Not sure how accurate Baz's lyrics are; I sing the first verse slightly differently, but I don't know where my lyrics came from, so I won't bother putting them here. Anyway, I've taken the first verse to indicate that the young man is determined not to work in the mine; the second verse indicates that he did end up spending most of his life in the mine (a familiar story). The second verse is clearly referring to the Glace Bay Miner's Museum - an actual mine, in which retired miners act as guides.

Btw, though I don't on principle object to people adding verses to songs like this, I find the verse quoted above in which the old miner prays for the mine to close to be almost bizarre. In a mining community, those wheels turning over the mine are bread and butter.