Depending on where you work… you might be k in an office, enjoying a morning cup of coffee while you peruse social media before getting down to work on those TPS Reports.
Perhaps you’re in the service industry dealing with people all day or maybe you’re a truck driver enjoying the solitude of seeing North America from behind the wheel of your semi.
But for some… work requires them to descend into the depths of Mother Earth.
Clocking in for a shift means leaving behind the bright light of the morning sun as it slowly fades above you as a damp darkness envelops you.
Dust fills the air, and the lamp on your head is nothing more than a small headlight in a black void. For the next eight, ten or 12 hours, work will be backbreaking as the rhythmic sound of a pickaxe keeps you going.
Every so often, the Earth groans around you.
Thousands like you will do this work for centuries and your efforts will fuel industrial revolution and progress, but it won’t come without danger.
The very dust that surrounds you and fills your lungs could explode into a fireball without warning.
But scarier still are times, when Mother Earth decides to reclaim you.
I’m Craig Baird, this is Canadian History Ehx and today I’m sharing the tale of the Springhill Mining Disasters.
The story begins 300 million years ago when the world looked very different. Most of the planet’s landmass was crunched together into Pangea, a supercontinent for 100 million years.
Amphibians evolved into reptiles, which themselves evolved into dinosaurs.
The Synapsids, ancestor to all mammals, walked on land, while the first snakes, lizards and crocodiles were beginning to appear.
What would be Canada, was unrecognizable.
Half of the future country was under a shallow sea, and much of the land was near the equator.
It was a tropical time for the future Great White North.
In what is now Nova Scotia, the great mountain range, which would become the Appalachians stretched for thousands of kilometres.
These mountains rose as high as the Alps, and covered parts of present-day eastern North America, Greenland, Western Africa, Scotland, and Scandinavia.
That area had huge swamps full of plant life which lived and died in an endless cycle that went on for eons.
Over time, those dead plants were buried by dirt and water.
As millions of years passed by, they were compressed by geological forces and formed……. coal
(BEAT – music transition)
Cut to 300 million years later when humans arrived in present-day Nova Scotia, and that coal was exposed at the surface in various deposits.
Indigenous Peoples took that coal and traded it or used it for fuel.
Underground coal mining didn’t begin in the Colony of Nova Scotia until 1720 and within a century, nearly one million tonnes of coal were mined each year.
The coal mines created towns as people settled in the area, looking for work.
Which brings us to…. Springhill, Nova Scotia.
The coal was so plentiful in Springhill that there was a time when men simply got coal out of their backyards.
Shallow pits existed throughout the area, dug by one or two men to excavate the resource.
With so much coal available for the taking, it did not take long before a company exploited it.
The east coast of the United States wanted coal, and Springhill was going to provide it.
In the 1870s, one of the first companies established for industrial coal mining was the Springhill and Parrsboro Coal and Railway Company.
As a result, the community grew quickly from 20 people in 1861 to 900 two decades later.
In 1884, the Cumberland Coal and Railway Company merged with the Springhill and Parrsboro Coal and Railway Company to form the Dominion Coal Company.
By the 1890s, the days of coal sitting on the surface for easy pickings were gone. Now to get it you have to dig deep.
With each passing year, miners went deeper into the Earth as the mines themselves expanded out.
As portions of the mines were exhausted of their resource l, they were abandoned, and new tunnels were dug out.
Sometimes homeowners would step outside to find a gaping hole in the front yard, where an old, abandoned mine tunnel had collapsed beneath.
Underground and inside the mines, the work was hot and dangerous.
Coal dust filled the air, and safety equipment was nearly non-existent.
Coal dust is fine-powered coal created by crushing and grinding the mineral.
It is also explosive.
Because coal dust covers far more surface area per unit weight than a lump of coal it can interact with other dust particles and, makes it highly susceptible to spontaneous combustion.
Thankfully, the coal dust won’t simply explode without warning. It needs four things to make it happen.
