The mountain was quiet that morning as the Rockies cast their long blue shadows.
Lanterns flickered to life one by one in the darkness as men stepped into the cold.
Just another day in a coal town.
Boots scraped across as men moved down the street, their collars pulled high, lunch pails swinging at their sides.
Some walked with their brothers.
Some with their fathers.
Some with boys who had only started in the mine weeks earlier.
No one said much. They never did.
The mountain had a way of swallowing sound… and soon it would be taking much more.
The cage rattled as it lowered the first crew into the darkness.
For hours the mountain held its breath.
Then… without warning…the silence was broken as fire and pressure ripped through miles of tunnels in a violent chain reaction.
Above ground, the town heard a sound no one would ever forget.
A deep, violent thunder rising beneath their feet.
Windows shattered.
The ground buckled.
And what happened next turned a quiet coal town into the site of a deadly mining disaster.
I’m Craig Baird and this is Canadian History Ehx. Today we continue our journey through Alberta’s history by travelling deep into the wreckage of the mountain… far beyond the collapsed tunnels…
To share an unlike story of survival
This is… The Hillcrest Mine Disaster…
Charles Plummer Hill had always been on the search for coal.
He was born in Delaware in 1862, and as a young man traveled west to find his fortune.
He didn’t find much in the way of riches, but he did fall in love with the beauty of the Rocky Mountains.
At 30, he became a US Deputy Collector of Customs for a territory of 1,300 kilometres along the international border from British Columbia to Alberta.
He was based in Creston, BC, and often travelled by foot and horseback.
He slept under the stars and became intimately familiar with the land.
When he had time, he prospected for gold and coal.
By 1899, he had quit the US Civil Service and turned to prospecting full time.
He was in present day southern Alberta, near the Crowsnest Pass when he finally found what he was seeking.
A large deposit of coal.
He had finally struck it rich.
Charles Hill bought land in July 1902 to build a mine and a town.
He called it Hillcrest.
Three years later, he incorporated the Hillcrest Coal and Coke Company.
He convinced the Canadian Pacific Railway to build a spur line to his new community, and with the prospect of steady work, miners from across North America and Europe arrived and within a few years the Hillcrest was home to 1,000 people.
Coal mining was big business.
It paid well but it came with a risk… and a big one at that.
If you went into the belly of the mine, it wasn’t guaranteed you would come back.
Canada had already had a few disasters in 1887, 1891 and 1902 which killed 403 workers.
For those working the Hillcrest Mine, the danger was ever present because of something that happened not too far away….
Just one kilometer away from Hillcrest, the Bellevue Mine was buzzing with activity.
It was just across the river and many of the miners at Hillcrest had worked on it before moving.
The neighbouring communities were close. They were type of places where everyone knew everyone. At 6:30 p.m. on Dec. 10, 1910, the ground shook in Hillcrest.
Fearing the worst, everyone ran outside. An explosion of unknown origin had torn through Bellevue trapping miners underground.
As was often the case in coal mines, the blast wasn’t the only killer what was left behind was. Afterdamp.
An explosion forced the clean air out of the mine, leaving behind carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide.
A deadly cocktail able to kill in less than a minute.
On that dark day, 42 men were in the mine, only 12 made it out alive.
But somehow, it could have been worse.
If the explosion had happened during the day shift, over 200 miners would have been underground.
In response to the disaster, the Alberta government created the province’s first mine rescue car. It could carry 12 men, trained in mine rescue, from the larger community of Blairmore, five kilometres away, to a mine disaster site.
The Bellevue Disaster was terrible, but many miners in Hillcrest took solace in the fact their mine was one of the safest in the eastern Rockies.
And soon life moved on, and over the next four years the Bellevue disaster was a distant memory as babies were born and new families moved in and by 1914 the Hillcrest mine was booming.
Sadly, it wouldn’t last.
On Jan. 31, 1914, Andrew Scott, the district inspector, visited the mine.
