The Protection Island Mine

When you're down at the waterfront and you look across to Protection Island - what do you see? Maybe you see only a pretty little island with homes and forests on it. But it's seen a lot more action than you'd think!

I could relate many historical anecdotes about Protection Island (e.g., the people hanged there in the 1850s, or the Kanoo Pavilion and Happyland, or the 1913 explosion of the Oscar) but this post is just about the Protection Island Mine itself.

This was the deepest mine in Nanaimo, which isn't surprising when you consider the coal seams trend downward as they move east underneath the ocean.

The workings under this area were originally started from the Number 1 mine shaft, located near the ocean just south of downtown (bottom of Milton St basically). That mine was reaching out way under the harbour toward Snake Island, and in 1891 they sunk the Protection Island mine as a shortcut to some of the furthest tunnels. This was especially handy in the early 1900s when they started having to pay the miners from the time they went underground, instead of when they arrived at the coal seam.

The miners didn't live on the island, so they would cross to the mine each day on a scow pulled by a small tugboat. If you missed the boat home at the end of shift, you had the option of coming home via the tunnels underground. One time there was a dance in Nanaimo and everyone was going - but one guy had to work late in the mine and someone said, "I hope he doesn't wear his hobnail boots if he comes by way of the tunnel" because the nails could create sparks that ignite the gases in the tunnels. Sure enough, a deep explosion was heard - it turns out this hapless fellow did indeed blow himself up beneath the harbour.

Note, the photo below shows the miners on their scow - at upper left are the bluffs which still exist on Cameron Island - in the background is seen a track which brought coal to shipping wharves - the track is roughly where Front St passes the Port Place parking lot outside Thrifty Foods today.

Another accident happened in 1918 when a group of miners were being lowered by hoist into the 640 foot deep shaft. The cable snapped - salty air is killer on metals! - and were so mangled that they needed to be identified by their personal effects, including a watch that stopped, showing the time of the accident. That watch has been held by the museum for years, and even mysteriously went missing, and was returned again, in the 2010s.

The mine closed in 1938, and the large decaying wooden pithead loomed as a popular landmark especially for boaters, until its final hurrah when, after the end of WWII, the coal company gave permission for the citizens of Nanaimo to set the coal tipple and buildings on fire as a celebration of the war's end. It was a spectacular bonfire, but unfortunately it ignited the coal slack piles, which burned uncontrollably for an extended period of time, becoming quite a problem.

Some concrete forms still remain at the mine site near the Gallows Point lighthouse, but otherwise, it's all just a memory for those who know.