And they say you don't go, say you don't go down in the Hillcrest Mine;
'Cause it's one short step, you might leave this world behind,
And they say you don't go, say you don't go down in the Hillcrest Mine.
From Hillcrest Mine by
The worst coal mining disaster in Canada occurred in
Hillcrest, Alberta, on Friday June 19, 1914. A total of
189 men died. 130 women were widowed and 400 children left fatherless.
The workers were members of the United
Mine Workers of America and among the other mining communities in
the Crowsnest Pass -- Burmis, Leitch Collieries, Maple Leaf
and Bellevue -- Hillcrest was considered to be
best run operation of them all.
There were 377 men on the Hillcrest Mine payroll
and the average wage was a
respectable $125.00 a month. The Hillcrest catastrophe occurred
just before the maelstrom of World War I, and perhaps as a
was forgotten by the Canadian public. Fifty years later, author
and historian Frank W. Anderson
researched the story of what happened at Hillcrest, and in 1969
Canada's Worst Mine Disaster.
Most of the information and photos used on this website
has been taken from this book.
On that Friday morning in June, the mine had been idle the previous two days due to overproduction of coal. Before 7:00 AM, the fireboss, William Adkin, had completed his mine inspection and posted a notice in the lamphouse warning of some low levels of methane gas along with some cave-ins in various parts of the mine. Methane gas was always present in the mine, but for it to explode it had to be above 5% and less than 14%. Coal dust itself was highly explosive, but it could be kept in check if there was enough moisture to dampen it. Moisture levels that day were considered adequate. The lamphouse was where the men would pick up their miner's lamp and deposit or pick up their "checks" -- the small brass numbered tags which the timekeeper used to keep track of time worked. There were two checks in the lamp house used to identify a miner. When the miner went in the mine, he picked up both and handed one to the timekeeper who placed it on a board. That told the timekeeper that the miner was in the mine. When the miner left the mine after his shift, he deposited his second check on the board in the lamphouse next to the other one. This system showed that the man who had entered the mine, had come out safely.
The sun was starting to rise that June morning as 228 men made their way to the mine to begin their underground shifts. At that time sixty-three year old William Dodd made one of the most fortuitous decisions of his life.
In the mine itself there were a variety of jobs to be done. One was to load and fire the charges which loosened the coal, and this dangerous, skilled work, was carried out by the fireboss. The coal was then shovelled, moved to chutes and loaded into mine cars which were pulled along rails by horses. A continuous cable system operated by hoists located above the ground, brought the coal the rest of the way to the surface. There the coal cars were unhooked and moved by donkey engines to the tipple where the coal was sized and its ash content reduced. The mining community was a well coordinated group, all of whom relied upon the other for survival. The group included bratticemen, who kept the air from two huge electric fans flowing in and out of the mine by a system of screens or brattices; carpenters and timbermen, who made sure that the roof would not collapse; rope-riders and hoistmen, who brought the coal out or ferried the miners in and out of the mine; the labourers, who did various odd jobs; and lastly, the miners themselves.
Work had started as normal that morning. At 9:00 a.m., eight more miners passed through the lamphouse to enter the mine. The timekeeper, Robert Hood, detected the smell of liquor on the breath of two of them and turned them away but, by mistake he put their checks on the board. This action later lead to confusion as to how many miners were in the mine. Meanwhile, fireboss Sam Charleton had laid charges near Old Level One (Hillcrest Mine actually consisted of two mines -- Mine Number One and Mine Number Two each with their separate entrances and linked together by tunnels -- see map below). At 9:30 a.m., it was later determined, Sam Charleton had been just about to fire the charges when there was a huge gas explosion very close to him. This initial explosion stirred up coal dust which then spontaneously triggered a second and maybe a third blast. The force of the multiple explosions travelling along the labyrinth of tunnels was horrific -- with anyone near the source, like Sam Charleton, being killed outright. Even men working on the surface were not spared: the young rope-riders -- Charles Ironmonger (the son of Charles Eli Ironmonger), who worked at Mine Number One and Fred Kurigatz, who worked at Mine Number Two, were both killed. The entrance to Mine Number One, which was closer to the source of the explosion than Mine Number Two's entrance, was jammed up so much debris that it was impassable. Three men -- George Wild, Antonio Stella and Arthur Crowther -- who had been working near the less-damaged entrance of Mine Number Two managed to escape from the mine within the first few minutes. A trickle of survivors followed them, but by time fifteen crucial minutes had passed, the total count of survivors was only 19 -- all the others were trapped down below.