By then over 300 men were extracting 1,400 tons of coal in three shifts.
They had come from all over the world including Scotland, Austria, Ukraine, Italy, England, France, and the United States.
All working together side by side in the hopes of a better life.
Apart from some minor violations, everything seemed in order at the mine and in line with provincial regulations.
These inspections were incredibly important. Mining companies, given the chance, often put profits ahead of worker safety.
To prevent that, the province kept a close eye to determine if mines were unsafe. If they were… they would be shut down and that kept miner owners in check… for the most part.
Andrew Scott left the mine and for the next three months, work ebbed and flowed.
In the spring production slowed down as demand for coal decreased to 1,000 tons per day on account of warmer weather
And by then it was the beginning of April, and Andrew Scott was back to do another inspection.
He found that in the No. 2 mine, the ventilation and timber supports were up to par, this might seem like an odd detail to bring up but it will be important later in the story.
Meanwhile just because a mine passed an inspection didn’t mean the work was any less dangerous.
Every day miners went deep into the mountain at the foothills of the Rockies and listened to every deafening creak and groan the Earth made.
Each day they dug deeper.
It was difficult and backbreaking work done under the threat of cave-ins and explosions.
When men left home in the morning, they didn’t know if they would return.
They were always painfully aware that the beginning of each shift could signal the last time they saw their loved ones.
Miners have a keen ability to put danger out of their minds or at least work through it.
And if something like what happened in Bellevue happened in Hillcrest it would signal an accident or disaster had taken place.
Their more assured and bigger threat came from a silent killer.
The black lung that came from breathing in coal dust.
It prevented many miners from reaching old age.
However, as demand was low the mine shut down and miners got a break from work for two days on June 17 and 18.
Then as dawn broke on June 19 the whistle from the engine house at Hillcrest blew signaling the start of a new workday.
At 7 a.m. men kissed their wives goodbye and walked towards work as the sun rose over the mountains and the shuffling of boots was drowned out by the birds chirping.
For the men it would be the last bit of summer sun they would see and as the men arrived at the mine, they crossed paths with fire boss William Adlam who had just finished his daily inspection.
The two-hour walkthrough found two cave-ins, and gas in seven rooms.
In six of those rooms, the gas was strong enough to put out his safety light, so he fenced them off.
As he left, he put his report up where the workers gathered before their shifts and went home for breakfast.
The miners knew to look for his very important report, so they knew the conditions they were facing in the mine and the long day ahead.
Before their descent into the mine, each worker stopped by the timekeeper’s office.
His name was Robert Hood, and he would give each miner either a square or a round tag.
Then, fire bosses Sam Charleston and John Ironmonger inspected the miner’s safety lamp and checked the tags that would be hooked where the miners were to work.
The round tags they kept because they would be used to identify the men if disaster struck.
By 7:30 a.m., 228 men took the elevator down into the mine, then just a half hour later Ironmonger fired the first of five shots to help loosen the coal.
Soon after 9 am, seven more men went into the mine to a total of 235 men.
Three men had missed their scheduled shift that day.
Julien Lefort hadn’t been feeling well and called in sick.
Thomas Price had a brother from out of town visiting so he switched shifts to be at thee train station that morning.
And the last man was Dan Kyle, and he was one lucky guy.
He was born in England, where life was tough and work was limited so Dan took a chance on moving across the ocean to Canada.
In early-1912, he purchased a ticket on a new and luxurious passenger ship about to take its maiden voyage.
One of his friends wanted to come along but was unable to secure a ticket so instead of traveling alone Dan traded in his ticket in favour of passage on a smaller vessel with his friend.
It turned out to be a wise decision because you may have heard of the ship, he originally had a ticket for.
The Titanic.
So, by trading his ticket Dan had avoided one of the worst maritime disasters in history and instead made his way to the Hillcrest mine where he often worked morning shift.
He wasn’t at the mine that day because his boss had shifted him to the afternoon the day earlier and so Dan was at home having a relaxing breakfast.
