Article content Jim MacLellan delivers one of his monologues during The Men of the Deeps’ Christmas Show at the Savoy Theatre in Glace Bay this past Saturday night. Photo by MATTHEW INGRAHAMArticle contentFIRST AUDITIONArticle contentFor someone who made a craft out of telling stories and singing with The Men of the Deeps since its formation in 1966, MacLellan admitted he didn’t know much about music or choir singing when he first auditioned.Article content“When I went up, I told them my history, and I said, ‘I’m sorry, I love to sing, but I don’t know much about singing,’” he recalled, referencing the choir’s first musical director, Steve MacGillivray, and choir founder Nina Cohen, whose enthusiasm for the preservation of mining culture had also led to the founding of the Cape Breton Miners’ Museum in Glace Bay.Article content“And (Steve) did the scales with me. He had me go up and down. He kept pounding the low note and had me sing a few lines of one song, Old Man River. And when I got to the bottom notes, he just put his hand up and said, ‘Great. Come back tomorrow.’”Article contentMacLellan was the 16th person out of around 40 chosen for the Men of the Deeps back then.Article contentArticle contentThe choir formed as part of Cape Breton’s contribution to Canada’s Centennial year in 1967 to preserve in song some of the island’s mining folklore. The group has always been comprised of coal miners — with bylaws stating that to become part of the group, its members required mining experience for at least two years.Article content Jim MacLellan, a longtime Men of the Deeps member: “It seemed that I always had to look after someone — and now here they were looking after me. It finally hit me. … I felt so humbled.” Photo by IAN NATHANSON/CAPE BRETON POSTArticle content‘BORN A MINER’Article contentMacLellan fit that bill easily.Article content“I was born a miner. I lived about three minutes from the pit (in Glace Bay) and I know I’ll die a miner. It was ingrained in me early,” MacLellan said.Article content“In those days, it was common for the oldest guy in the family to go in the pit. I’d say 90 per cent of the people that lived in Caledonia (neighbourhood of Glace Bay) — that’s the way it worked.”Article contentHe said he was encouraged to join the priesthood but decided against that.Article content“I started in the mine at age 17,” he said. “And they train you. They put me with the old timers — some of them were in the First World War; some of them were in the great march in New Waterford in 1925. They taught me so much in those two or three years before I transferred into the engineering department.”Article contentArticle contentHis mining time also allowed him plenty of career advancement.Article content“I’m still only 20 years old, and so I got in (to) the engineering department, and away we went,” he said. “Eventually, I went to night school and became a surveyor, and later on a field engineer that’s in charge of ventilation and all that. Then I taught night school for 10 years — mining and so on. So I was really engrossed in mining.”Article content Jim MacLellan, top row right, has been part of The Men of the Deeps since its inception in 1966. Photo by CONTRIBUTEDArticle content‘KIND OF A MISNOMER’Article contentBut miners’ reputations, he said, were being sullied because of the profession.Article content“The publicity we got on this island was horrible at the time,” he said. “There were strikes, explosions, fires and tie-ups — all kinds of problems. And the miner was kind of a misnomer: they were good, honest, hard-working people, but what they put in the (newspapers), especially in Ontario, we were considered terrible.Article content“But I think The Men of the Deeps changed that (perception).”
Final bow for ‘Big Jim’ MacLellan with The Men of the Deeps
