Extreme Frontiers: Racing Across Canada from Newfoundland to the Rockies (12 page)

I swapped my trainers for some boots and they tried to fit spurs on me, but for some reason they couldn’t get them to attach
properly. They told me that when I fell off, as I undoubtedly would, there would be somebody out there to make sure the cow
didn’t trample me. They fetched a pair of chaps and strapped those on while the announcer introduced me to the crowd.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, we have a first-timer. He’s travelled through Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and now he’s part of
a trip across the second biggest nation in the world … We’re talking Canada, we’re talking extreme frontiers … Ladies and gentlemen,
Charley Boorman!’ But that wasn’t all. ‘He’s travelled Canada pretty much any which way he can: he might be motorbiking, he
might be saddle-horsing, he might be hitchhiking, but one thing I do know: before we get to the final event
this afternoon, we’re going to have him out here riding a cow!’

They gave me a body protector, which I was very glad of. The announcer continued to rattle on. ‘We have us a motorbike-riding
cowboy! They’re even suiting him up with a hat.’ And they did – little Alan’s hat was plucked from his scalp and pressed down
over mine. Russ stood by, getting the camera ready for the photos to go along with my obituary. I could see it now: ‘Slightly
famous adventurer trampled to death by small cow.’

They had what they call the tickle strap wrapped around the cow’s belly now, and everything was ready. Suddenly, I didn’t
care that this was a cow. I climbed over that rail like I really was Steve McQueen. Cowboys were all around me, the bell clanking
away on the tickle strap as the announcer built up my part. Hands gripping the rail, I slid my legs down the steer’s flanks,
and the warm body of this beast was rippling beneath me. A cowboy worked the tie down around my palm as the announcer talked
about me going down in a blaze of Canadian glory. Finally I was all set, and with one last look up at the others, I hooked
my heels under the cow’s belly. Then the gate was open and the animal was tearing across the arena … and I was in the dust.

I think in bull-riding competitions you have to stay on for eight seconds. I’d lasted maybe one and a half. Before I had time
to get my free hand airborne, I had slithered off the side and was eating dirt. Needless to say, I was on my feet in time
to take the applause, then, hands aloft, I made my way back to the chutes. I was dusty but alive. I’d love to have done it
again. A bit more practice and they’d get me on a saddle bronc.

*

In the meantime, the first of the real saddle-bronc riders was out in the arena, riding an unbroken Appaloosa that was doing
everything in its power to buck him off. He hung on, though, and made the eight seconds before the pick-up guys – the cowboys
on horseback who ride around the arena for safety – came alongside and helped him slide off the bucking horse. My adrenalin
was pumping just watching. I was really into this now, and I would have given anything to have a go. But that would have to
wait for another time; right now it was the girls’ turn, and we were really rooting for them. Only one member of the team
would be riding. Kerry-Rae Joiner made her living exclusively on the back of a horse, and she was preparing herself to go
into the arena now, one hand at her side flexing her fingers. I watched in awe as she climbed into the saddle – my little cow
had been nothing compared to this. She rode a buckskin horse – that’s tan with a black mane and tail – and she made the eight
seconds before the whistle blew and the pick-up guys eased her off.

What a day! This was wild, fantastic fun and I could see why families had ranched in this area for generations. I was in awe
of the competitors; I’d had just a tiny taste of the kind of buzz you get, and it was an experience I will never forget.

The next day was 4 July: Independence Day south of the border. We were back on the bikes and headed for a town called Drumheller.
En route we passed through this small dot on the map, called Wayne. Riding along with the wind in my face, I noticed an old
mine built into the hillside. I could see a car park, so obviously this was a place we could visit. Mining in the area had
been big business and Russ and I both knew we ought to take a peek.

Atlas No. 3 was a coal mine dominated by a massive wooden building that looked as though it was on its last legs. Crisscrossed
with wooden walkways and covered gantries, it was built on the side of what was now a grassy green slope, though back in the
day it was probably slag. For years the mine had played a vital role in the economy of the Drumheller Valley, providing coal
for household use. I was introduced to the programme director, Jay, who was dressed like an old miner in a plaid shirt and
dungarees with the requisite amount of coal dust on his face. He told me that the mine didn’t officially close until 1979
and was the last of the 139 mines in the Drumheller Valley to cease coal production.

