would go first to sound out both the place and the promised job, and my mother and I would follow a few months later, with whatever furniture we were taking with us being shipped shortly after that. So it was that, on the morning of Sunday, December 8th, 1957, my mother and I waved father off at Rotherham Masborough railway station, whereupon he made his way to London, and then on to Gander, with a brief stopover at Prestwick in Scotland to take on additional fuel and passengers for the flight over the Atlantic. It was Tuesday, December 11th, one day after my father's 44th birthday, that he eventually landed in St. John's, and from there made his way across the Tickle to set foot for the first time on Bell Island. I suspect it was John Haslam who picked him up at Torbay to take him to the island, and to the Bennett Street Staff House where he was to spend the next three months before my mother and I eventually joined him in March of 1958. Ironically, it was the very same ‘Brooke Bond Tea’ man who'd told us about the showing of the film on Canada to whom we gave our cat ‘Whisky’ when my mother and I left Rotherham!
My father's hiring was noted in the January 1958 edition of the Submarine Miner, the in-house monthly newsletter of DOSCO Wabana Mines, with a short and to-the-point paragraph that read:
The following announcement was made recently by the Works Manager, Mr. V.J. Southey: 'Effective January 2nd, 1958, Mr. T. Careless will act as Assistant to the Works Manager. His duties will be strictly administrative and will include no supervisory responsibilities.'
His new position at Wabana was a far cry from his previous job at the National Coal Board’s Silverwood Colliery at Rotherham, but my father was ready for a new challenge and it didn't seem to take him long at all to get comfortable in his new surroundings. He immediately got off on the right foot with his new boss, Victor Southey, despite their very different backgrounds, and their working relationship endured through all the various ups and downs that Wabana was to suffer in the years to come.
Anyway, needless to say, my father was intrigued by the letter offering him a job, particularly as it happened to come at a time when he was rather disillusioned with his position at a local colliery in the town of Rotherham, and was looking for a change of scenery. My mother worked part-time at a local grocery store at the top of our street, and it was the ‘Brooke Bond Tea’ salesman who mentioned to my mother that one night the following week they were going to be showing a film about Canada at the local Methodist Chapel. After seeing the film showing the delights of the Rockies and the Prairies, and plenty of coverage of Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa, (oddly enough, no scenes of an ice-covered Conception Bay or the unpaved muddy roads of Bell Island!) father was more determined than ever to leave Rotherham behind. Within a few short weeks, we'd gotten passports and been to Leeds for an in-depth medical examination, and the stage was more or less set. The plan was that my dad would go first to sound out both the place and the promised job, and my mother and I would follow a few months later, with whatever furniture we were taking with us being shipped shortly after that. So it was that, on the morning of Sunday, December 8th, 1957, my mother and I waved father off at Rotherham Masborough railway station, whereupon he made his way to London, and then on to Gander, with a brief stopover at Prestwick in Scotland to take on additional fuel and passengers for the flight over the Atlantic. It was Tuesday, December 11th, one day after my father's 44th birthday, that he eventually landed in St. John's, and from there made his way across the Tickle to set foot for the first time on Bell Island. I suspect it was John Haslam who picked him up at Torbay to take him to the island, and to the Bennett Street Staff House where he was to spend the next three months before my mother and I eventually joined him in March of 1958. Ironically, it was the very same ‘Brooke Bond Tea’ man who'd told us about the showing of the film on Canada to whom we gave our cat ‘Whisky’ when my mother and I left Rotherham!
My father's hiring was noted in the January 1958 edition of the Submarine Miner, the in-house monthly newsletter of DOSCO Wabana Mines, with a short and to-the-point paragraph that read:
The following announcement was made recently by the Works Manager, Mr. V.J. Southey: 'Effective January 2nd, 1958, Mr. T. Careless will act as Assistant to the Works Manager. His duties will be strictly administrative and will include no supervisory responsibilities.'
His new position at Wabana was a far cry from his previous job at the National Coal Board’s Silverwood Colliery at Rotherham, but my father was ready for a new challenge and it didn't seem to take him long at all to get comfortable in his new surroundings. He immediately got off on the right foot with his new boss, Victor Southey, despite their very different backgrounds, and their working relationship endured through all the various ups and downs that Wabana was to suffer in the years to come.
My father not long after his arrival at Wabana, aged forty-four.
One of the jobs that my father was tasked with was to basically keep a running inventory of how much iron ore was being mined and stockpiled on a daily or weekly basis, and comparing those figures with how much was being sold and shipped over the same period. It also included determining the projections of how much iron ore needed to be mined over the upcoming months, and plotting those figures against how much had been ordered and was due to be shipped in the months ahead. This was, of course, long before the computer era, and much use was made of ‘lines and columns’ on graph paper and an array of various coloured pens and pencils, the necessary figures being tabulated using a somewhat primitive but nevertheless reliable adding machine.
