For more than 20 years a local group has hoped to turn the mine into a heritage site and will now ask city council to help fund roughly four million dollars towards the project.
Lesslie Toth is the President of the Galt No. 8 Mine Historic Society and worked at the mine for more than 25 years alongside some 400 other employees.
He tells Global News he wants to share fond memories of the mine by developing it into an interpretive tourist heritage site.
“It really privies me to have had confrontation and have rub shoulders with men like that who really built this company as far as I’m concerned, and Lethbridge for that matter,” he says.
Between 1935 and 1957 the mine produced more than 300 million tons of coal and according to Belinda Crowson with the Lethbridge Historical Society, was an economic driver for Southern Alberta.
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“The schools were powered by coal, the train was powered by coal. Coal was an important part of Lethbridge but also all of Canada. It was the industry that kept us going and if we forget that history we’re forgetting a large part of what made Lethbridge,” she adds.
According to Treasurer of the society, Bill Axtell, the dream is to preserve and protect the sites remaining structures and create a southern Albert tourist attraction.
“We’re the only formal mine in which nine of the 11 original buildings are still intact, so we’ve got something to show. We’ve got something that we can present eventually on the scale of Heritage Park in Calgary,” he adds.
There’s a lot of work to be done but the possibilities are endless, including rides in the original mining trains, theatrical acts and educating students on the future of the energy industry.
Axtell also believes the site would act as a legacy to past generations in the mine industry.
“If you go through Lethbridge you’re going to find tones of families that are decedents of mining families, so we’re touching a lot of lives to develop this,” he adds.
The group will unveil its development plans to city council Monday afternoon.
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