He led me up the long path to the old workings. It was a big operation even now, with something like 30,000 visitors a year.
During its heyday, coal mining was the most dangerous occupation a person could have in Canada. There had been seventeen fatalities
at this facility alone, but that was a relatively small number compared to other mines in the country. Jay told me of various
disasters, including explosions of methane gas in which hundreds of men died. The deaths at Atlas No. 3 had been caused not
by explosions, however, but by rock fall or something they called ‘squeeze’. That was when the roof came down and the floor
came up and those caught in between were crushed to death – a truly horrible way to go.

He took me into the tipple, an upward-sloping wooden tunnel laid with rails for the coal carts, which zigzagged its way right
into the mountain. Apparently contract miners were paid according to the weight of coal they mined, and all of them were issued
with brass checks with a number stamped on them. Jay showed me the number 57 check; if that was my number, my lamp would carry
the same marking, as would my station in
the washhouse and my ID tags. Each miner had a handful of tags with him every day; whenever he filled a coal cart he would
place a tag on it, and when the cart arrived at the weighing scale the number was noted and that was how he would get paid.

The mined coal was tipped from the carts at the head of the tunnel on to a long conveyor belt that carried it down to what
were called shaker screens – sheets of metal with various-sized holes in them that would shake 120 times a minute. That way
the big pieces of coal would stay up top and the smaller chunks would fall through the holes to another shaker below. From
the shakers the coal fell into hoppers, and was then shifted on to another conveyor belt, which ran out to the waiting box
cars on the railroad below.

Standing there looking at the belt, I tried to think about what it would be like to have mined this mountain: the dirt and
the dust, the airlessness, the threat of the roof caving in and the floor shifting always in the back of your mind.

Jay told me how the big chunks were treated with a combination of oil, wax and kerosene before they were dumped into the coal
carts. The oil was to make the coal shiny and the kerosene to make it light up well in the fireplace, while the wax meant
that they could paint the coal red. Red? What was he talking about? Both Russ and I were scratching our heads. Jay was clearly
waiting for the question, so I asked it.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘what colour is coal everywhere else in the world?’

‘Black.’

‘Right. So if you’re the only one supplying red or orange coal, then people are going to remember you, aren’t they?’

He went on to explain that they employed a teenager to sprinkle paint powder on the coal. All day, every day, that was
what he did, going through pot after pot. The trouble was, in those days the paint was lead-based, of course, and people were
cooking their food and heating their houses with coal that had lead sprinkled on it. Jay told me about one young coal sprinkler
who fell ill and was diagnosed with lead poisoning. When he got better he went back to work, and told the managers what had
been wrong with him and why; their response was that he should use a little less paint.

I asked Jay what it was like to be a miner back in those days, and he told me that it was pretty well paid for manual work –
back in 1936, a contract miner could make ten dollars a day. The work was seasonal, though, with coal only being mined in
the winter. The old hands brightened up their time playing pranks on the new guys. The miners would cut holes in the rock
face so that the methane could escape. Apparently they told one new recruit that they needed to see if the hole was straight,
so he would have to take a look inside. Unwittingly he obliged. The naked flame on his helmet lamp ignited the methane and
he was blown off his feet and his eyebrows were scorched off. After that he was a marked man. According to Jay, the poor guy
was the victim of prank after prank for the next few months.

Taking a moment to consider all the machinery, I realised that not only was it very claustrophobic in here, it must have been
incredibly loud too. The conveyor belt would be going all the time, and the miners would have had to contend with the jarring
rattle from the shaker screens and the coal falling through. Jay said it would have been non-stop, and of course in those
days there was no such thing as ear defenders. Men regularly went deaf because of it.

