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ESTEVAN — For generations, the Jahn family has lived and breathed coal.

Paul Jahn settled near Roche Percee, outside of Estevan, around 1905. His son, Clarence, sold the homestead to Old Mac Coal and went to work in the company’s mine. He was a dynamiter. Then he worked a 350 shovel. He may have stripped away his father’s own earth to get at lignite beneath.

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Clarence’s son followed in his father’s footsteps. Now 77, Lorne Jahn started at $2.05 an hour. He kept mining coal, off and on, for about 40 years.

Lorne still lives less than a mile away. He can hear the buckets from the draglines dumping dirt. He refused a buy-out offer when the Shand Power Station went up in the early ’90s. It rocks his windows whenever it fires up.

He likes to blame his daughter. She’s worked as an engineer at both Shand and the nearby Boundary Dam station, both coal-fired plants fed by the mines.

“I give my daughter heck, cause she’s the one doing it,” he said.