VISIT TO A MINE

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 131, 6 June 1939, Page 9

VISIT TO A MINE

KING'S REQUEST

WORKINGS INSPECTED

(Received June 6, 1.20 p.m.)

SUDBURY (Ont), June 5.

Their Majesties today descended the shaft of the Frood Mine, the largest working in the Sudbury district, where 90 per cent, of the world's nickel is produced. At the request of the King the stay of an hour at Sudbury was extended in order to enable the visit to the mine to be made. He particularly requested to see the underground workings.

Two thousand five hundred miners had been given a holiday in order to see the Royal procession, but a skeleton crew was hastily summoned. The Queen and her ladies-in-waiting were fitted out with light silk waterproofs, gloves, and rubbers, and the King and his equerries wore khaki overalls. All complied with the regulations and donned safety helmets. Mr. Donald Macaskill, general manager of the International Nickel Company, attached to the King's helmet a regular miner's lamp, and the Queen carried a flashlight.

Their Majesties entered one of the cages used for transporting 60 miners at a time and descended at the rate of 1500 ft a minute. At 2800 ft they stepped out and found themselves in a brightly lit shaft station which, with its whitewashed walls and air of neatness, was reminiscent of a London underground station. They took seats in a car drawn by a battery locomotive and were taken to the face, where they remained for some time watching the drilling and examining the glinting ore, from which eleven metals are recovered—nickel, copper, gold, silver, platinum, selenium, tellurium, palladium, rhodium, iridium, and rutherium.

On returning to the surface their Majesties inspected the upper workings. Before leaving they picked up samples of ore as souvenirs of their visit.