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The mountain is gone, we dug it down,
And hauled it away on a train;
Our shelter from the wind is gone for evermore,
I'm an open pit miner, I work in this hole.
I can see the sun rise, the stars in the skies.
The sound of production fills the air;
From the drillin' to the blastin' they're diggin' and a-haulin',
From the mines through the mill, there's another tilt to fill.
From the mountain to the steel,
For the ships that sail the sea,
And the rails that carry the trains along,
One man shan't die for the buglers down the line,
We've changed the ways, we brought the mountain down.
Now for thirty-odd years, I've lived through the fears,
The strikes, the lay-offs, plenty of them;
Through the winters so abrupt, the summer's eatin' dust,
What price have I paid for the livin' that I've made?
When the day's work is done, I return to my home,
The kids who were young, how they've grown;
They have gone a different way, no reason to stay,
There's more than iron ore we export from Labrador.
From the mountain to the steel,
For the ships that sail the sea,
And the rails that carry the trains along,
One man shan't die for the buglers down the line,
We've changed the ways, we brought the mountain down.
The mountain is gone, we dug it down,
And hauled it away on a train;
Our shelter from the wind is gone for evermore,
I'm an open pit miner, I work in this hole.
Recorded by the Iron City Ramblers (A Place We Call Home).
From Wikipedia: In the southwest corner of Labrador, near the Quebec border, the region's livelihood is based on iron ore mining which can be traced to the 1950s when the Iron Ore Company of Canada (IOCC) constructed Labrador City and the Quebec North Shore and Labrador Railway to haul ore to the port of Sept-Îles, PQ, 575 km to the south. The adjacent Wabush Mines were established in the 1960s by another company, along with the town of Wabush and the Wabush Lake Railway which connects to the QNS&L. Labrador West is also home to tremendous wilderness opportunities in a pristine state with little human settlement or development. Wilderness recreational opportunities in the Labrador West area include camping, fishing, hunting (particularly for caribou, black bear, and ptarmigan), hiking, boating, skiing, and snowmobiling.
