Every once in a while, long stretches of silence at Nordegg's Brazeau Collieries is broken by a steady hum - a rising eerie drone causing onlookers to pause pensively before it escalates into loud, uneven and tinny banging. "It's just the wind hitting the outside walls," said Dennis Morley, a 75-year-old retired Brazeau miner, to the group of tourists. Morley points to the wall of a massive, off-gray, battered structure, which more than 45 years ago was a processing facility among many other weathered buildings still standing at the 79-acre coal mining site. "Maybe the ghosts are coming back," said one tourist, chuckling.

Since the early 1980s, when the Alberta government contracted a cement company to level the site and haul the debris away, Morley, along with long-time Nordegg native Anne (McMullen) Belliveau, have fought to preserve the mine, which closed in 1955 and left Nordegg a desolate playground for mountain ghosts.

"When the mine shut down, everybody just packed up, and left everything as it stands today," said Belliveau, a retired Calgary school teacher who was born and raised in Nordegg more than 65 years ago.

The society is in its fifth year of a six-year, million dollar restoration program of Brazeau Collieries. Belliveau is further hopeful that last year's exploratory talks between the Canadian federal government and the provincial Municipal District of Clearwater will some day lead to Nordegg's selection as the national historic site to represent the country's coal mining industry.