The following transcript of

Eldred Dickie’s interview

on

Memories and Music (broadcast in November 1974)

was created by the Sudbury Public Library as part of a

Summer Canada Project

in 1982.

••• 1

SUDBURY PUBLI C LIBRARY "MEMORIES & MUSIC :

ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM

I NCO LTD. CI GM

I NTERVIEWEE: Eldred Dickie POSITION:

TRANSCRIBER: Bonnie Savage TAPE NUMBER: 002

DATE: INTERVIEWER: Don MaeMillan

DATE OF TRAN: July 1982 SUMMER CANADA PROJECT

THEME:

D.M. Now we're going to try a l evel t est, a l evel test here with Mr. Eldred Dickie, and Mr. Dickie you would speak up this time. Give me the names of the some towns and cities i n Canada.

E.D. Well I'm going to name our own. Sudbury, North Bay, Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal.

D.M. That sounds fairl y reasonabl e. Now maybe one or two i n the Maritimes or something out there.

E.D. Oh yeah, Winnipeg.

D.M. Yeah.

E.C. You've got to go t o Edmonton and Calgary.

D.M. Our guest now is Mr. Eldred Dicki e who ret ired last June the thirtieth after some over thirty-nine years wit h I nco. All of it at Frood Mine and he reti red as a foreman. We t hi nk that you will find Mr. Dickie a most interesting guest. Now there are many reasons for that. One of them is that, as you will find out in the interview, Mr. Dickie, could have pl ayed hockey for a living. He could have been a businessman. He was a successful businessman, but he abandoned that because it was not what he wanted to do with hi s life. He considered entering the priesthood and having given that a good look and thought about i t long and hard, he decided against that. He tried mining, and in mining he found his life's work along with working with people, with administration. Now we're getti ng a little bit ahead of ourselves here,but we wanted to give you a litt le bit, a little background again on our guest today Mr. Eldred Dickie. Now Mr. Dickie so that we may get to know you as well as we can on our l ittle show, where are you from? Where's you're home town?

E. D. I was born in Chapleau. I was born in Chapleau.

DICKIE ••• 2

D.M. I suppose you would grow up and go to school in Chapleau?

E.D. I went to, yes I did. I went to school in Chapleau. I also went to school in Fort William and Toronto.

D.M. Now let's take it a step at a time. Now your father was an interesting man. Now what was the story about your father Mr. Dickie?

E.D . Well my father, he came to Chapleau. He studied law, and he come up and he was going to open a practice in Chapl eau but the small town at the time, just a new railroad town so he got a job with the C.P.R. as well as his little office and acted as J ustice of the Peace.

D.M. That's interesting eh? I mean, about what size would Chapleau at that time?

E.D. Well it's pretty hard for me to say. I'd say that when I was going to school it would be about eighteen hundred, maybe two thousand people at the most.

D.M. So your father would take a run on an engine, steam, somewhere and back and then practice law on his days off or something. How did that work out?

E.D. He'd come in off the road and had his own little pl ace and he'd do his little bit of business whatever there was. There wasn't too much then because, I imagine about when my dad was there, the place would be, if there would be twelve hundred people that would cover it.

D.M. Right . Still I find that interesting. Now, and your mother too. Was she, she was from that area right?

E.D. Yes. She was born in Pembroke. Come up to Chapleau and she

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was working in Chapleau and met my father, and they got married. They had four children, two boys, two girls. I'd, I was the baby of the first family.

D.M. Right. Well now sir, when, you would start school in Chapleau around about what, '14, '15, around in there?

E.D. That's about it.

D.M. Any of your schoolmates who might be around listening to this broadcast that you can remember now?

E.D. Well two of the boys that went to school with, they were a little younger than I was at the time, but they're both retired now.

DICKIE

The two Henderson boys came down here to Sudbury. Grant , he Was working for Fal conbridge, and Gordon, he was a great hockey player. Oh yes, there 's another.

D.M. Right.

E. D. George Fythe. He worked up to be chief electrician out at Falconbridge. I believe George is retired. He went out to Vancouver to live for awhile, but he 's back here in Sudbury too.

