WELLAND CANAL
ERIC DOBROFF
SPECIAL TO POSTMEDIA NETWORK
On the morning of Jan. 17, 1928, Rocco Fraracci was repairing track on a trestle high above the ground at the Welland Canal’s new syphon culvert.
Conditions were icy that morning when suddenly the Italian slipped and fell 20 metres to his death.
This marked the first fatality on the canal in 1928, a year that would become the most deadly year for the waterway’s workers; on average, a casualty occurred every 12 days.
Forty-two years prior, on April 20, 1885, Fraracci was born in the medieval hilltop village of Castropignano, located in the mountainous Molise region of Italy. It is also the village where he married Fiorentina D’Onofrio on April 4, 1908. He had one brother, Carmine, and two sisters, Pasqualina and Angelina.
Rocco was the first of the Fraracci siblings to leave for Canada. He arrived in New York in 1908 with Welland listed as his ultimate destination on the passenger manifest of the
Later, in 1915, his brother Carmine joined him in Welland, but his sisters never left Italy.
Fraracci found employment in Welland with Atlas Construction Co. For six months previous to the accident he was responsible for general track repairs. J.C. Horgan, superintendent at Atlas, described Fraracci as “a splendid workman, one of the best in the employ of the company.”
There were no witnesses to the tragedy that Januarymorning,sonoonecoulddescribewith certainty the cause of Fraracci’s fall. Fraracci and a co-worker, Massimino Maddelena, were busy repairing track on the construction trestle when Maddelena left and, upon returning a brief time later, saw that Fraracci was missing. Shortly afterwards his body was found 20 metres below at the bottom of the trestle. The position it was found in, along with the observable injuries, indicated that Fraracci had landed directly on his head, resulting in instant death.
At the inquest into the accident, Horgan, the superintendent in charge of the syphon culvert contract, cited a sleet storm of the day before as the cause of the tragedy, due to the fact that walking was difficult and slippery the next day. Horgan assumed one of two scenarios must have happened: Fraracci was either walking along the trestle when he slipped, or he had stopped to pull a track spike whereupon he lost his balance and fell. He felt it was possible that had the sleet storm not occurred the accident might have been avoided. But, he qualified this by saying that the company had ashes, sand and salt put down that morning in the hopes of preventing this type of accident.
Fraracci was survived by his wife and eight children: Serafina (Sarah), Felice (Felix), Ascenzo (Shanz), Carmelo Sandillo (Sidney), Carmela, Lena Marie, Alfredo Benedeto (Freddy) and Rocco (Rocky). Many of his descendants still live in Welland, Port Colborne and other Niagara areas.
Fraracci was buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Welland. — This article is part of a series remembering the men whose lives were lost in the construction of the Welland Ship Canal. The Welland Canal Fallen Workers Memorial Task Force is a volunteer group established to design, finance and build a memorial to recognize workers who were killed during construction of the Welland Ship Canal. For more information about the memorial, or to contribute to the project, visit www. stcatharines.ca/CanalWorkersMemorial.