Machinery accident took life of young worker

By 1928, work on the Welland Ship Canal had progressed substantially and the waterway was beginning to take its final shape.

As the construction continued, one of the major tasks in its completion was dredging the channel to ensure that the navigable depth was sufficient to allow the largest of ships to transit the waterway. The final desired depth of the canal was 25 feet (7.5 metres) and that would not be achieved until 1935.

As the construction continued in earnest, the excess rock, soil, sand, and debris had to be removed as an expected part of the work of building the canal.

Dredges were used to carry out the excavation activity on this part of the project. They were large vessels with a digging, scooping or suction apparatus on one end and usually worked alongside barges that would carry away the materials once removed from the channel bottom. There were three styles of dredges used on the canal — clam dredges, dipper dredges and hydraulic dredges.

The material removed from the channel by dredging was used to build the new breakwaters protecting the harbour entrances at Port Colborne and Port Weller.

Sadly, as with most aspects of the canal work, dredging could be dangerous. As a water-based piece of equipment, workers had to be concerned not only with the usual hazards of the workplace but also with hazards related to working around water. Drowning could easily happen and the vagaries of water could shift the boat in an instant and cause accidents for those working in the vicinity. In addition, dredges had large moving mechanical parts which could malfunction and potentially injure workers.

Edward Joseph Morin was one of the men employed on dredges in the canal’s construction. He was hired by J.P. Porter and Sons as an oiler on the hydraulic dredge Shuniah. Ironically, his job was to keep the ship’s moving March 11, 1904 (Chapeau, Pontiac County, Que.) April 5, 1928 (Section 6, Welland) Caught in gears of the dredge Shuniah Oiler, dredge Shuniah, J.P. Porter

& Sons, Ltd.

Holy Cross Cemetery, Welland (Section 2, Row 1, Grave 3) parts oiled so that they wouldn’t malfunction and possibly cause an accident or the breakdown of the equipment.

According to official records of the Department of Railways and Canals, Morin was oiling the machinery in the cutter room of the dredge on April 5, 1928. There were no witnesses to his death but the nature of the accident seems obvious. In the process of oiling the machine, which continued to operate during the oiling process, he was somehow caught in the machinery and this resulted in his body being severed in two. His remains were found by his shift relief, Fred Lahey, at about 11 p.m.

Dr. Allison was called to the scene and ordered an inquest. The results of the inquest were recorded in official correspondence of the Department of Railways and Canals where they note that “a verdict of accidental death was returned with a rider recommending that the orders requiring the machinery to be stopped while these gears are being oiled be rigidly enforced.”

Joseph Edwin Morin (his name as baptized), was one of three boys born to Narcisse Morin and Alice Lahey in March 1904. He had an older brother Alex, and a younger brother Michael.

Morin was 24 years old, single, and living at 58 Regent St. in Welland at the time of his death. He had been in Ontario for eight years, having come from Quebec. His brother Alex was the informant on his death certificate and lived at the same address with his wife Mildred. Edward 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.