3.3.1 Ore Extraction

Underground mining methods sought to further reduce man’s involvement in moving and breaking up blocks of rock.

		Cross-section of a mine, circa 1750.
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		Drilling and blasting in drifts, 1930-1940.
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Gravity soon became the miner’s ally. Once the areas of mineralization had been blasted, the ore was conveyed to the lower drifts, often down inclined planes, the impact breaking up the rock as it moved towards the chutes which remained sealed until the mine cars were loaded.

		Inclined plane in an asbestos mine, pre-1940.
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Block caving (collapse) methods were increasingly used from the 1920s on. They allowed asbestos mines to gradually be converted into underground operations and were used in the copper and gold mines in the Abitibi region when they first went into production in the 1930s.

Underground crushers completed the operations that prepared the rock for hoisting to the surface.

		Ore chutes for loading mine cars, Noranda mine, 1934.
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