Two other men at the mine that day had also avoided disaster in the past.
Charles Elick and John Hood had been in the Turtle Mountain Collapse that buried the town of Frank on April 29, 1903, but you might know it as the Frank Slide.
Their close call with death didn’t deter them from mining again.
For them and the other men of the Hillcrest mine June 19 was just another day of back breaking work.
And for that above ground, life went on…until… the earth began to rumble beneath their feet and their whole world would never be the same.
At 9: 30 a.m., Charles Ironmonger, was working outside the mine when a sudden blast of air and pressure shot out of the entrance tunnel.
The fire boss’ 19-year-old brother was picked up and thrown across the yard and onto the side of the hoist house.
He died almost instantly because the hoist house’s eight-inch concrete wall had also been destroyed by the blast, and its roof was blown off.
Nearby, William Hutchinson and his brother, David, were at the No. 3 mine entrance when they were knocked off their feet as smoke billowed around them and turned their world pitch black.
David knew exactly what had happened.
Somewhere in the deep… the mine had exploded.
Once he got back on his feet he ran out of the mine entrance and came across John Brown the mine manager who was nearby at the No. 2 entrance.
Brown was covered in black dust but even in the chaos he immediately realized something was very wrong.
All day, every day, the mine’s fan ran constantly to ventilate the mine.
But now it was silent.
Alex May had been at the engine house when he heard a muffled noise and felt the ground shake.
When he ran outside, he saw rocks shooting out of the fan at high speed.
If he had been there minutes earlier, he would’ve been killed.
But now he was joined by the mine manager who was desperate to get fan going because if there were any survivors underground, they wouldn’t have much time if fresh air wasn’t pumped in.
Thankfully they were able to get it going quickly but had no idea at the time if there would be any survivors.
Meanwhile across Hillcrest the earth shook, dishes rattled and people felt like the ground shifted beneath their feet.
Then came the sound everyone dreaded.
Three whistles from the powerhouse.
The signal that an accident had happened was blown by Alex’s father, Dan May.
If you’re noticing a pattern in the names, you’re not wrong. In mining towns like Hillcrest, brothers, fathers and sons all worked side by side.
Which added to the horrors of those in town when they walked out of their homes to see black smoke rising in the air.
Hillcrest dropped what they were doing and immediately rushed towards the mine.
None of them were sure what had happened to their loved ones… they just knew their worst nightmares had come true.
Deep below the surface miners had felt the blast tear through the mine.
Some had died instantly but many had survived.
Aside from the ringing in their heads from the pressure wave, the mine around them was deathly quiet.
It was also pitch black. Their safety lamps being off signaled growing levels of toxic gas.
No sound.
No light.
So, miners had felt their way to safety.
And they had very little time left.
The lucky ones were near the entrances.
Pete Dujay had been working 15 metres from the entrance when he felt the explosion.
He was able to get to fresh clean air but had to do it by crawling over two dead horses and three dead men.
Meanwhile over in the slant of No 2 mine, Joe Atchison had been working in a slant when he was suddenly deaf before, a shock wave threw him to the ground.
He managed to get back on his feet before a cloud of black smoke swarmed him.
He woke up three hours later under the warm summer sun unaware he had been dragged out of the mine and towards safety.
After the explosion, William Guthro literally ran towards the light at the end of the tunnel as he did, he felt something grab his foot.
He was suddenly trapped so he looked down expecting to see a hand instead he saw his boot was caught in a fork in the mining rail track.
As the air thickened with toxic gas around him, he cut his boot off with a pocketknife and ran for his life.
There would be other early survivors including a man named Yeaden who was in the mine when the explosion happened and was immediately knocked unconscious.
He came to thanks to the use of an early portable resuscitator used by physicians who had spent 45 minutes keeping him alive.
He said,
“They said they feared I would never come to, but I am here to tell the tale.”
Yeaden was nearly taken by the Grim Reaper, but he was desperate to join the rescue mission and as soon as he was able, he was on his way to the mine.