The stacker/conveyor on the cliff top at Scotia Pier, that transferred the stockpiled iron ore ‘over the edge’ into the ore pocket, from whence it was transferred by a bucket-type conveyor which continuously dumped the iron ore from the bottom of the pocket into the waiting ships’ holds.
The early sixties were busy shipping seasons at Wabana, and because I was interested in the coming and going of the ships, my father would bring home at lunchtime the Telex that he would get each morning giving the date and estimated time of arrival of every ship that was due, and what its capacity was. Quite often, these ships arrived in the late afternoon and we could see them from our living room window as they headed up Conception Bay towards the anchorage. With a combination of that day's Telex message and a pair of binoculars, it was easy to identify the vessels as they approached.
The early sixties were busy shipping seasons at Wabana, and because I was interested in the coming and going of the ships, my father would bring home at lunchtime the Telex that he would get each morning giving the date and estimated time of arrival of every ship that was due, and what its capacity was. Quite often, these ships arrived in the late afternoon and we could see them from our living room window as they headed up Conception Bay towards the anchorage. With a combination of that day's Telex message and a pair of binoculars, it was easy to identify the vessels as they approached.
The Norwegian registered iron ore carrier Carmencita, sits at Scotia Pier on a summer evening circa 1962 or '63, with hatches open, waiting to be filled with yet another several thousand tons of Wabana iron ore, likely destined for the blast furnaces of Great Britain or Germany.
A Huge Gaffe
It was probably in his first summer on the job that my father committed a huge gaffe which, had it been somebody other than V.J. Southey and his stern but calm demeanour that he was working for, could well have cost him his job. Sometime in the early 1950s, the miners’ union had negotiated with management for a week’s paid summer vacation, a first in the history of the Wabana mines. To simplify matters, it was decided to shut down the entire operation for the last week in July, during which time no ore was mined. (There were some people who could not take their holiday that week, such as maintenance people who performed work that could not be done while the mines were in operation, some who kept the pumps running so that the mines wouldn’t flood, and pier and stockpile workers who loaded ore carriers. These people took their week’s holiday at another time.) Because of this method of dealing with the negotiated week’s vacation, there was no iron ore production during the last week in July, the stockpiled ore being used to load the steady procession of hungry ships, until production resumed again at the end of the vacation period. Maybe my father didn't have a coloured pencil for that eventuality, or, being new on the job, maybe he simply hadn’t been aware of it. Perhaps he knew but he'd forgotten about it, I'm not sure which, but forget he did. Suddenly, one morning, he realised what he had done, and that his graph paper and his columns of figures included a week’s worth of ore production that unfortunately wasn't going to happen!! And, according to the telexes that he brought home every day for me to peruse, there was no shortage of ships heading for Wabana that were going to be looking for the non-existent iron ore to take away!
One can only imagine my father's distress at having to take his sheets of graph paper, and his reams of tabulated production and shipping figures, and go along the corridor and ask Doris Bennett, Mr. Southey's secretary, to let him know when the Works Manager was available so that he could go in and see him. According to my father, “what seems to be the problem, Tom?” was Vic Southey's question of the day. When my father explained to him what he'd inadvertently done, and that he'd balanced his sheets by relying on a week's worth of iron ore production that simply wasn't going to be there, and confirming his worst fears by showing his boss the figures to prove it, apparently all Mr. Southey said was “Well, let's see what we can do about it.”
One can only imagine my father's distress at having to take his sheets of graph paper, and his reams of tabulated production and shipping figures, and go along the corridor and ask Doris Bennett, Mr. Southey's secretary, to let him know when the Works Manager was available so that he could go in and see him. According to my father, “what seems to be the problem, Tom?” was Vic Southey's question of the day. When my father explained to him what he'd inadvertently done, and that he'd balanced his sheets by relying on a week's worth of iron ore production that simply wasn't going to be there, and confirming his worst fears by showing his boss the figures to prove it, apparently all Mr. Southey said was “Well, let's see what we can do about it.”
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Victor J. Southey came to Bell Island in 1956 as General Superintendent of Dominion Wabana Ore Limited. A year later, he was appointed Resident Manager, a position he held until 1965. You can read more about his career on the People page of this website by clicking "People" in the top menu, then "S" in the drop-down menu.
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Catastrophe Averted
The upshot was that several ships were diverted to Seven Islands for their cargo. A couple of ships were delayed. The ‘Sydney boats,’ the Charlton Mira and the Arthur Cross that shuttled iron ore between Bell Island and North Sydney, were put on ‘the coal run’ for the week. With that, the crisis was more or less averted, although according to my father, there was hardly a sizeable lump of iron ore on the surface at Bell Island waiting to be shipped anywhere by the time the holiday period was up, and there was considerable overtime in the offing for the mining and production staff once things were up and running again!
