![]() |
|||
![]() ![]() |
![]() |
||
![]() |
|||
Home>> People and Communities>> People/Miner Profiles>> Elk Valley>> Dick and Dalia Guzzi |
|||
Dick and Dalia Guzzi | |||
August 8, 2020 Interviewers:
(Italics - Leslie Robertson) (A - Dick Guzzi) A1 - Dalia Guzzi) Q: Did you hear about the mines a lot from your grandfather or? A: Oh yeah, yeah he was the one he was working
underground in
Q: Did your dad work in the mine Dalia? A1: Definitely 40 years. Q: Forty years? Also at Coal Creek? A: Yeah. Yeah. Cause my dad worked in the mine for - he didn’t work that long - my dad worked probably maybe 20 some odd years and then being that he was in the store - my grandma had the business that’s what he went into - he went into the grocery business and then he built the house onto the store and all that kind of stuff as we were growing up and heck we just had a good life. Q: When did he open the store Dick cause I remember here in 1953 but it was here way before that? A1: Oh yeah. A:
Q: In the forties - thirties? A: Yes way way back into the thirties yeah. A1: Because uh when they were kids - Mike and them went away to work that’s his brother and they sent him money to start it up again during the Depression. A: Yeah that’s right. Q: So he started even before the Depression then if they were helping him out.? A: Yeah. Yeah. A1: Then they closed it and then they opened it again. Q: None of your family did go - none of your brothers and sisters or your brothers went into the mine did they? A1: No. A: Uh Mike went. A1: Oh Mike went yeah.
Q: They never had much choice did they? A1: No. No in those days.... A: ... a lot of them didn’t make it - they were doing the work underground in the mine and a bloody big bump would come and some of them got buried alive and all that kind of 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. |
|||
![]() |