Happy Tuesday! I hope this email blog post finds you well. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t over-the-moon excited to write this one because I think it’s pretty special, and different – this week I’d like to write to you about my Dad. It’s his birthday on Wednesday, so I figured now would be a good time to write about him. Let me assure you that this topic is relevant for a mining-themed blog since my Dad works in the mining industry, too.
For most of my life, I really had no idea what my Dad did for a living. I knew he worked at a nickel mine, but that was about it. I do know lots of other things about my dad: he is an accomplished hockey coach and scout (a national champion) whose skills I had the luxury of witnessing on a regular basis; he is a fan of James Bond; he dislikes liver & onions. I also know that my Dad is well-respected, he is thoughtful, and he always knows the right things to say. I am a part of Dad’s life outside of work – but I knew very little about what he did for most of his waking hours. There were little glimpses of things here and there, such as in Grade 4 when he explained to me how nickel gets extracted from ore using a series of “bathtubs filled with chemicals”. Or the time he brought home core samples and I discovered that they break when you smash them against regular rocks, then subsequently smashed my finger and acquired first blood-bruise under my fingernail. There was the time when he brought my brother and I to work and we got to see the hoist operator’s room (the coolest part of the mine); I remember being awestruck towards the “TV’s” where we could watch what was happening underground. Then, there were the times when he told my brother and I: “Do not become a miner”, a piece of advice he learned from his own experience as one.
My Dad began his career in the mining industry in May 1989 where he worked as a cage tender & miner, during which he was also university student studying history & political science. I like to poke fun at my Dad for how irrelevant his degree is for the industry, but truthfully it makes his career all the more impressive. He always says; “The most important thing about having a university degree is that it proves that you are capable of learning something”. This mantra has been extremely motivational as of late, since I too am now in the mining industry with an irrelevant degree, just like Dad. Perhaps it is the case that I graduated with a different “toolbox” than he did, but we both are capable of learning things all the same.
After his stint as a miner, my Dad then migrated his way into the mining engineering department where he worked in ventilation, surveying, and design. During these 8 years he also met my mom, opened a restaurant with my mom, closed a restaurant with my mom, married my mom, coached hockey, briefly became a real estate broker, bought a house (without my mom knowing – and they still live in it), had his first child (me), became a hockey scout for the Brampton Battalion (whom he still works for), joined mine rescue, and probably did a lot of other things I’m forgetting to mention. Mom & Dad have always been the busiest people I know, which has instilled in me a great sense of initiative and desire to always be progressing towards “the room where it happens”, because that’s what they’ve always done. Not long before my brother was born, my dad moved on to become a shift boss.
For the next 7 years, Dad alternated between being a shift boss and a relief captain. For me these years were filled with memories such as starting school, being coached by Dad in hockey, getting our cats, going to see mom at the restaurant she worked at, and so on – which I’m sure are things my Dad remembers quite well, too; Although, what I didn’t know was that at work my dad was a supervisor who was responsible for the wellness of many unionized personnel. After this, he became a mine captain for nearly 4 years, where he was involved with mine planning & blasthole mining. In 2010, my dad worked as the Business Improvement Lead, then in 2011 he worked as the Mine Planning Lead (during this time I went to highschool and started university), and then in 2017 the became the Engineering Lead at the mine.
This brings us to today, where my Dad is the Operations General Foreman at Fraser mine. My Dad has worked his way up the ranks in the industry, and from my point of view there was very little luck involved. My Dad created his success by being the type of worker that I strive to be. He does more than what is asked of him – whether it be putting in extra hours every day, or working from home on his days off. He always wants to be learning and does what’s best for others. To me, my Dad is in “the room where it happens” – which means he is trusted to make big decisions and has a great impact on the place where he works. I have yet to truly understand the daily tasks he does, but what I have learned is that if we lived in an alternate reality where he wasn’t my Dad and he worked in a similar position at my mine, he’d be someone I’d be nervous about meeting due to his wealth of knowledge, responsibility, and seniority. Though to me, he’s always been Dad. Who knew, right?!
It has always been true that Dad & I have a shared interest in learning things, whether it be history lessons on the way to hockey practice or quantum mechanics on the ride home from Toronto. However, most of the time these topics were one-sided – Dad knew history and I knew physics. Although, since I’ve started working at the mine I have experienced a lot of cool things and the coolest thing is that Dad and I now have a shared interest in what we do. Dad gets to witness me learn about a discipline that he is an expert in, and I get to ask him a million questions about it. What’s also cool is that as I learn more about battery vehicles, I get to teach him things too. I remember the moment when I realized that this industry was more important to me than just batteries – it was last summer when I asked my Dad about shaft loading “chairs” (no, not the ones we sit on). It’s an indescribable feeling to be working in the discipline of my Dad, our good friend Wally, and both of my grandfathers; so much so that it’s truly the biggest reason as to why I think it’s important to stay in this world. It is true that batteries are interesting, my coworkers are wonderful, and gold extraction is cool – but altogether the mining industry means nothing to me without Dad. Happy Birthday, Dad!
(September 22nd, 2020)
astronomine 