At the top of the tipple, Jay showed me the elbow chute where the coal came down from the carts on to the conveyor.
There were such massive quantities that the belt would clog up all the time and a young fellow would be there with a jemmy
(a sort of crowbar) to unjam it. I spotted a sizeable weld where the metal had sheared; Jay told me that it was always a rush
job to fix those because the welders would have been nervous about using a naked flame when the air was thick with coal dust
and methane.

No miner was supposed to be younger than sixteen, but as Jay put it, in the old days age was negotiable, and from the records
he knew of at least one person who had started at twelve. The younger you were, the worse job you got. One of the worst was
‘bone picker’; a youngster who would stand at a certain point alongside the conveyor and pick out anything that wasn’t coal:
stuff like shale – what Jay called clinkers – petrified wood and, surprisingly, dinosaur bone. This place was chock-full of
fossils apparently, and every now and again a chunk of T. rex that had been residing in the sandstone for seventy million
years would be dug up with the coal.

I was itching to get underground. Once I was kitted out with lamp and helmet, Jay took me into the shaft and we walked up
the steep slope to where the tipple connected with the mountain. By the time we reached the entrance I was pretty tired. After
my exertions at the rodeo yesterday, and on the bike this morning, I was beginning to feel the days. We had been on the road
for almost a month, but everything had been so varied that we hadn’t really noticed the fatigue. There’s a point on any expedition
when the weariness just kicks in, though, and for a day or two every movement has to be forced. Walking into the mine, as
thousands of miners had done before me, I was suddenly at that point. A little breathless, my limbs heavy – I imagined the
others were feeling the same.

The moment we entered the mine, the temperature dropped. The deeper we went, the more certain I was that mining wouldn’t have
been for me. It wasn’t just the cold; the tunnel felt tight and claustrophobic, although compared to some it was apparently
quite wide. Jay mentioned the Sunshine mine, further south, where the tunnel was no more than two feet wide all the way along
the seam. I couldn’t imagine working in a space that narrow, but thousands did.

We went deeper still. The sandstone walls of the narrow shaft were supported by timbers and metal struts. Because it was sandstone,
there was a little give, and that’s why there was a danger of ‘squeeze’. I could just imagine how terrifying it would be to
find yourself trapped in here with the roof coming down and the floor lifting to meet it. Crushed to death and nothing you
could do about it. I thought about Chile and the ordeal those miners went through, stuck at the bottom of that shaft for weeks
on end while another shaft was sunk to try and rescue them. I’d only been down here a few minutes and it was enough already.

Outside again it was good to feel some air in my lungs. The view from the top of the mine was outstanding. High on the hill
overlooking the valley, with the sun overhead, some of the fatigue I’d been feeling began to leave me. It got better still
when Jay said I could drive the train. Before we went down, though, he pointed out a strip of highway in the distance and
beyond it a couple of shacks. He told me that in the heyday of the mine there had been a town there with 200 houses, a hockey
rink, hotel and store. It was nicknamed Cactus Flats, and when the mine shut down, the whole place was recycled and shipped
over to a new location outside Calgary.

The ‘train’ I was driving was more of an engine actually, and
a small one at that. I’d been imagining some steaming locomotive complete with cowcatcher and coal tender, but this was one
of the old electric engines they used to take empty carts into the mine and bring full ones out. Pit ponies would bring the
carts up from the deep, but once at the top, they would be hooked up to this engine. Since it was battery-powered, I assumed
it was quite modern, but Jay said it actually pre-dated the serial numbers they had going back to 1936, so that made it at
least seventy-five years old.

The engine was named Linda, with deference to mining tradition, as all engines were given the name of some special woman –
usually somebody’s sweetheart. Jay said that Linda had been named after the executive director of the mine.

He showed me how to fire her up – to tickle Linda into life, so to speak – signalling first with the bell to let everyone know
I was bringing her out of the shed. Once we were hooked up to some coal carts, Russ invited a few onlookers. Russ likes trains …
he likes trains
a lot
, actually. I’m sure he was keen to stop here because he knew that where there’s a mine, there’s a train. That didn’t mean
I was going to let him drive, though; no chance. Linda was my girl, and the seat at the wheel was taken.