Interview with Harry Ellis

Audio recording and transcript of Harry Ellis's 1979 interview with Bernard McNicholl for the Coal Tyee History Project. Ellis shares memories from his time as a coal miner on Vancouver Island and he talks about his father and brother who were also miners. He explains how his family moved from Northfield to Cumberland, and then to Ladysmith as his father found work in different mines. Ellis explains how he quit school at 15 years old to work at the Hamilton Powder Company in Departure Bay, but he left there after several explosions. In 1912, Ellis joined his father and brother at the Jingle Pot Mine, and he talks about events there and at Extension during the Vancouver Island Coal Miners' Strike. He goes into detail about how he and other attendees of a meeting at the athletic club in Nanaimo were all detained by soldiers with bayonets. Throughout the interview, Ellis touches on wages, safety in the mines, union organizing, and the ethnic communities in Cumberland. He closes the interview by giving some details about various coal mining accidents that he is familiar with.