First a confined space, second a lot of dust, third a source of ignition and lastly… oxygen
The more confined a space filled with oxygen and coal dust is the greater the chance of explosion.
Do you know where you can find the four elements for spontaneous combustion?
A coal mine.
On Feb. 20, 1891, a man named Madden, who was the Deputy Inspector of Mines, visited the Springhill Mine and reported that everything was in good condition.
A day later at 12:30 p.m., men were working in pit one and two.
. Connecting the two pits or collieries, deep underground, was a 400-metre tunnel.
Within that tunnel — a confined space— there was a lot of coal dust, and oxygen waiting to combust It is not known what ignited it, but the explosion tore through the tunnel and into the mines, killing everyone in its path.
That day, 125 miners were killed.
Among them were many children aged 10 to 13.
One news report stated,
“Some of the bodies recovered were frightfully mutilated and had to be identified by clothes or marks on the limbs.”
An eyewitness said,
“It swept like a tornado through the dark passages, hurling timbers and clouds of dust and flying missiles before it.”
As rescuers arrived at the mine on that icy February day, they dug through the rubble in search of survivors… After an hour they heard the soft voice of a 13-year-old John Conway.
He had been leading a horse through the mine when the explosion tore through and was instantly pinned under the now dead horse, that’s when he began calling for his mother, he didn’t stop until rescuers reached him.
Dozens of other families weren’t so lucky. They arrived at the mine to identify loved ones.
A Mr. Armstrong buried three sons.
Reid Carter lost his sons, one of whom was to be married a week later.
And Oliver Dupee suffered an immeasurable loss because just after finding the body of his son James in the morgue his other son ran towards him. As he ran slipped on ice, landed on his head and broke his neck.
Donations to the victims’ families poured in across Canada Montreal gave $5,000, Halifax $7,000 and from across the pond Queen Victoria gave her condolences, and a financial contribution.
Lord Stanley, the Governor General of Canada, donated $500.
After two months, $70,000 had been raised.
Sadly, this wasn’t the last tragedy Springhill would see… because as you’ll hear next.
The 1891 Springhill Mining Disaster was just the first of three.
For seventy years the mines continued to drive economic growth in Springhill.
During that time the population grew from 900 to 8,000 and 1,585 were employed in the mines.
While there had been incidents during that time, no disaster on the scale of 1891 had occurred.
That was about to change.
In the seven decades since the disaster trains were introduced to help haul the coal out of the mine.
. That train generated a lot of coal dust as it went up the steep 38-degree incline to the surface.
On Nov. 1, 1956, a l train from mine four was hauling coal to the surface when a gust of air stirred up coal dust along the slope.
Without warning, possibly due to overloading, the train cars broke off and careened down the slope.
They collided with a power line inside the mine, igniting the dust and producing a massive explosion that ripped up the slope and out of the mine, carrying with it coal dust.
As the explosion reached the oxygen-rich surface, a second explosion occurred, destroying the building at the entrance to the mine as a flame shot 60 metres in the air, killing five men instantly. Two others died from their burns later, while another two were blown clear and received only minor injuries.
Nearby, a young girl named Anne Murray, who later became a Canadian icon, was sitting on her couch. She said,
“I remember being thrown off the couch and then running out into the street to see a cloud of black smoke rising from the mine a mile away.”
Margo Guthro was hanging clothes in her backyard when she saw the explosion. She didn’t know it then, but two of her uncles had just died.
The first man to venture out of the mine had all his hair burned off his body. All his clothes were gone, except for his belt and work boots.
Rescuers immediately ran in and encountered carbon monoxide at 30 metres at levels so high two of them died from inhaling the deadly gas.
The gas is a natural by-product of the carbon-rich coal. Called fire damp by miners, when it burns, it becomes poison in our lungs.
Many of the men deep inside the mine didn’t know there had been an explosion higher up and when they tried to resurface at the end of their shift, they encountered the gas and died where they stood.
