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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
There are few men around anymore like former Giant Mine box hole driller and cage operator Alan Poole.

Alan Poole visited Giant Mine and Yellowknife after being away for 62 years. He said seeing the mine one last time was one of the items on his bucket list. - Simon Whitehouse/NNSL photo

The veteran mine worker dropped into Yellowknife this week after being away for more than 60 years to "tick off his bucket list."

Born and raised in Yorkshire, U.K., and currently residing in southern England, Poole recalled coming North after the Second World War. He said he found today's city very different from when he was here for 14 months between 1949 and 1950.

"It is quite a surprise," he said. "I mean, I knew it was going to be, but it is very different. All I remember really was the Old Town. There was no new town."

In other instances, the town and scenery remain much the same.

"I walked down to the Old Town (Monday) and it is exactly as I remember it," he said, adding he was trying to figure out the location where he played baseball games at the time. "Just like then, there are a couple of scrubby old buildings and a couple of floatplanes in the water."

Poole said the idea of re-visiting came to him while sitting in a Bermuda restaurant with his wife a few years ago. A gentleman happened to walk in with a T-shirt reading "Yellowknife" and the two struck up a conversation.

"I said to him, 'Are you from Yellowknife?' And he said, 'Yeah.' I told him I worked there back in 1949 and '50. The guy said, 'Oh my God, you wouldn't believe the change. We have high rise buildings now.'"

Poole never found out who the man was, but from that exchange, he told his wife he wanted to revisit the city and some other locations in Canada before the end of his life.

Being only 18 when World War II ended, he said he was too young to have been recruited for the military and became eligible just as there was a dwindling need for servicemen. In the post-war years he ended up wandering Canada.

His first experience in the North, before reaching Yellowknife, came when he was hired as a storekeeper for Eldorado Mining and Refining at Port Radium in 1947.

His duties included running movies for the 200 people in the now deserted community.

"We had a community hall and we would run movies twice a week," he recalled. "We ordered the movies in from Edmonton and set them up and did the advertising at the camp. We would put posters out and the job gave me spending money."

He recalled one amusing story in which area Inuit came in for the same movie showing on Friday and Saturday night. Someone then asked the visitors why they came again.

"They said, 'Last night (in the movie) a plane was coming down and then shot back up. Maybe tonight it will crash,'" he said, laughing.

At 21 he found himself in Yellowknife after making his way to Toronto and back to Edmonton in 1949. It was in the latter city that he acquired a job at a Giant Mine recruitment centre.

"They were hiring everyday and everyone would sign on for one year. At the end of the year, you would get a free plane ticket on the way out," he said.

After staying at Giant for 14 months, he left town because it was "too cold."

"Outside of the windows of the (mine) bunkhouses, we would get Scotch whiskey and put it outside to candle," he said, describing the weather. "The water in the Scotch whiskey would freeze and we would have 200 proof liquor, which made for very good drinking cocktails."

Poole recalled intermingling with displaced persons of Hungarian, Polish and Jewish descent who, fresh from Europe's refugee camps, rarely spoke a word of English.

His first two weeks at the mine were the toughest, during which he broke rocks on the rock pile underground.

While working conditions were "primitive," he said there were a lot of perks, including a 24-hour cafeteria that provided almost any, and as much food as one wanted. He was also able to escape to Yellowknife - mostly for drinking beer and chasing women, he said.

Eventually, he got away from the rock pile and worked the cage for six months; taking people and supplies underground. He also drilled some box holes for a while.

After deciding the "weather was a bit too severe," Poole moved to Vancouver and eventually went to law school. He ran a business and later retired in England.

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