D.M. It ' s interesting Mr. Dickie, that people who t ake a look ~t the rest of the world and come back to Norther n Ontario they tell me that they l ike the se~sons . It gets a little chilly but they'd r ather have some snow and cold than some rain. And I agree with that.

E. D. That what I gather, from what G.eo rge was telling me about it . He said he enjoyed it , but it's far away from the r est of the world.

D.M. Now, you played, you started playing hockey as a tyke eh, and tell us about your very, early days playing hockey out in Chapleau.

E.D. Well to be ve~ honest about it , we didn't have the material that the kiddies have today. You got lucky enough to get a hockey stick and then to do our practicing we practi ced on the hard snow with a small can that they have cream in there they used to get and we'd take them out sometimes it was worse than that. Sometimes it was a piece of frozen stuff from the horse.

D.M. Used as a road apple ••••

E.D. A road apple.

D.M. • ••• in those days.

E.D. But on Saturdays they were very good to us, the town, they'd give the school children the rink on Saturdays and we'd play in the mornings. We'd play our hockey.

D.M. About that time, at that point in time it seems, didn't some hockey players put magazines in their, inside their socks for shin pads.

E.D. Well I've got to admit it. It wasn't magazines. We used to have to use better than that. We had the catalogue. That was the big thing in my days because ••••

D.M. The Eaton's catalogu~ , eh?

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•

DICKIE ••• 4 246

D.M. Well now • • •

E.D. You know, I ' ve got to recall something he,re because, I ' ll never f orget t he ' first time I came down to Sudbury here to play hockey, I borrowed the uniform I came down in. I couldn't , I didn' t have one. A fellow by the name of Harold Shimbine, he was working up at , he was a Sudbury boy too, he was working up in Chapleau on the rail road there. He used to play for the C. P.R. up there and he lent me his outfit to come down here to play hockey.

D.M. Excellent . well t hen, you then, you moved from -Chapleau it seems to me, a round '23 about and played some hockey in Fort William right?

E. D. That ' s right . Now I tried to play junior and go to school . And before the season was over, I was going to school alright , but they moved me up into the senior rank.

D.M. There was some pretty good senior hockey around Ontario and Canada in the early twenties I believe.

E.D. There was, there was , and the following year the, Dutch or the Fort William at the time they called them , they won the Allen Cup.

D.M. Right . I forgot the name of the team . Do you remember the name of the team? Was it the Tigers or the ••••

E. D. No, they used t o call them • ••

D.M. • ••• Warriors or what was it?

E. D. • ••• the Fort William Seniors.

D.M. Fort William Seniors eh.

E.D. But they had Port Arthur too you see , so they just went by their own name.

D.M. Fair enough. O. K., so , that was , we're talking ' 23 then, but you then returned to Chapleau, co r rect?

E.D. That ' s right .

D.M. And I believe, here you are, you'd played hockey, pretty good hockey. I pr esume you'd considered professional hockey, but you came back to Chapleau to think things over about ' ?5, and you thought you wanted to give some thought to priesthood. Is that co r r eQt si r?

E. D. That's right sir.

D.M. Well would you tell me j ust what the story is there •

DICKIE • • • 5 309

E.D. Well I thought about it ever since I was a l ittle fellow I guess. I lik~d the life , and always felt that I'd l ike something where I could work with people and do things like that, so that was it . So when I came back from Fort William, my uncle told me , he said, well if you want it, he said, I'll help you. So he did. So I went down to Toronto then, and went to school down in Toronto. But when I got in there for awhile , I guess I'd come back home on holiday ., and gee the women were as good-looking then as they are now. You just couldn't, so I went back and told them, and they were very nice with me . I couldn't ask for anything better. They treated me real well and thanked me for making my decision and not making a mistake.

D.M . ivell Mr. Dickie, you've, you phrased that very well, and I know that you say that with al l sincerity. So we have you back in Chapleau around '26. What happened then?

E.D. Well I went to work for awhile in Chapleau. I worked for Foot and Chappells. I worked with, Mr . Grout and I started together. He eventually, he got to own the store. I suppase if I might have stayed there , I might have owned that one too with him , but however, I didn ' t .