Bill Ferguson and Ed McCormick went into the mine to search for survivors and at some point, Bill’s mask came off and he inhaled the deadly gas. As he was pulled out of the mine by Alex Spence, he said,
“Get me my mask. I’ve got to go back. I’ve got to go…”
He never got to finish that sentence.
A day after the explosion, officials believed everyone inside was dead and they were ready to seal it.
Sealing the mine would deprive any fires still roaring inside of oxygen, thus putting them out.
It was the only way to deal with the situation.
Before the officials could seal it off, someone saw that the air compressors were still running, meaning they had been restarted and were being used deeper in the mine.
This was a clear sign that there were survivors running the compressors to pump fresh air in.
Meanwhile, help arrived from across the country.
On Nov. 5, a RCAF Dakota carried oxygen and equipment and needed to land at the town’s only airstrip which had no lights so a truck with a bullhorn went through Springhill, broadcasting he following:
“All vehicle owners, please go to the airfield.”
Hundreds of cars heeded that call and lined the airstrip creating a runway with their headlights to help the plane land.
It had been five days since the explosion and deep inside the mine, several men had barricaded themselves from the lethal air and clustered around air pipes to access clean oxygen.
Among the men, Deputy Overman Conrad Embree emerged as a leader.
He kept morale up, wrote a diary and led the men in their quest to escape.
His own father had survived the 1891 explosion, and Conrad had been mining since he was 15.
Immediately after this explosion, he had scouting parties go out in the dark to find other survivors.
The men came up with the plan to crawl up the fanway, which allowed for the air compressors and ran to the surface of the mine.
To make the journey, the miners dipped cloth in whatever water they could find then plugged their noses and made slits for an airline to breathe through in cloth over their faces and create a barrier from the gas.
Bruce Canning was one of those men. He said,
“After a while, we decided there was no use staying there. We tore our shirts to pieces, wet them in rusty water, put them on our faces and pushed on.”
As they journeyed up, miners stopped at valves to access oxygen from the pipes.
Canning said they crawled in the dark, and they didn’t know if the person they were bumping into along the way was alive or dead.
quote,
“I passed out several times. I couldn’t get enough air. My heart was beating so loud I thought it would burst.”
Eventually, the miners met another group doing the same thing, and together they kept crawling.
Ken Gilbert celebrated his 30th birthday in the dark and wrote his will on a piece of paper. Eventually, he passed out due to the lack of oxygen available.
At the 1,000-metre level of the mine, they met rescuers who were stunned to see them.
Ken Gilbert, was rescued after he passed out and said,
“The next thing I knew, I was in All Saints Hospital.”
No. 2 and No. 4 pits were sealed, so that the fires inside could burn out.
They reopened in January 1957 and only then were the remaining bodies collected from the mine.
The final death toll of that explosion was 39, while 88 were rescued.
Widows received $100 at first and $50 per month after.
They were also awarded $20 per child per month until the child finished school.
The total amount awarded to a widow with children could not exceed $150 per month and if the widow remarried, she was given a final, one-time payout of $500.
After the deadly explosion, the Coal Mine Regulation Act was passed which banned high voltage cables on coal hoisting slopes.
Two disasters down.
One more to go.
But before I get to the last one, a year after the explosion, a fire tore through downtown Springhill.
The fire destroyed five apartment houses and 15 businesses.
After the fire, Mayor Ralph Gilroy said,
“Everything’s happened now that can.”
Whether he was tempting fate or not, he was very wrong with that statement.
By 1958, two years after the last explosion, pit two was one of the deepest mines in North America.
Some sources claimed it was the deepest a, but I couldn’t verify that.
The mine went down 1.2 kilometres below the surface. It was so deep because it was old and dated back to 1873. With each year, miners dug deeper and deeper to find coal.
To really put it into perspective, think of the CN Tower. It rises above the Toronto skyline for553 metres. Now picture another CN Tower on top of that, and then a quarter of a CN Tower on top of that. That is how deep the mine went.
