Many of us find it strange driving where the overpass was until recently. And to many of us, it brings back memories of other sites in Timmins that local historian Karen Bachmann calls “here and gone”.
In 1927, the Hollinger Mine built a bucket line suspended over Algonquin Boulevard and parallel to the eastern side of Highway 655. Bachmann says the “Hollinger Aerial Tramway” carried gravel to the mine to be used as backfill underground.
“There were 230 buckets that were suspended along about 11,000 metres of cable, and that aerial tram ran 16 hours a day, Bachmann narrates. “Each bucket dropped its load every 17.5 seconds for a yearly total of about 750,000 tons of backfill.”
Despite lectures from police, parents and teachers, kids thought it was cool to hitch a ride on one of the buckets.
“Well, one little guy decided he wasn’t listening to this stuff. So, him and the big guys all went and grabbed on and did their wonderful thing and had their little ride, excepting he kind of let go and fell.”
Luckily, Bachmann adds, he fell into a pile of snow but still broke his leg.