D.M. But you didn ' t . v/hat did you do?

E.D. So I went down, I worked there for awhile. So then I went back down to Toronto . I saw the light down in Toronto. I wanted to go again, and I was aiming to go for big business there. So I started with the Stop and Shop people .

D.M. Now that' s a famili ar name. They, but they were bought out. Is that not right?

E.D. I believe they sold out to Dominion people. It was a big name in the States eh, and the Dominion bought them over here , but I worked there.

D.M. You did, now let's not be unduly modest Mr. Dickie, you did pretty well with Stop and Shop. I s that not true sir?

E. D. Yes I did. I went up, I was supervisor of twenty-three stores.

D.M. Well alright, but despite this sucess , you did not stay at this work in Toronto.

E. D. No, I got , along come some people from Timmins, and big money to play hockey again you know. In those days , a pro would make six to eight thousand, but when you ' re going to get more than ,that just t o play amateur and your room and board' s t hrown in, ' well •• ••

D.M. You had to consider that eh?

E.D. My expenses was paid, so away I went up , but ••••

DICKIE ••• 6 382

D.M. This was up to where? To Timmins?

E.D. Timmins yeah.

D.M. So, but you didn't stay long in Timmins Mr. Dickie.

E.D. Well I'll tell you, it was quite a difference. I'd taken a trip back up there since. Gone down and looked for the Hollinger Hall, but I never found it, but I found the Hollinger Village. It was a little square boxes made with tar paper on them. Maybe you've been up there, and you saw it.

D.M. I haven't.

E.D. But they were good homes, but it was pretty rough country I'll admit, when I was up there at tha~ time.

D.M. Well now, we're talking mid-Depression. I'm certain that things have changed.

E.D. Oh it's beautiful there now, beautiful.

D.M. Beautiful the way it is now.

E.D. Yeah, yeah.

D.M. There were a lot of places that didn't look too great in the middle '30' s.

E.D. That's right, that's right.

D.M. So having left Timmins, where'd you go?

E.D. I came back down, and on my way back home to Chapleau I stopped off here in Sudbury and I went down with my uncle Jack and my aunt Maggie and stopped with them for a little while and I met, I met this good l ooking gi rl while I was visiting there, aqd my my uncle said, well why don't you stay and work with me for awhile. So I -did. I helped with work -with him, but there was just a job on the yard on the C.N. So I worked in the yard there for awhile, and I said to him, oh no, this wasn't for me. If I want railroad, I can go back home. So he said, why don't you try the Ineo. So sure enough, he got me an appointment and I went out and I saw Mr. Parker. So he asked me where I'd like to work. I couldv'e gone to work in Copper Cliff but the fellows kept telling me about this great Frood Mine. It was easy to get to and close to town and they were making lots of bonus, so I said, I asked, and that's where I went. So he told me to drop down the following day, which I did, and he just come out and called out my name, and I went in and ••••

D.M. You became a ~miner.

• DICKIE ••• 7

438

E.D. • ••• became a miner •

D.M. And you remained a miner for thirty-nine years.

E.D. Thirty-nine ye~s, four months.

D.M. There you have it friends. I guess on the day that you went out there, you didn't know what was in store I guess, but a fine de­ClSlon. But now, as you were working in the mine Mr. Dickie, the, you, I know that you, you did well. You finished, of course as a foreman after all these years. You started out as the, on the school stope and what were some of the other jobs you had there?

E.D. I started out as a shoveller in the school stope and they at that time, they were just as strong for safety as they are now, and they taught you the fundamentals of mining. Told you all the safety aspects on the school stope, but we watched this fellow using this crusher over there. So that looked pretty good job to me. They only had about three of them in the mine, so this guy told me the school stope, he said, you'll never get a job running that because there's only two more. Well I said, well I'd like to lea n it, so he put me on it, and I learned it, but when I came out of the school, I went, they figured this is pretty late fellow, so they put me on nipping for awhile. Well then I nipped for awhile and pipe fitter was sick so I went on fitting and then I went drilling in thirty- seven stope. Way down in thirty-one hundred. Just opened up t hat level. Used to go down, car~ your lunch pail down the ladder. Half the time it would come open and you'd lose your milk, but they were a fine bunch of men. You couldn·t ask for better. I tell you, I can't, I think that was one of the things that kept me with Frood Mine.