The iron ore carrier Welsh Herald, at 30,000 tons capacity, was at the time the largest ore carrier to have visited Bell Island back in 1963 when the ship was still new and took away its first load of Wabana ore, off to feed the blast furnaces of the Welsh steelworks at Port Talbot. Ships with such large capacity soon made a dent in father's 'Ore to be Shipped' column on his tabulated sheets of graph paper!!
Once the issue had been more or less resolved, apparently all Mr. Southey said to my father was, “Well, you'll not make that mistake again, Tom, will you.” Which, considering what the outcome might have been if somebody considerably more petulant had been in charge, was more than reasonable.
Even the stockpile of fines, like the pile seen behind me in the above photograph, which was formed of more or less pea-gravel sized chunks of iron ore that were a by-product of the crushing process, several tons of which was shipped with each boat load anyway just to get rid of it, was completely gone by the time my father’s production/shipping crisis had ended!!
After the Mines Closed
In June 1966, when sadly the mines finally closed, V.J. Southey was transferred to Nova Scotia to be the General Manager of the Dosco-owned Halifax Shipyards, and convinced my father to go with him to be his assistant at Halifax, so he certainly didn't hold my father's mistake against him.
Unfortunately, after he'd only been at Halifax Shipyards a few months, V.J.Southey suffered a heart attack and had to take early retirement, and my father only lasted two years at Halifax before he too moved on. Without a doubt though, he always considered his time at Bell Island, working under V.J.Southey, with his coloured pencils and his tabulated columns on graph paper, the most fulfilling period of his long career working behind a desk.
Unfortunately, after he'd only been at Halifax Shipyards a few months, V.J.Southey suffered a heart attack and had to take early retirement, and my father only lasted two years at Halifax before he too moved on. Without a doubt though, he always considered his time at Bell Island, working under V.J.Southey, with his coloured pencils and his tabulated columns on graph paper, the most fulfilling period of his long career working behind a desk.
My father, Tom Careless, minus his coloured pencils and his adding machine, in the back garden at Greenwood Avenue, in the early months of 1964, as can be seen, well out of iron ore shipping season!
It's a Small World Sometimes
When we'd only been in Halifax a couple of months, in the summer of 1966, we were still getting acquainted with our new surroundings. After we'd been out for a Sunday afternoon drive somewhere, when we came back to our apartment building, we were met by a young couple who had driven all the way from British Columbia in their Austin station wagon, packed to the roof with their belongings. They were hoping my father was the Building Superintendent, but we told them, “Sorry, no, he must be out somewhere.” When we got upstairs, I said to my dad, “Those two look like they could do with a cup of tea!” and he said, “Yeah, go and tell them to come up, they might as well wait in here as sit in their car.”
It turned out that the couple, Peter and Nancy Bower, were to be our new next-door neighbours. Peter was going to be attending King's College to do his Masters degree in History, and Nancy was planning to work at Dalhousie University. During that initial conversation we had on that Sunday afternoon, we were amazed to learn that in December 1957, when Peter was about fourteen years old, he was flying with his family to start a new life in Canada after several years in Rhodesia (his father was a newspaper publisher) and was on that very same flight as my father, who was flying from London to Gander to start his new life on Bell Island!!
And that very same Halifax apartment building is just about four blocks north of where I'm sitting today.
It turned out that the couple, Peter and Nancy Bower, were to be our new next-door neighbours. Peter was going to be attending King's College to do his Masters degree in History, and Nancy was planning to work at Dalhousie University. During that initial conversation we had on that Sunday afternoon, we were amazed to learn that in December 1957, when Peter was about fourteen years old, he was flying with his family to start a new life in Canada after several years in Rhodesia (his father was a newspaper publisher) and was on that very same flight as my father, who was flying from London to Gander to start his new life on Bell Island!!
And that very same Halifax apartment building is just about four blocks north of where I'm sitting today.
Standing in front of their Austin station wagon, in which they had driven from British Columbia three years previously, Peter and Nancy Bower are pictured in the Hydrostone district of Halifax. The "Hydrostone" housing area was laid out and built primarily to house residents of the city who had lost their homes in the dreadful Halifax Explosion of December 1917, in which a large part of the north end was completely flattened and at least 2,000 people lost their lives. Needham Park is the hill that can be seen in the background. The apartment building where Peter and Nancy and I first met is just a couple of hundred yards further to the right; in fact, the living room of our apartment overlooked the park. The Hydrostone area has now become very trendy, with coffee shops and boutiques mixed in with the original 1920s housing, which now, of course, is very desirable and expensive.