Malcolm Link and Charles Jones had been in the No. 15 mine chute when they heard what they thought was a cannon. They dropped to their hands and feet and crawled to safety.
All of these men were able to get out fairly quickly because they were close to the surface those that were much further into the mine could only pray that they would be found before it was too late.
As I mentioned earlier in this episode after the Bellevue Mine disaster, the provincial government created the Alberta Mine Rescue Car No. 1.
It was stationed nearby in Blairmore 30 minutes after the disaster at Hillcrest happened Superintendent Henry James immediately called the Canadian Pacific Railway to get a locomotive to pull the rescue car. But once it arrived at the Hillcrest station there was a problem.
The car either had to be switched over the Hillcrest railway tracks to travel to the mine, or it had to be disconnected from the CPR locomotive and then attached to the Hillcrest one so it could be transported.
This rescue cart was good on paper, but poor practice.
The entire process was excruciatingly slow for everyone involved and the rescue didn’t get to the mine until 11 a.m., an hour and a half after the disaster.
In the end, instead of dealing with switching locomotives, the 12 rescue breathing apparatuses on board were loaded into a wagon and hauled up to the mine.
One of which we know helped save one of the miners.
Meanwhile at the mine, all rescue operations were slow.
Anyone going in to rescue miners or retrieve the dead knew the danger of going into the mine full of toxic gas.
Before entering they were required to write their wills George Vicars, and his rescue crew were one of the brave ones.
When they reached the interior, they found bodies strewn in every direction and in every conceivable position.
J.R. McLeod, known as Doc, entered the mine to find John Hood, his close friend and Frank Slide survivor.
They made it a short distance they felt the impact of the toxic gasses.
Doc fell against a wall and vomited, others on the recovery team hauled him back to the surface to recover.
Once he felt better, Doc went back into the mine and managed to make it 95 metres deep where he found the body of his friend.
Hood had been burned across his upper body and face but somehow had survived the initial blast but succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning shortly after.
By 11:30 a.m., two hours after the disaster, there were only 40 survivors.
Outside the mine loved ones anxiously waited for those who had survived.
The Calgary Herald reported,
“The scenes around the mine tell a terrible tale of the havoc wrought at the fearful force of the explosion. It is only with the greatest difficulty the gangs of rescuers, armed as they are with the latest scientific devices for saving life in such cases, can make any headway. Men, horses, timber and rails and wagons are jumbled in chaotic mass, and the path is strewn at every step with the debris, so that only those men who were fortunate enough to have been working near the pit mouth have any chance of being brought out alive.”
Meanwhile search and rescue operations continued and over the course of the day, coal cars surfaced loaded with charred and disfigured bodies The victims of the disaster were taken to the washhouse where they were cleaned and identified.
It was a graphic and gruesome endeavor.
Because of the violence caused by the explosion most of the victims weren’t intact and, in some cases, they had to be pieced together to be identified.
To dull the grief and horror of the volunteers were supplied with a constant stream of alcohol as they prepped each body by wrapping it in a shroud.
They were then transported to a freight wagon and taken to the union hall where they were laid out in rows where loved ones waited to identify them.
The Winnipeg Tribune reported on the grim proceedings by saying quote:
“Wives and children wept together, and even strong men broke down and bowed their heads to the inevitable. Widows were led away from the last fond gaze of all that is mortal of their husbands, and the moist eyes of onlookers were not a few. It was not infrequent that the lids of caskets were opened, and kisses imprinted on the cold lips of loved ones.”
Meanwhile, the surrounding communities pitched in to help.
Many of them were women who were married to miners themselves.
They cooked for rescuers, volunteers and families. Some even arrived with washtubs and buckets already full of coffee.
With the sudden influx of people, food supplies in Hillcrest quickly dwindled, that’s when residents of Blairmore and Coleman sent 1,200 loaves of bread.