D.M . I think from, excuse me, from your, from the way you talk, and think back, that it was the men. That you liked the people you worked with.

E. D. That's right. They were all nationalities ••••

D.M. Right.

E.D. • ••• and some of them just come from the old count~, Builing lit­tle homes in the Donovan, and they were so friendly and close to you you know, that •••• well I remember one man building his house and down the level and having a little tough time, and the guys in the level said don't wor~ eve~body. , And I was one of t hem that had to do that too. We just take our shovels over, we dug his; basement, got the cement poured, helped him put out the frame of his house, and that 's the way the majority of them houses in the Donovan went up in those days.

DICKIE ••• 8 505

D.M. vJell great years. Great people. Now in addition to your work, you found you sort of, your other, not your vocation, your avocation, in getting involved with sports. In organizing sports and one thing and another. Is that true Mr. Dickie?

E.D. Yes it was. We started off, went down there, and you know it's not hard for a bunch of men to find fault eh? But being as I was, hockey and that, we started a little argument and that's how we started our different level hockey teams. And we'd all chip in so much for our ice, and our sweaters and one shift boss would have one team playing against the other, and I saw it here in the old Palace Rink, right here in Sudbu~ now, and that's where Cambrian Ford has their big garage. But at that that time, you there in the morning when these here level teams were playing off and you couldn't get in. It was just packed with miners.

D.M. Right. Lots of rivalry, lots of good hockey in those years eh?

E.D. Oh, good sport.

D.M . Well now we're going to get away just a moment from the, from the sport, we're going to get back to it, but you were married. Now what, whom did you mar~?

E.D. Grace, Grace Kennedy.

D.M. Now she came I think from an Inco family, right?

E. D. Yeah that's right. Her grandfather was out of Worthington and her other grandfather, Mr. Deeker, he was master mechanic out at Frood Mine when I, years when it first opened. He was right there with the people.

D.M. Now how did you come to meet the young lady?

E.D. Well she used to come around with my cousin. They were going to school together. It was a lucky day for me.

D.M. Very well said. If you're listening Mrs . Dickie, you are appre­ciated. Now, so where did you live right after you were married?

E.D. Oh we had, when we got married, we lived up in Burton, just up from the church there, and we had a l ittle apartment there, and we moved over to Melvin, then we went down, we lived on Edmund St reet . We had a three-room apartment back there. My wife's aunty had that big house on Edmund Street. She used to keep it for Mr. McVittie, and that's where my good friend Bert Meredith, he was down boarding with her ••••

D.M. Yes.

DICKIE ••• 9

E.D. • ••• and we used to poke around a little bit together with Bert. But I couldn't keep up with him. He was a pretty wild fellow in those days.

D.M. You said that Mr. Dickie, not I. Mr. Meredith you ••••

E.D. Oh Bert will appreciate it.

D.M. • ••• are greatl y appreciated.

E.D. He was, he was a hard worker. I'm telling, you, for a young

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man that come out l ike that, he was a stope boss. He worked up to stope boss, but Bert he could work like a horse. I could never figure it out. He was such a, pretty fancy guy too, but he was a good worker, and he enjoyed life.

D.M. Bert Meredith is very well known and very, very highly regarded in Sudbur,y. I can tell you that sir. Well now, we have you finding something to do, something that you like to do Mr. Dickie. Getting hockey teams and one thing and another organized. Did you not, did you not get an ulcer or something started? Or no, wait a minute, before that, you got involved in an athletic association •• •••

E.D. That's right.

D.M. • ••• in '36 or something.

