The long whistle
Haunting sound had deadly meaning.
This story is about the preventable deaths of 65 hardworking men and boys in a small Cape Breton coal town 100 years ago on July 25, 1917.
The Number 12 Colliery explosion remains the worst disaster in Cape Breton’s storied coal mining history.
Whether by habit or hobby, I have a penchant for soaking up anything and everything related to the legacy of Cape Breton coal miners. My appetite for information includes tragic mining fatalities woven, like red threads in a tartan, into our labour and cultural fabric.
I have witnessed it – first hand.
Some of my buddies’ names are etched into the monuments at the Colliery Lands Park in my hometown of New Waterford. I have heard the pit stories while sitting on my father’s knee, at kitchen tables, around campfires, in the pit and at funeral homes where I pay respect to my fallen brothers in arms.
Just last month I attended a coal miner’s wake where Eunice McCarthy told me a story about her grandfather, John Vincent McKay, a 45 year old shot-firer and father of ten children.
John D., as he was called, died in the depths of Number 12 Colliery on the morning of the explosion. Rescuers found a holy scapular in his folded hands.
As I listened to Eunice, I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes. My mind raced to the families and friends of the 65 men of the deeps.
Confession: My grandfathers were coal miners. My father was a coal miner. Many of my friends were coal miners. I was a coal miner. This story has a personal bent.
It’s funny how your brain works. Talking to Eunice instantly reminded me of a story I told at a Davis Day ceremony in 1995 about Arthur Gadd, a trapper boy, who was killed in the Number 12 explosion at the tender age of 15 years.
In my mind’s eye, I could see names of the 65 miners engraved on the beautiful Miner’s Monument in Davis Square.
Immediately I thought about a June 16, 1996 letter I received from Sister Marie Kelly. It thanked me for the Davis Day tribute I gave to the valiant women of the mines – the wives, mothers, grandmothers and others – who played such a vital role in the lives of coal mining families and in shaping our coal mining heritage.
Thinking about the women of the mines brought back a vivid memory from the 1960s when I heard the 12 pit whistle blow a long blast. I watched my mother run to the window and stare desperately up the street. I was too young to understand the look on her face, the fear in her eyes or the reason she started crying when my father came around the corner at the top of Drake Street.
I know now. It was the long whistle.
I envisioned the same look on the face of Mary Ann Gadd, when she heard from a coal company cop that there was an explosion in Number 12. She had just sent her two boys, William and Arthur, off to work the dayshift.
Her words, from 100 years ago, played in my head and wrenched at my gut.
“Oh my God, my boys are in there.”
Mrs. Gadd and thousands of townspeople ran to the mine site for any word about their loved ones. Initially they were told nothing was wrong. Then silence – until the bodies started coming out of the mine – then chaos. My drive from the funeral home was preoccupied with thoughts of the true cost of Cape Breton coal.
If I learned one thing from Teddy Boutilier, my high school history teacher at BEC, it’s that history is about the backstory and, more often than not, that story is your best educator.
The backstory of the Number 12 explosion is rooted in the lust for coal dating back hundreds of years but it was the grand expansion of coal operations commencing in 1907 that lit the fuse on that fateful morning in 1917.
The Dominion Coal Company had opened Numbers 12, 14, 15 and 16 collieries in rapid succession within the boundaries of what would soon become the incorporated town of New Waterford. In Number 12 alone, the company estimated it would take 1,200 miners to work the 6 foot six inch seam of good quality metallurgical coal.
The company painted a magnificent portrait of mine safety. Powerful ventilation fans would provide ample airflow to sweep the underground workings of bad air and mine contaminants. Deadly methane gas would be diluted in the fresh air and circuited to the surface by way of properly maintained tunnel systems, air doors and heavy brattice air curtains. Regular government inspections would ensure that 12 pit was a safe place to work.
Jobs for life - things were looking up for Cape Breton coal miners and their families.
The backstory tells us that something went terribly wrong with Dominion Coal’s front story. The miners put it this way.
By 1917, the First World War was in full swing and coal was the primary source of fuel for the war machine. A coal miner with a pan shovel in his hand was as important to Canada’s war effort as a soldier with a rifle in his hand.
Despite labour shortages, due to miners’ enlisting to fight the war, the Dominion Coal Company was pressing the men to speed up production to help Canada’s war efforts. That’s corporate code for higher profits.
The company was hiring young boys to work the black seams. Experienced miners knew that more coal meant more gas. More gas meant more risk. Miners in Number 12 were seeing increasing gas outs in their sections.
Pit talk fixated on baffling shortages of brattice for some “rooms,” partially blocked airways and the relentless push for more coal.
In the weeks and days before the explosion the company sent miners home because of poor ventilation and bad air – John Cameron was one of them. Gus Brown took a week off without pay because the air was bad. Many miners reported for work but simply refused to go underground. The men were edgy.
Dominion Coal was aware of the source of the miners’ main concern – gas. John D’s 14-yearold son Henry, an underground horse driver, remembered the mine being very gassy at times and said the company concentrated more on production than on looking after the air courses.
