Haunting whistle
Mine explosion of 1917 worst in Cape Breton history
When Eunice McCarthy thinks of the 1917 explosion at the No. 12 Colliery in New Waterford, her mind pictures a town devastated and a grandfather she never got to meet.
“My mother Jenny (Deveaux) never even knew her father,” she said.
“She was only nine months old when the explosion happened. She grew up without her father and always wondered about him. But that wasn’t the only family, there were 64 more.”
On July 25, 1917, the mine whistle at No. 12 blew at 7:30 a.m. after an explosion rocked the pit 2,000 feet below the surface, killing 65 men and boys, including McCarthy’s ’s grandfather, John Vincent McKay.
McCarthy said she wished she had asked more questions when her grandmother, Elizabeth MacKay, was still alive but she has read, researched and looked through photos of the tragedy over the years and her interest only grows.
Her grandparents lived in Dominion and had 10 children, although five died while still young.
“My grandfather walked the sandbar every day to come and work at the No. 12 pit.”
Her uncle, Henry McKay, was only 10 years old when he started working in the pit and was just 14 and underground when the explosion occurred. Henry tended to the horses. “That’s what got him out of the pit. It was so dark he couldn’t see anything, he got out of the pit holding on to the tail of a pony,” she said.
“They brought my grandfather’s body home at 2 a.m. They found him kneeling with a scapular (rosary) in his hands.”
A photograph that McCarthy has shows people pouring out of the St. Agnes Hall with her grandfather’s coffin.
“I can’t imagine the line of coffins and the sadness in the community at that time,”
McCarthy said her grandmother was a strong woman who would have dealt with it one day at a time.
“She was a woman of great faith and always wore all black, a long dress, black coat, black shoes and black purse on her arm,” she said.
“She really mourned him her whole life.”
In 1922, a memorial was being built and McCarthy’s grandmother was asked for a photo as the miners wanted the statue on top to depict him.
“They used his features but it was to represent all of the miners who were killed,” she said.
The monument was erected in a field off Ellsworth Avenue in 1922 and later moved to Miners Memorial Park, which is now known as Davis Square.
The Cape Breton Regional Municipality is holding a No. 12 Mine Centennial to remember the 65 miners, at Colliery Lands Park on Tuesdayat 6:30 p.m.
“I’m just pleased I lived long enough to see this commemoration happen,” McCarthy said.
McCarthy’s grandson Ty Gittens, 11, and her grandnieces and grand nephews — Alex McKinnon, 14, Sarah McKinnon, 11 and Theo Thorne, 9 — will be part of a parade of 65 children each carrying a lantern to represent a fallen miner.
Eunice’s husband, Eddie, worked at the No. 12 colliery from 1954 until a fire at the mine in 1973, and then at Lingan until he retired in 1988.
“My grandson will be wearing Eddie’s pit hat.”
Steve Drake, well-known for not only having coal in his blood but for his advocating for miners said he’ll be at the 100th anniversary ceremony Tuesday.
“These were my brothers,” said Drake, a former coal union official who has since moved on to the field of law. “No one can understand the camaraderie and the brotherhood unless you’ve worked underground in a coal mine.
“I’m proud to say I’m a third-generation coal miner from New Waterford.”
Drake said when the long whistle was blown at 7:30 a.m. on July 25, 1917, signifying something bad had happened,
he can’t imagine what families must have been going through.
For Drake the thought brings a mixture of both sadness and anger.
“When you think of the fact 65 people died needlessly and how their families must have been impacted back in 1917, I feel nothing but sadness and empathy for those families.
“When you think of what happened and the fact it was preventable I get angry.”
Drake points the finger at the Dominion Coal Company that wanted as much coal as they could get and to get it out as cheaply as they could.
“This is a tragedy, those 65 miners were killed unnecessarily,” he said.
“The miners always operated in a safe manner. In my mind the company allowed the gas to build up — and fast forward to 1992 and think about what happened in Westray.”
As soon as the mine was declared safe a mere three weeks later, the coal miners had to go back to work in the mine that took 65 of their brothers’ lives.
Drake said the miners pushed for safety legislation, and that could be the one good thing that came out of the explosion.
“The miners always wanted a safe operation, no one wanted to go to work in an unsafe coal mine miles under the Atlantic Ocean and not know if you’re going to get to go home to your wife and kids. No one wanted that and no one deserved what happened in 1917.”