My father is Emil Dahl, who was born March 10, 1900 and spent part of his years working at the Shand mine. While he was there, I was born on January 2, 1935. My older brother Lloyd, at a young age, worked at the Shand coal mine. My mother's brother, Hans Troseth, worked there too. When dad came from Norway, his name was Emil Jesdahl. He came to Canada in 1923.

My father was in Shand twice. There would have been two to three hundre miners that had worked in that mine from the time it started to the time it finished. He moved to Estevan around 1937, and worked in another mine from 1945 to 1965. After he left Shand, it pretty well shut down.

It was underground mining. My father says they had a white horse working in the mine. At first there was no cutting machine. Bottom cut, cross cut. Later on they had one of the best cutting machines in underground mining. Sometimes when they lived in Estevan, they would take food and stay out at the mine for weeks at a time. He says it was nice working down in the mine when it was cold and blowing outside, while down in the mine it was nice and warm.

One day working in the mines, my father fell 40 to 50 feet. Today he doesn't have any heels - instead an artificial knee and hip joints, and a pin in one shoulder.

A lot of people came from the Ukraine. There were shacks all over. They lived right down in the valley. Those were the good old days. We had more fun then than we have now, that's for sure! You could go out and have a dance and have a heck of a good time.

Shand brick plant

Whatever he made in the mine seemed to go to the store. They had a nice store there, though. It was a great big store. My father says he used to haul groceries from Estevan to the store - J.G. Peterson would pay him so much an hour.

My father kept his vehicle parked right by the store, and put a big canvas over it. He knew old Peterson pretty good. They were good friends.

My father was one of the miners that marched into Estevan on September 29, 1931 to protest housing and working conditions. Three miners were killed that day. They were buried in the Bienfait cemetery.

The tipple of the Shand mine was on the right, looking south from the tracks. The bunkhouse was on the left. That was where all the men ate and slept. The store was near the bunkhouse. The big house and the shop were north of the tracks. When you left the big house going south the school house was on the left side immediately across the road. Peterson ran the school himself. They had dances there a lot of the time. There were quite a few homes on the left and right side as you went down the hill. The residential area was right down along the tracks. On the left side over the tracks there was a boiler room and a little power house.