To get to the very bottom you had to travel over four kilometres down a slope to get 1.2 kilometres beneath the ground.
It took 20 to 40 minutes for miners to ride the trolley down.
Pit two was known for accidents, so many had happened that some said it was cursed.
Between 1892 and 1955, 182 men died in 125 incidents.
Like the dwarves at Moria in the Lord of the Rings, perhaps the miners had dug too deep.
The deeper you go into a mine; the more pressure is exerted on the Earth around you.
Nature abhors a vacuum, and each time miners dug into the Earth, it created space The Earth around it wants to fill.
To prevent that, pillars of rock were built into rooms carved out by the coal miners. This was called the room and pillar method.
Long walls were mined out as well, believed to be safer.
Unfortunately, different long walls were brought together at certain spots where immense pressure mounted.
Every so often, the mine groaned as rocks shifted.
Miners in general felt these were a good sign as it helped relieve pressure on the mine.
Between 1917 and 1958, the mine experienced 525 bumps.
Then at 7 p.m. on Oct. 23, 1958, miners felt one of those groans or bumps and thought little about it.
They felt them once a month on average, so they were used to it.
They continued with their work, oblivious to the growing danger.
At 8:06 p.m., just over an hour later, the Earth decided to reclaim the void left by man.
A massive bump, the largest mine bump ever recorded in North America, tore through the Springhill Mine’s No. 2 pit.
The force was measured equaling 1,000 tonnes of dynamite, 1/15th the power of the first atomic bomb.
The bump was so powerful that seismographs at Dalhousie University 177 km away, recorded it as an earthquake l 17 seconds after it happened.
In Ottawa, officials at another seismograph also recorded it as an earthquake in Nova Scotia.
The bump caused the floors of the mine to go up faster than an elevator.
Like reverse pancaking the mine floor shifted upwards and t collided with the roof of the next level and, shifted up crushing into the roof of the level above it.
As it surged upwards the bump crushed levels and the miners inside them.
Anyone not in a side gallery or shelter was crushed to death in an instant.
Paths were blocked as chasms opened forming obstacles nearly impossible to cross. Areas that were 12 square feet were now only two feet in diameter.
Herb Pepperdine was working in the mine when he was suddenly picked up, hit in the head, and shaken.
Gorley Kempt was knocked unconscious. When he woke up, he was squeezed against the ceiling. He had to squirm his way out of the narrow space that was filling up with gas.
Joe McDonald was cutting out coal from the rock wall. The next thing he remembered was the wall moving towards him.
Leon Melanson was putting up timber when in an instant he was in darkness. He couldn’t move his legs and it took him a moment to realize that he was buried to the neck in coal.
Nearby Frank Hunter heard a boom as the bump blew out his eardrums. He put his hand to his ears only to find blood.
Doug Jewkes was thrown seven feet in the air then buried up to his chest. The man standing next to him, Les Bouchard, was buried in coal and killed.
The bump sent shockwaves across Springhill.
Houses shook and dishes were knocked to the floor.
Dave Cochrane, was 8 years old at the time, he said,
“Everything was falling around us. Everyone was just standing there bewildered.”
Anne Murray said of that day,
“I physically remember the shockwaves as they registered in our house, more than a mile away from the pithead.”
City council was in session, in the chambers all talking stopped as the mayor and councilors held onto their shaking chairs to keep from falling on the floor.
Within minutes, dozens of people ran to the mine.
Rescuers sprang into action to get people out of the mine and encountered survivors at the 4,100-metre level, as they walked and limped to the surface.
The bump released carbon monoxide? gas within the mine, which increased in concentration as the 4,200-metre level where the ceiling had collapsed.
Of the 175 miners, 75 made it to the surface by 4 a.m. the next day.
What they didn’t know was that buried deep inside the mine were men, waiting to get out.
For five and a half days, rescuers worked to reach those who could still be alive in the mine and hope was fading fast as they worried that anything, but bodies would be found.
