The Fiddick Colliery, or what was known as the Fiddick and Richardson slopes of the South Wellington Colliery, operated between 1907 and 1912. In 1913, the Fiddick Colliery was owned and operated by Pacific Coast Coal Mines Ltd., which continued the coal mining operations up to 1917. The Fiddick mine reopened and resumed coal production in 1927 and operated until 1939. Operations consisted mainly of recovering pillars that were left by the former owners. Similarly, the Richardson mine or Ida Clara Colliery, (formally the Richardson Slope), reopened in 1931 and operations until 1940 consisted of recovering pillars of coal left by the former owners.

The coal seam worked was known as the old "South Wellington coal", a continuation of the Douglas Seam. The coal occurs in the Early Campanian Newcastle Member within the Upper Cretaceous Pender Formation, Nanaimo Group. The seam strikes northwest and generally dips shallowly northeast. The seam tends to be strongly sheared with abundant slickensides and ranges between 1.8 to 6.6 metres in thickness. The coal is underlain by undulating shales and overlain by sandy shales and minor conglomerate.

The average production between 1908 and 1917, was about 182 tonnes per day of highly volatile bituminous rank coal.