For anyone who survived the initial explosions, the greatest danger then became the poisonous carbon dioxide gas which the miners called "black-damp" or "afterdamp". At a concentration of 13% it would cause unconsciousness, and after the explosions, the levelwas estimated to be at a deadly 50%. Realizing this, the first thought of the men on the surface was to suck out the deadly afterdamp with the exhaust fan located at the entrance of Mine Number One. Miraculously, the men found that the intake fan at the entrance of Mine Number Two had kept on working. At the same time, they realized that it was imperative that they get a hoist working to help with the rescue work. The hoist engine at Mine Number One was still operable, but the men had to use their bare hands to pry away the huge chunks of broken concrete which surrounded it. Somehow, they managed to quickly access the hoist engine, clear the track into the mine, and find a still serviceable mine cart to be used by a rescue team -- all accomplished within the first fifteen minutes.
Without delay, and at great risk to themselves
from afterdamp, the first rescue crew entered the mine
breathing apparatus. One of them was Engineeer
Hutchinson, who had just barely managed, minutes
before, to stumble out of the mine, alive. The group got as far as
the junction of Level One North and Level One South where they found three
men miraculously alive. They whisked them to the surface. Meanwhile,
David Murray Sr., who had escaped
the explosions, had overpowered Constable William
Hancock and run back into the mine to look for his
sons, Robert, William and
David, Jr. Tragically,
David Murray Sr.'s search proved not
only futile, as his sons were dead, but fatal to himself, too. His
body was later found some distance back in the mine.
At 10:00 a.m., more help and vital oxygen masks arrived from the nearby towns of Blairmore, Coleman and Frank , Alberta. Under the direction of Dr. William Dodd, an emergency hospital tent with oxygen and resusitation equipment was set up outside the mine entrance. The oxygen masks allowed the heroic rescue crews, their numbers now bolstered by the new arrivals, to push deeper into the mine. By now, workers had managed to clear a small hole in the totally blocked entrance of Mine Number One, and former fireboss Harry White, equipped with oxygen, squeezed through it and dropped into Slant Number One, the part of the mine where the explosion and destruction had been the worst. Harry Whitenhad the grisly job of exploring and examining the devastated area. Initially, it was commonly assumed that fireboss Sam Charleton might have set off the explosions, but Harry White's detailed observations put an end to that speculation -- Sam Charleton's body was found with the firing cable still wrapped around his waist. Harry White concluded that the initial explosion was due to methane gas ignited from a spark which could have been set off by a lamp flare, electric cable short, or even a rock fall.
Level One North had escaped most of the destruction and the fans were able to clear the smoke and gas from there first. Consequently, the rescue work progressed quickly in this area and within an hour the last of the miners in this section had been brought to the surface. The rescue crews then clawed their way past broken timbers and twisted metal into Level One South where they came upon the horrific scene of thirty dead miners lying face down in a pool of water, victims of afterdamp. Further on in Slant Two, rescuers found more survivors who had tried to get out, only to be driven back by the smoke and carbon dioxide. They had managed to soak their shirts in water and breath through them to filter out the afterdamp. By time rescuers found them, one man had drowned in a pool of water and the others were all unconscious. One of them, Joe Atkinson , whom it took three hours to revive, returned to the mine the next day as one of the rescue team.
Meanwhile, the scene outside the mine was one of absolute shock. There
were women and children wandering about aimlessly, unable to believe
the total destruction of the mine and its buildings. Smoke from
continued to issue forth from
the mine for hours. Although the danger from further explosions was
high, the rescue teams continued to go into the mine to bring up the
bodies, some of them mangled and unidentifiable except by their
checks. RCMP officers Corporal Rant, Corporal
Mead , and Constable William
Hancock were given the grim job of identifying and
washing the bodies before they were laid out for the families. As
the hours passed, and the rescuers pushed deeper into the area of the
mine where the devastation was the greatest, the work became slower
and the number of bodies fewer. As well, work was slowed by fires
which occasionally erupted and had to be brought under control by the
exhausted rescuers. Yet, by Saturday afternoon 162 bodies had been
viewed by the coroner and passed for burial and within a week of the
explosion, only two bodies had not yet been found. One other was found
in July, and the last body was never found.
To view my photos of the new Miners' Memorial which was
unveiled during a special Ceremony held
at the Cemetery on September 2nd, 2000, please