E.D. That's right. In '36, we started, I got, they asked me to go in as secretar,y for the Frood athletic. Now there was just the one mine, that was Frood mine. And don ' t forget at that time, every­thing was done with a shovel, hand drills, and it was quite a way of mining. You'd never believe the difference between now and then. However, we did, we wanted to in '36. We had a pretty good hockey team. There was always, there was Creighton, Copper Cliff, Coniston, and even the refinery had a good team. Falcon­bridge had an A-one team, and of course opposition down there. We had that Port Colborne. They had a number one team but ••••

D.M. They were pretty good. They beat you that you that year right?

E.D. That's right, but the following year we got Red stewart up here and Red picked up a pretty good crew. He had Mel Hil l, he had ••••

D.M. Jimmy Dewey on that team?

E.D. • ••• Jim Dew~, Campman. They were all good hockey players. Bill Reagan. Poor old Bill, he's still around and doing good.

DICKIE ••• 10 6~

D.M. Right.

E.D. And they went out, they won the Allen Cup first. They were real good. Harry Towns was looking after them at the time, and ••••

D.M. There will be a l ot of our listeners who will remember that . Probably saw the games eh?

E.D. Yeah. Gordy Soucie there was the treasurer. We had at that time, I'll give you the board that we had on it.

D.M. Yeah.

E.D. We had Frank Weaver and then we had Mr. Brock. That was Norm Crete's Fathep-in- law by the way.

D.M. Right.

E.D. And then we had Gordon Soucie, he was the treasurer, and then I was the secretary. Then we had Harry Towns on the executive. We had Harry Smith on the executive, and we had Jack Cullen. He looked after the football end of it for us.

D.M. But now, you also, and maybe just some of the older timers will remember this. You also won a world cup. But this was before Russians weren't too actively involved.

E. D. That's right, that's right. The year that our team won the Allen Cup, they went down, they had to go to Toronto, and they pl~ed the london's. Now I just forget the last name. There was a lon­don something in there, but they were the winners overseas at that time, and Frood played them in Toronto, and Frood won that game. They were called the Sudbury Frood Tigers at the time.

D.M. Right . Now a lot of good baseball played around this part of the world around '36 , ' 37, right?

E.D. Yeah there was. We had, there was again, t hat was wonderful opposition because each small town, l i ke Creighton and Copper Cliff and Coniston and Garson, we all had baseball teams. We all had football teams. They all worked in t he mines or i n the smelter and there was great opposition. I saw as high as seventy­two hundred people down here at the Queen's Athletic Field.

D.M. You know it's too bad in a way Mr. Dickie, that, but I guess those days are gone. It's nothing you can change. It's just a changing world eh? What do we do? All watch too much television or something now?

DICKIE • •• 11 675

E.D. Oh we watch a lot of it, but I'm going to be honest with you. I was down this summer, and we moved this park over here on Notre Dame, at least the city did, and I watched these young fellows out playing baseball, but that baseball is going to come back.

D.M. It is eh?

E.D. It is because I for one, was awful surprised at the calibre of ball we've got. It's got to come up because it's a number one game.

D.M. So it is that . It's good to hear. Now you, one of your early things that you did sir, on behalf of your fellow man if you like, a Christmas tree, a Christmas tree fund started.

E.D. Yes, we started that back in I guess '37, and it was the year before we opened the Inco club. We held our first Christmas tree in the Polish hall on Frood Road, and I've got to give my wife a lot of credit for that day. She's been wit h me side by si de. I've run it ever since. I 'm very proud to say that we ran our tree, we've ran all our sports and we've never gone int o the red. When we won the Allen Cup team, we were in the red, but I put on drives out at Frood, and we ' ve had them there ever since and a wonderful bunch of people. They back you up to the point that, you give them something for their dollar , t hey're going to give it right back to you. You know that?

D.M. Mr. Dickie, talking to you, I beli-t?ve you. Now '39, a band right?

