1

Aerial view of Bell Island looking from west to east.
June, 2002
Conception Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador

2

Bell Island is located in Conception Bay, on the northern part of the Avalon Peninsula. The island is about 9 km long by 3 km. wide, and is serviced by a year-round car and passenger ferry across "The Tickle" (the body of water between the island and the community of Portugal Cove).

3

Early picture of Lance Cove Beach
1920
Lance Cove, Bell Island, Newfoundland and Labrador

4

As with many places in Newfoundland, the first settlers on Bell Island lived primarily by fishing and farming. Farming was particularly important, owing to the island's unusually rich topsoil. Throughout the nineteenth century, the seal hunt drew large numbers of men from Bell Island and all around Conception Bay. The Pitt family opened a brickyard on Bell Island in 1848, and the Rees family operated a shipyard on the island, in Lance Cove, for a period during the 1800s.

5

Early surface mining on the north east side of Bell Island.
1900
Bell Island, Newfoundland and Labrador

6

It was not until the 1890s, however, that the Bell Island deposits drew serious attention from professional mining interests. By 1892, the deposits had come under control of the Butlers of Topsail, who brought in agents of the New Glasgow Coal, Iron and Railroad Company (later called the Nova Scotia Steel and Coal Company) to begin developing the site. Thomas Cantley, Secretary of Nova Scotia Steel and Coal, called the minesite "Wabana", which is believed to be an Abenaki Indian word meaning "the place where daylight first appears", and mining began in the summer of 1895.

7

Miners at the opening of No. 3 Slope
1900
Bell Island, Newfoundland and Labrador

8

Miners at the entrance of one of the first underground mine shafts.
1902
Bell Island, Newfoundland and Labrador

9

In 1899, a second company joined Nova Scotia Steel and Coal when the Whitney Company (later called the Dominion Steel Corporation) purchased rights to the large "lower bed" of ore that lay under the Scotia company's "upper bed". Both of these beds ran under the sea floor of Conception Bay, and after surface mining had exhausted the easily accessible ore, workers began the giant task of reaching and extracting these submarine beds.

10

Underground mining shafts
2004
Bell Island, Newfoundland and Labrador

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There are roughly four billion tons of ore left in the mines, but the industry shut down because of the high cost of getting the ore from the mine to the market.

There were six mines in total during the course of the industry at Bell Island. Four of the mines, numbers 2, 3, 4 and 6, went submarine - meaning the mines actually went under the sea floor. The other two mines (1 and 5) went underground and broke out at the shoreline.

12

Miner hand loading ore car at 900' west level, No 3. Mine
August, 1949
Bell Island, Newfoundland and Labrador

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Work in the mines of Bell Island was difficult and often dangerous. Until the eight-hour day was introduced in 1943, workers often worked ten hours a day, six days a week. This meant that for about six months of the year, workers on the day shift saw daylight only on Sundays. Lighting in the mines was provided first by candles or a tin lamp that burned seal oil. In 1911, carbide lamps were introduced and in 1935 workers began wearing battery-powered electric lights on their hats.

14

Workers getting on board
1930
The Beach, Bell Island, Newfoundland and Labrador