By the time night fell, what had happened in Hillcrest became one of the worst mining disasters in Alberta’s history.
The death toll was staggering.
Most bodies had been retrieved by the end of the week, except for two that weren’t found for a month. One miner was never found.
In the end, of the 237 men who went into the mine that morning, only 48 came out.
Of the victims, 43 were Austrian and 30 were Ukrainian immigrants, including six from the same village. Only 17 were born in Canada.
All were looking for a better life for themselves and their families.
In a single moment almost 20 percent of the town’s population was gone forever, and the ripple effect was immense.
There were now 90 new widows and 250 fatherless children.
Many of them were from the same family.
The Petrie family lost three sons in the mine, among them was17 year old Alexander Petrie who had only been working at the mine for three weeks and hadn’t even received his first paycheck.
David Murray was killed, along with his three sons David, Robert and William. His wife was left to raise their seven other children alone.
Charles Elick, the other survivor from the Frank Slide didn’t make it out of the mine and on the same day he died, his wife Julia gave birth to their son.
Alfred Johnson died in the mine as well. He had recently married Florence and on that day, she lost a husband, her brother-in-law and her father in the blast.
The Hillcrest Mine disaster ripped through families and left them in tatters.
For days on end, trains left Hillcrest transporting the many dead to their hometowns elsewhere in Canada and Europe.
Many others found a final resting place in a mass grave their caskets had their name chalked on the outside, then they were buried side by side depending on their faith.
Over 600 people stood at the cemetery to watch the burial among them was Pat Cossimo.
As he stared at the caskets, a cold shiver ran through his body. There, in the dirt, was a casket with his name on it. He had been mistakenly identified as a victim in the sheer number of bodies.
The weekend after the disaster over 117 victims were buried and many mourners did not leave until the sun went down.
As the town grieved, donations from around the world poured in.
The Canadian government gave $50,000 to the Hillcrest Mine Relief Fund, while the Alberta government donated $20,000.
The head of the Eaton’s Company, John Craig Eaton, contributed $1,000 to the fund which by July 6, had raised $82,875.
While Canadians were generous, the mine owners were not.
The families of victims had to sue to get any compensation.
In the end, most widows received $1,800, or about $43,000 today which was paid out at $20 per month over the course of seven-and-a-half years.
Austrian miners and their families received no compensation until peace was declared between Austria and Great Britain, which would not come until the end of the First World War four years later.
And as the dust settled and people grieved, that grief turned to anger and as with any disaster, two things had to be determined.
How did it happen, and who was to blame?
To answer those questions a Royal Commission was formed, and their consensus was that a small methane gas explosion which ignited coal dust in the air which was larger explosion and caused most of the air in the mine to be consumed.
It then left behind the afterdamp that killed most of the miners.
This was all speculation, because in the end no official cause was found as there was a lot of fingers pointing about who didn’t follow safety rules.
However, in the wake of the disaster there were several improvements to the mining industry, most notably was the requirement that every mine had to always have a rescue team available, with self-contained breathing apparatus on-site.
There were also improvements in safety regulations and workers compensation benefits for miners.
But you might be wondering…what happened to the mine after the disaster?
Despite the danger of coal mining, after the Hillcrest Mine reopened in July 1914,
By then new miners had arrived looking for work but few new safety measures were implemented and by 1926 there was another explosion where two miners died.
With that the mine’s days were numbered.
The company went into liquidation in April 1938, and the mine closed for good on Dec. 2, 1949.
Without the lifeblood into the community, the town suffered as people moved away.
. From 1941 to 1966, the population fell from 783 to 551. It has rebounded slightly since then, with just over 600 people still calling Hillcrest home thanks to an increase in tourism and traffic on the Crowsnest Highway.
Those who visit can find a memorial now standing at the Hillcrest cemetery. It is a lasting reminder of that terrible day over 110 years ago when 189 men went to work and died in the dark, struggling to breath, with their last thoughts of the loved ones they were about to leave behind. The Montreal Gazette,