E.D. Yes, we opened up our Inco club and they put me, and I was director of the Inco club ever since it was built and in fact, it was one of the first ones. Our first meeting we held in that club, I had Mr. McCaskel1 and Mr. Beattie and myself and Mr. Jarrett and we were sitting there on a pile of lumber the first little meeting we had inside. They were finishing it off. So, we did, we operated. I promoted bowling with Mr. Stone and, the help of it, ' and had as high as , Frood alone had as high as forty-five teams. Then we had the mixed bowling and we started with badmin­ton. So then everything was going fine but we needed a band. So good enough, I got a hold of Paul Coster. He worked out at Frood, and I said t o Paul, can we get some players. So we did. We imported a piano player. We gave them a job in the carpenter shop and we got quite a band. We got quite a few of the boys from Sudbury that played into it and quite a few of our players, if you remember Mark Kinney at the time.

D.M. I recall Mark Kinney.

E.D. Well he came to play here and he was shy, so he took quite a few of our players with him.

DICKIE ••• 12 736

D.M . Well, that I did not know. Now, and again this was sort of the golden age of boxing and what not for this part of the world right sir? Henry Dunn?

E.D. Or is it Andy. Remember Henry Dunn, you know what we tried to do , and most of the time in our sport s in those days, we still try to do it especially out at Frood. But we had teams going around to different sections of the mine, and some of them lived in, what they used to call Fournier Ward then eh, and that's down in the Flour Mill and we were short down there. They ran a l ittle shal ­low ball. Nobody was supporting them so I went to Henry Dunn. He had a l i ttle one-chai r ba rber shop up on top of College Street there. I said, look Henry, you give me a hand and get that ball going down there in the Flour Mill, I ' ll give you all t he stuff that goes with it. Bats, balls and everything that goes . We ' ll even give you sweaters. Henry said, I ' ll get that going for you but you ' ve got t o help me. I said, what ' s that Henry? He said get me a job with Inco . Well boy I 'm telling you, you ' re looking at the guy with a wooden leg.

D.M. It ' s not easy.

E. D. I said, gee Henry. He said, I looked after pool rooms, I can fix the tables and he said I can fix bowling alleys and you've got it down there. I said that's the club. I said O. K., I'll get out and get you that job but you get out and get that ball . Well he did. So I went out and very fortunate, I was lucky enough. He said send him in, so the doctor checked his chest and everything else, but ••••

D.M. But they forgot to examine his legs.

E. D. Lucky enough Henry could move them around, and dance around on them like a young fellow and he came in and he worked at the Inca club. Oh they knew, pretty well, but he was away from the mine and that ' s the way it was . But he done a good job and through it, he started with me on it , so I was t ickl ed to death so I had another fellow, I had Henry Dunn.

D. M. Right . Now you turned out some pretty good boxers about that time I think Mr. Dickie.

E. D. That's right. We started off with Henry. So I said well Henry you're going to earn this job here you've got now because we ' re promoting wrestling and we ' re going to promote boxing. So which we did, and Henry did. \'le had some of our fellows. They went up and they were exellent. They were going right up to the t op r anks but they ' re fighting against people outside of their class . They started them off right up in the top. They should have worked their way up.

DICKIE ••• 1,3 789

D.M. You're right Mr. Dickie. I don't know if it was Henry Dunn I was talking to or somebody, mentionned that a good fellow, a middle weight, I 'm not sure who got down to the States and got outmatched.

E.D. That's right. Too often happens.

D.M. Too often happens, right.

E.D. He was a good man. Now in wrestling we started the same thing only our wrestling went pretty good. You see, we were getting the amy boys up there at the time. They 'd come from the amy camps with their boys, and our boys would go down there, and we had Nick Chalmer. Well he was out of this world as wrestler. He was really good, and we brought in this Belanger. He worked at Fread. He was good. Brought him from Montreal . In f act, the man stayed here. He' s, later on he took a job in the hotel busi­ness. He was a bartender and tapman and I believe he 's retired right now in Sudbury. And anot her one was Clark Phillips. Well Clark was, he was an A-one wrestler. I forgot one too. There was George Fleming. He stayed, he was quite a wrestler too. He worked up to be general foreman over at North Mine, I believe he was at Murray.

D.M. Wonderful memories Mr. Dickie.

E.D. But they were good boys . We had good shows, we had good wrest­ling. Good cl ean fighting.