At 3 p.m. on Oct. 29, rescuers wondered if they could continue digging and were trying to figure out the concentration of poisonous gas ahead by looking into a broken pipe.
Blair Phillip, one of the rescuers, put a glass jar up to the stump of the pipe to gather air. His head lamp reflected off that glass jar and into the pipe. For a brief second, that light danced in the pipe and reached f Gorley Kempt and Harold Brine ‘s eyes on the other side of the rock wall.
It was a bit of light, in a sea of darkness and it meant one thing.
They were saved.
The miners started to scream through the pipe, rescuers heard them.
News spread quickly that 12 men were found alive deep inside the mine.
At 2:25 a.m. on Oct. 30, 1958, a rescue tunnel broke through to the trapped miners.
Their long ordeal was over.
With so much media attention, Prince Philip and Nova Scotia Premier Robert Stanfield went to the mine site on Oct. 31 to meet with injured miners.
That rescue was seen as a miracle but there was one more to come.
One level above the rescued miners, seven others waited for their chance to see sunlight again.
Believing t men could still be alive on the level above, rescuers dug a new tunnel around the collapsed ceiling to reach would be survivors.
Seven miners were trapped in that level, and they banged on pots and pipes until exhaustion hoping someone would hear them.
Eventually, rescuers heard them and pressed on.
As the seven men sat in the dark, a portion of the wall suddenly opened up and the light from headlamps blinded them.
One miner said it was like seeing angels.
On Nov. 1 nine days after the massive bump the seven men were rescued… they were the last ones to come out of the mine alive.
Douglas Jewkes was one of them and he spent the time trapped in the mine, dreaming of two things… being rescued and
A 7-Up.
He promised himself that if he got out, he would have the biggest 7-Up possible.
He mentioned 7-Up so much that his fellow trapped miners told him to knock it off.
As he was pulled out of the mine, a reporter asked him what he wanted most. Without hesitation, he said:
“All I need now is a bottle of 7-Up and a scoop of ice cream.”
Within an hour of reaching the hospital, there were two bottles of 7-Up waiting for him.
The story reached the ears of 7-Up executives and Douglas Jewkes was offered a job in Toronto as a spokesperson for the company earning $75 a week.
His mining days were over.
Among the seven miners who spent those long days in the dark was another man named Maurice Ruddick.
Ruddick was born in Joggins, Nova Scotia to a coal mining family.
His ancestors were enslaved people who came to Nova Scotia with British Loyalists during the American Revolutionary War.
A former amateur boxer, Ruddick spent most of his life mining.
By 1958 he was in his mid-40s and well-liked among fellow miners. He and his wife Norma had 12 children.
Ruddick was known for always having a well-groomed moustache and wearing pomade in his hair with pastel shirts and a felt fedora.
He was also known for his wonderful singing voice. He and his older children often performed as The Singing Miner and the Minerettes
As the men sat in the dark, Ruddick sang and had the men join him in song and prayer to keep their spirits up.
While he kept a brave face inside, he feared he would never see his family again.
He said quote,
“I cried in the darkness, but I made sure that nobody else heard me. It might have broken their resolve to live.”
This was not an exaggeration. A mother of another miner said,
“If it wasn’t for Maurice, they’d all have been dead.”
Rescuer James Rossing, said that as he reached the trapped miners, quote.
“When we found them, there was Maurice Ruddick, sitting on a stone stack, singing at the top of his lungs.”
When John Calder, another rescuer, broke through he asked if Maurice was there. When Maurice replied, Calder said,
“The workmen’s compensation board sent me down here specifically to get you out. They said they’d have to pay so much for your wife and 12 children, if we didn’t find you, there wouldn’t be enough left over for the others.”
For the first time in the nine days the men shared a laugh.
Several of the miners and rescuers were invited to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show.
It was one of the most popular shows on television at the time and would be the same show that would give the Beatles their American debut in six years’ time.
