Miner's Day biggest success to date

Scottish tourist Robert Jardine stood patiently in the sunshine on Canmore's Main Street Saturday morning (July 12) waiting for the Miner's Day parade to start.

He had heard about the parade while staying in Canmore and had wandered down "just to see what it was about," he said.

It was the same story for Utah residents Donna and Arlan Greening.

"To us it gives us a sense or a feeling of your history and the people who lived here," Arlan said.

Up the street Calgarians Diana and Clarence Harten, meanwhile, knew all about the parade and Canmore's coal mining history. As they sat waiting in lawn chairs as they had their breakfast of muffins and coffee, Diana, who was born in Canmore and whose father, uncle and grandfather were underground miners, said the upcoming parade reaffirmed the role mining played in the town's history.

"It established this place," she said. "There wouldn't be a Canmore without the miners. They were the backbone of this town."

Shortly afterwards, Highland pipes could be heard down the street as Canmore's mining families left the North-West Mounted Police barracks and began the short march south towards the Canmore Hotel.

Led by the pipe band and past and present RCMP officers, the 300-plus members of the mining families, many of who were carrying signs indicating their family names, were greeted by cheers, applause and laugher.

This year the parade, the Friday night reception and the Saturday afternoon picnic were special, given that 2008 marks Canmore's 125th anniversary and this Miner's Day saw the unveiling of a book, a statue and a new collection of paintings, all of which celebrate Canmore's coal-mining past.

Survival in Paradise: A Century of Coal Mining was released Friday (July 11) along with Michael Vincent's newest line of paintings celebrating historic buildings, and on Saturday (July 12) came the long-awaited unveiling of the Canmore Miner's Bronze, a 6'2" statue of a coal miner.

Hundreds of onlookers gathered Saturday cheered as the white sheet covering the statue fell to the ground.

The statue has been donated to the Canmore Museum & Geoscience Centre to ensure it remains community-owned, according to project coordinator Scott Macpherson.

"This has been a grassroots initiative all the way," he told the crowd, adding the committee raised over $22,000 for the project.

Margaret Poznansky, whose father was William Wilson - the namesake of the Wilson Mine - and who was also instrumental in saving the Canmore Opera House and the Goat locomotive, said she thought the entire event helped Canmore maintain its ties to its coal-mining days.

"I think it is very important. I think it is important for whoever is from Canmore to reconnect to their roots and I think it is also important to people who come to Canmore and see it as tourist," she said.

When asked what her father would think of the celebrations, Poznansky said he would have been surprised.

"I think he would just be amazed that anyone would have even thought of honouring coal miners. To him it was a simple way of life," she said, adding her father grew up in a coal-mining family.

Richard Eliuk, who grew up in Prospect - one of Canmore's small subdivisions - and worked in the tipple as a young man in 1954-'55, said after the festivities that preserving memories is more important than ever.

"You've got to keep the memories alive. Everybody is dying out so you've got to have pictures

and memories."