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Home>> People and Communities>> Ethnocultural Communities>> Elk Valley's Italian Community>> Oral Histories>> Angelo and Betty Schianni |
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Angelo and Betty Schianni | |||
September 9th, 1998 Interviewers:
Note: “B” indicates “Betty” and “A” indicates “Angelo” B: Well I can start I wasn’t born when they came but
they did come on the - it was in November of 1928 and this is
when my
Q: What did [your father] do Betty? B: He was a miner. He worked One East mine. A lot of Angelo’s dad he can interview you about his mother and dad too. His part is quite interesting. But... Q: The One East was a nightmare. Did your father tell you about that? B: Oh yeah Oh I can remember people coming home with a boot of my dad’s and he would be in the hospital because his leg was broken you know. Accidents I’m telling you in one of those pictures, the one that’s got my mother - close to my mother he had his finger chopped off. You can see it in the picture. Yeah you can see it in the picture, it’s over there. And oh he was a victim of many, many, many accidents. I guess everything was done manually or with a horse. A: All the miners that worked in One East were in accidents. B: Yeah every one of them. Q: Those bumps aye - those bumps? B: My dad was in a bump for many hours.
B: Yeah and he still survived. You can tell that in your thing... A: He survived he had a broken arm. He was on his way out... He was on his way out with another fellow and Mr. Pallone was stuck and no light. B: Oh it was terrible well when they have a bump I mean it hits their lamp that’s on their head and that thing totally goes out. But they all.... Q: How did they keep going back there? B: And they always went back - this is what I was going to tell you. A: Well sometimes they would take a maybe week off before they went back. B: Oh yeah but they went back but you know who it was harder on? Our families, like our mothers and us when we got to know it. A: It was like it was waiting for something to happen. B: We were just you know we’d always wait for them to
come home. My mother would hate to see him go. Because she never
knew if he was going to come back. I’m thinking you know she
just come over from Italy it was so hard. What was she going to
do and stuff
This oral history transcript is extracted from the
Elk Valley Italian Oral History Project undertaken for the Fernie and District Historical Society
in 1998-99. The
Heritage Community Foundation and the Year of the Coal Miner Consortium would
like to thank Leslie Robertson and the interview team and the Fernie and District Historical Society,
which is a member of the consortium, for permission to reprint this material. |
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