The Miracle Miners, as the rescued miners were called, were also invited by Georgia Governor Marvin Griffin to visit Jekyll Island for a free vacation.
He was hoping to promote tourism through the miners’ popularity.
The miners, including Maurice Ruddick, all accepted eagerly.
It didn’t take long for Governor Griffin to discover that Ruddick was Black.
Griffin had sworn to keep Georgia segregated come hell or high water and was accused of being racist by many of his political opponents. The governor immediately stated that Ruddick would have to be segregated if he was going to vacation with the other miners.
The other miners were going to refuse the invitation if Ruddick was forced to stay in a different place than them. Either they all went together, or they wouldn’t go at all.
Not wanting to ruin the vacation for his friends, Ruddick agreed to the demands of Governor Griffin.
Ruddick said,
“This might be a chance to open some people’s eyes.”
Fellow miner Ted Michniak said,
“When Maurice said it was all right with him and insisted, we take the holiday regardless, then we figured we’d be showing the Georgia people that we’re a little bigger than they are. We’ll obey their laws, even though we might not agree with them.”
While the white miners stayed at a nice hotel, Ruddick and his wife stayed in a trailer, built especially for their visit.
They also attended separate ceremonies.
Governor Griffin was quickly met with widespread negative press.
To try to mitigate it Griffin had another trailer moved in with a Black cook and maid to serve Ruddick and his wife meals.
He added a third trailer with a Black teacher and his wife, in the hopes that they would keep the Ruddicks company.
Nearby Black residents came over to the mini-trailer park to entertain the Ruddicks, and they raised $100 for their children.
Meanwhile in Nova Scotia, The Town of Springhill was awarded the Carnegie Medal for Heroism for saving the miners.
The medal exists to recognize individuals who perform extraordinary acts of civilian heroism in North America. The medal was created through a $5 million trust established by Andrew Carnegie.
This was the only time the medal was awarded to a community.
As for Springhill, the No. 2 mine was closed, and in the 60s massive unemployment hit the community.
By 1961, the population had declined 20 per cent to 5,800 people which has continued, year-after-year.
Today, Springhill has a population of 2,654.
Yet, there was an interesting legacy left by those abandoned mines.
As the mines were abandoned, they slowly filled with water. Due to geothermal activity in the Earth’s crust the water in those mines has been heated to 18 degrees Celsius.
Beginning in the 1980s, that heat source has been exploited by the community. This has allowed the winter heating bills of Springhill to be some of the lowest in the province.
I could spend a lot of time covering what happened to the miners after their ordeal was over, but I thought I would focus on Maurice Ruddick, the most famous of them all.
After the vacation in Georgia, Ruddick and his wife returned to Canada.
In February 1959, the Toronto Telegram ran a poll to have its readers choose Canada’s 1958 Citizen of the Year.
Ruddick was honoured to be included but said that the award was not just for him. It was for the entire community of Springhill.
Of 21 nominees, Ruddick took 51 per cent of the vote.
While many in the community were happy for Ruddick’s win there were others who were resentful.
People said was outshining the other rescued miners and some complained that someone more deserving should have won the award instead.
As quickly as Maurice’s fame came, it disappeared.
And then, Ruddick faded into obscurity and lived the rest of his life quietly in Springhill.
When he died in 1988, his story had mostly been forgotten to history.
His death only merited short blurbs in the newspapers in Canada.
But then, his story reached a new generation, long removed from the 1958 disaster.
His daughter Val MacDonald, a folk singer, recorded a song that he composed while in the mine called The Springhill Mine Disaster Song.
In the 1990s, a Heritage Minute was produced that told Ruddick and the miner’s story.
A musical was also written, Beneath Springhill: The Maurice Ruddick Story, further bringing the story of the singing miner and his efforts to keep his friends alive to even more Canadians.
And slowly, the story of Maurice Ruddick and his efforts was heard again… and now you know it too…