D.M. Now, I know that your interest in athl etics, it seems that you told me as we were preparing for the broadcast, that when you were just a kid, eight or nine or ten years old, that your father took you t o see Jess Willard fight Jack Dempsey. Right?

E.D. That was my uncle.

D.M. Y5ur uncle took you eh?

E. D. Yeah. Fort William. He took me down to see that, and that was the first one I ever saw. To him that was a great thing. To me well ••••

D.M. It was just another couple of boxers eh?

E.D. That's right.

D.M. Well now ••••

E.D. It 1 s just like, as I was saying, when I went to see a wrestling match in Duluth, the first one I ever saw, the same uncle took me. He was quite interested in that . My uncle Dan. And when I saw that Bull Montana and what they went through, well you know, I thought that was one of the worst things going, but yet when I come up here, I seemed to get tangled in it, and I thought it was perfectly alright.

•

DICKIE ••• 14 837

D.M. They fool ' arbund a little bit in wrestl ing.

E.D. That ' s true, that's true.

D.M. Well now, this Clay-Foreman fight awhile back. Now you saw that. Now, the close curcuit . Now what were your, how did you react to that?

E.D. Well you ' ve got to give Clay credit. He won it , but if it was in an amat-euy fight, if it was in an a.rlItteur fight, that would have

""- .. stopped after the second round because they ' d say, no competltlon. When a man stands against the ropes and don 't fight, well that would wrap it in am teur fighting. Ask any am 'teur and he ' ll tel l you the same. Any man that knows his boxing, e ' l l tell you that that would never carry on. However, Clay did, he played it smart that time. He got away with it. You couldn't do much over in that country. I just guess you just have to t ake what your going. But this man Foreman, he just poked his arms and his elbows and that was it.

D.M. And wore himself out eh?

E. D. And wore himself. I n the eighth~ round, well his arms just had to drop. And the minute he dropped those arms, well bango . You can stand against a rope just yourself, or brace yourself against that wall , and when you 're dealing with your arms up like that, you br ace your tummy, and I can hit you in the tummy, and it won ' t hurt you at all .

D.M. That's just your, a young fighter, Mr. Di ckie.

E. D. I hope you're not that old.

D.M. No , not really. Well now sir, we, let's get an opinion here. Get some arguments going. \fuo do you pick as the number one greatest of the heavy-weight fighters of al l time.

E. D. I ' ll tell you. I s~w t?em. You know, i f ;I h~dn 't saw them in person, I saw them In plctures, and I was down ' at New York one time and I met Jack Dempsey and I ' l l still give the old boy the credit of the whole works. They can say what they like, you say, a big argument but who did he fight. It makes no odds. He sti ll won.

D.M. True enough, true enough.

E. D. And he was a long time champ, and next to him I ' d say Joe Lewis .

D.M. Fair enough. Well now you, there ' l l be people listening to this who may not agree with you, but you have your opinions and reasons for them •

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E.D. I haven't. I let them people go back, and if they watch it back from when I have for the last fifty years, then I'll argue with them.

D.M. I bet you do . Now Mr. Dickie we started out by saying here t hat you were a man who could have a career as a hockey player. You could have, I think you considered a career in the priesthood. You took a good look at business and did ve~ well indeed. You settled on mining. It seemed to be right for you. You've had some superviso~ positions in mining over the thirty-seven years you've been there. Now how many grievances have you had over the last thirty- seven year s .

E.D. All the time I was boss at Inco , they had two unions, but I never had a grievance. I've been able to handle my men I figure. I could talk to them . If they got into difficulty, I asked them. The only thing I ever asked my men, to tell me the truth, and if they'd tell me the truth, I ' d go to bat for them. And I did, and if I figured they were right , I took the higher powers that be, and I always got a good answer on it . So therefore, I never had a grievance.

D.M. Well said. Well ladies and gentlemen, our guest today has been Mr. Eldr ed Dickie. He r etired last June, June thirtieth after thirty-nine years and four months with Inco. All of it at Frood. At the time of reti r ement he was foreman. Thank you ve~ nuch Mr. Dickie fo r coming to visit with us on Memories and Music .