Download or read book Coal Dust in My Blood written by Bill Johnstone and published by Lantzville, B.C. : Oolichan Books. This book was released on 1993 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bill Johnstone spent most of his working years as a coal miner, first in England, then in Alberta, and finally on Vancouver Island. Born in 1908 in Northumberland, England, he began working in the pits as a hand miner at the age of thirteen. After immigrating to the Canadian Prairies, where he alternated between working as a farmhand and a miner in the Alberta coal mines. In 1936, he moved to Vancouver Island where he mastered nearly every phase of coal mining from working on the picking tables to shooting explosive charges. He also studied mining engineering and mine rescue and was injured in a cave-in. Not long before his retirement, after 52 years in the mining industry, Bill Johnston became district superintendent of the Canadian Collieries mines near Cumberland.