'Here as long as the Robertson Headframe'
Judith Sharp says she will miss the structure built the year she arrived in the city.
| Before destruction of the Robertson Headframe, the paper is profiling Yellowknifers and their relationships to the structure. If you have a story e-mail newsdesk@nnsl.com or call 867-766-8295. |
Evan Kiyoshi French
Northern News Services
Wednesday, April 13, 2016
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
When folks ask Judith Sharp when she arrived in the city she says she can point to the Robertson Headframe - for the time being.
Judith Sharp says she feels like "a part of me is gone," knowing the Robertson Headframe is coming down. - Evan Kiyoshi French/NNSL photo |
The 73-year-old who grew up in Ottawa and moved to the city when her husband took up a military posting here, first set foot in Yellowknife in 1977, the year the iconic rectangle was raised over the Con Mine shaft. She said she feels "terrible" knowing the structure is slated for deconstruction in the coming weeks.
"People always ask me how long have I been here and I say 'I've been here as long as the Robertson Headframe,'" she said. "Now they're going to take it down and I feel ... like a part of me is gone."
Sharp said the headframe was one of the first things she saw when she arrived and it's the first thing she sees when she returns from quarterly medical checkups in Edmonton.
"It's what you look for when you've been away," said Sharp. "It's the first thing I look for when I'm flying in. Then I see the Northlands Trailer Park where I live and it's like I'm home."
Sharp said her brother-in-law, Clyde Sharp, studied in Germany before the mine went fully operational to learn the ins-and-outs of the massive German-made engines that drove the hoist. She said he wrote the operators' manual that was ultimately used to train Con Mine workers.
Sharp said she went on a tour of Con Mine once, and she was startled to learn how cold it could be inside the Earth.
"I found it very, very cold, very wet and very slimy," she said. "You really had to have the rubber boots, you had to have the lamps on your hardhat. I don't know how people survive working underground, if they have difficulty with depth. I found it really very strange."
Sharp said she and her husband separated in 1979, and he moved to Calgary shortly after. She said she decided to stick around in the city she had come to call home.
Sharp said she wishes the headframe could be preserved.
"I really wish that somehow they could maintain the structure," she said. "It was just like a part of us."