Con Hogan said the mine bosses cared only for the pound of coal. Henry and Con were working in the lower sections of 12 pit when the explosion changed their lives forever. They lived to tell their story but 65 men and boys never got that chance.
There lies the rub – no living witnesses to who or what ignited the deadly methane gas that had accumulated in Number 12 pit.
Having no eyewitnesses puts a very different spin on a case. Scene investigation and circumstantial evidence became vital components to the evidentiary picture of the Number 12 explosion.
The backstory tells us that 270 men were working the dayshift on July 25, 1917. At approximately
7:30 in the morning, 2,100 feet down the slope, an ignition source triggered a gas explosion in No. 3 Room, No. 4 Balance at the No. 6 West Level. Sixty two miners died. Three barefaced miners, who bravely entered the mine to help rescue their buddies, died from breathing bad air.
The families buried their loved ones and grieved. The town bowed its head in sorrow. The Amalgamated Mine Workers of Nova Scotia (AMW) demanded an investigation. Dominion Coal Company President, Mark Workman, and General Manager, D.H. McDougall, in telegrams from some ivory tower in Montreal, sent the standard condolences for the “lamentable disaster” just before the company called out its lawyers. The Halifax law firm of McInnis, Mellish, Fulton and Kenny was on the case; Humphrey Mellish was a lawyer at that firm in 1917.
The ensuing investigations delivered a mixed bag of results. At the coroner’s inquiry, there was a tonne of conflicting evidence as to whether or not Number 12 was ever a gassy mine. An overman in the rescue party that found John D’s body testified that his shot-firers battery was 15 feet from his body in No. 3 room. The end of his shot-firers cable was eight inches from the battery. His Davy safety lamp was two feet away. The overman said the shot was examined and “thought it had been fired.”
The coroner’s jury delivered a blunt message: gross irregularity in mining practices was largely responsible for the retention of gas and the ensuing explosion which caused the deaths of 65 miners. Unspecified mine officials were found guilty of gross neglect.
A provincial Department of Mines inquiry recommended improved ventilation systems at the coalfaces but laid no specific blame for the disaster.
Stay with me on this part. A report to the Minister of Public Works and Mines by Hiram Donkin found that the dead end crosscut was properly undercut and the two holes were properly bored. Only one hole had been fired and it did not bring down the coal as expected. Further investigation determined that the fired hole had been properly packed, firmly stemmed and was not overloaded with powder. However, at the back of the fired hole, the coal had pronounced cleavage planes (a crack in the back door) which provided a secondary path for the explosive force to escape as a flame out into the gas filled mine workings.
Based on the evidence, John D’s section appeared to be 100 per cent up to snuff for a safe shot to be fired.
Other parts of the mine – not so much.
The “official findings” did not stop certain fingers from pointing at John D. for causing the explosion. John D. was an elected AMW leader and was known for being vocal about miner’s rights. Blaming him did not sit well with the miners. They vowed to strike every Wednesday and Saturday until the right parties were held accountable.
A strike would interrupt provincial coal supplies. A grand jury was quickly convened in New Waterford and approved criminal charges. The Dominion Coal Company was indicted for causing grievous bodily harm to its employees and three officials were charged with manslaughter.
What happened next is a story unto its own but an abbreviated version may provide some understanding of why coal miners’ prefer their own kind of justice.
After several preliminary legal skirmishes and delays the trials finally came before the court on October 28, 1918 with newly appointed Justice Humphrey Mellish presiding. After hearing three days of testimony, Justice Mellish ruled there was insufficient evidence to send the case against Dominion Coal to the jury.
Following legal objections and additional argument the case did go to the jury and Dominion Coal was found not guilty. The cases against the three officials were disposed of due to insufficient evidence. Arguably, that should have ended the story. Not for the miners.
At the AMW convention in October 1917, the miners approved construction of a monument to remember and honour the 65 men and boys who died in the Number 12 explosion. The names of the 65 miners would be engraved around the base of the monument. The statue of a coal miner would stand on top of the monument forever watching over his friends and their families.
The miners agreed that the facial features of the statue would be those of a coal miner and they borrowed a picture from Elizabeth Bennett, a miner’s widow. The monument was unveiled on July 25, 1922 at the corner of Ellsworth Avenue and Mahon Street in New Waterford. Thousands of people attended the dedication. Decades later the monument was moved to Miner’s Memorial Park, now Davis Square, where it stands to this day.
Being a coal miner I can say that the men will always have the last word. In what was a purposeful thumb of the nose to those who dared point the finger of blame at anyone but the Dominion Coal Company, the decision to carve a specific miner’s face in stone was regarded as a sign of admiration for a trusted member of the miner’s brotherhood.
The last word: Elizabeth Bennett was John D. MacKay’s wife – it is his likeness on the Miner’s Monument.
That’s coal miners’ justice. Stephen J.W. Drake of New Waterford is a third generation coal miner and former local president of the United Mine Workers of America. He is currently working as a Crown attorney for the Nova Scotia Public Prosecution Service in Sydney.