"Glace Bay" a Glace Bay Travel Page by easterntrekker

It’s hard to write about the town I grew up in. On some level I know it so well and on another level I don’t know it at all. So I will try to paint a picture of this little town on the banks of the Atlantic Ocean.

Glace Bay has always been a coal-mining town. Following the formation of the Dominion Coal Company in 1893, a number of mines were opened in what was destined to become Glace Bay. In its heyday, the town had 12 collieries. Today it has none.

Many families came here to work in the “mines”. Our family was no exception. My Dad was a miner as was his father before him. As children we learned the meaning of the whistles that blew once when there was work and twice when there wasn’t. Nobody got rich working in the mines but it was our life.

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Going to school if your Dad wasn’t a miner , he was probably a fisherman. The early 1950's, Glace Bay was the sword fishing center of Canada. In the 1990's due to over fishing and the subsequent the closure of the fishing grounds the role for the port has been diminished. However there is an active lobster fishery.

I returned to Glace Bay in Oct 2008 to take my daughter and one-month-old granddaughter to meet some relatives. I don’t get back much anymore since my Mom has died, and most of my family has moved away. I like to pretend she still lives in the old white house. that still stands proudly on the top of the hill on our street.

Formerly an independently incorporated town (1901-1995), the municipal government in Glace Bay was dissolved and the community has been amalgamated into the larger regional municipality. So in a since I guess that is the final chapter on this proud little hard working place.