Painter crushed by bridge counterweight
Elmer Hines was part of a crew that was responsible for scraping off old paint and re-applying a new coat of paint to lift Bridge No. 14 at Lincoln Street in Welland.
On the morning of July 3, 1930, the 21-year-old was perched on a bosun’s chair 30 metres above the Welland Ship Canal, cleaning star braces on the bridge’s east tower.
The St. Catharines resident, one of the eight children of Louis Hines and Jane (Jennie) Dyer of Dunnville, had married the former Margaret Edith McGeorge of St. Catharines just four weeks earlier.
Fewer than three months before, he had also joined the maintenance crew of the federal Department of Railways and Canals, which was building the Welland Ship Canal and was responsible for operating the canal and its predecessor.
At 8:40 a.m., bridgemaster William Johnston sounded a warning siren. He was lowering the gates to stop traffic on Lincoln Street prior to lifting the bridge deck for an oncoming ship. A couple of minutes later, Johnston sounded the siren again and began to raise the bridge deck.
Hines, high in the east tower, had a 20.3- to 25.4-centimetre clearance for the counterweight to pass him as it came down the tower.
Painter Percy McKeever then heard a scraper fall to the deck.
He suspected something was wrong and rang an emergency stop bell. Johnston stopped the bridge, but it was too late. Hines had put his head out and was crushed by the descending 323-tonne counterweight. His body was slumped over a bar in the tower.
During a July 11 inquest conducted by coroner Dr. Duncan Allison, foreman Bert Curley described the clearance between the counterweight and braces: “It must have been an unconscious act,” he said of Hines putting his head out to look down rather than lean back to avoid the counterweight.
In a Welland-Port Colborne Evening Tribune story about the inquest, painter Alex Galloway said that he had “heard two painter’s scrapers fall … [Hines] might have let one scraper fall, and have been crushed when he inadvertently looked down to see where it fell.”
The inquest ruled Hines’ death was an accident, siren warnings had been sounded, and everyone was cleared of responsibility.
For his new wife, his death was a personal and economic blow. She was described as “absolutely without funds” in a letter by the canals department’s acting comptroller, F.W. MacLennan. He urged the department paymaster to pay wages due “at as early [a] date as possible.” Hines was owed $73 for his last two weeks of work in June and $11 for July 1 to 3.
The comptroller also wrote that Hines, with only three months on the job, did not qualify for compensation under the federal Civil Service Act.
Later, Margaret Hines did receive some money from the Ontario Workmen’s Compensation fund. This support would cease upon her re-marriage (she did remarry, to Herbert William Burt, son of William Henry Burt who, in 1914, had been the first canal construction fatality).
After the Welland Canal bypass was opened in 1973, vertical lift Bridge No. 14 at Lincoln Street in Welland was replaced with a flat bridge.
— This article is part of a series remembering the men whose lives were lost in construction of the Welland Ship Canal. The Welland Canal Fallen Workers Memorial was unveiled in November 2017 at Lock 3 next to St. Catharines Museum and Welland Canals Centre. www.stcatharines.ca/canalworkersmemorial