Mining

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

When twins Jamie and Trish learn that their hockey team is playing in
the Junior Miner’s Tournament in Edmonton, Jamie asks his dad for new
skates. “Skates don’t grow on trees,” his father says. The next
thing the twins know, they are deep underground in the tunnels of a
hardrock mine watching iron being quarried from the earth. Then they are
at an ore-processing plant and a mill watching steel being made. A
special side trip to the Alberta oil sands allows them to observe an
open-pit mine operation and discover where hockey pucks are born. By the
time they finally make it to the arena in Edmonton, Jamie and Trish know
just about everything they will ever need to know about steel, skates,
and mining; maybe they will think twice before they ask for new skates
again.

Previous volumes in the Canada at Work series covered the farming,
fishing, and forestry industries. This book’s accessible prose and
accurate illustrations will enable young readers to absorb technical
information easily. Female miners and mill workers are shown working
side by side with their male counterparts. This is a first-rate
introduction to the mining industry in Canada. Recommended.