‘Their light will always shine’
Ceremony marks 25 years since Westray mine disaster in N.S. killed 26 people
NEW GLASGOW, N.S.— Twenty-five years after she lost her husband to one of Nova Scotia’s worst coal mining disasters, Darlene Dollimont-Svenson still finds it difficult talking about the life they once shared.
Thirty-six-year-old Adonis Dollimont and 25 other miners were in the final hours of a four-day shift at the Westray mine in Plymouth, N.S., when a coal seam spit a jet of methane gas that somehow ignited.
Fuelled by volatile coal dust, a massive fireball raced through the tunnels at 5:18 a.m. The explosion killed every man in the mine and tore off the metal roof at the pit entrance. In the pre-dawn sky on a rainy Saturday morning, the blast erupted in a roaring blue-grey flash that shook houses more than a kilometre away.
On Tuesday, Dollimont-Svenson was among 200 people who marched through an industrial park in New Glasgow to the Westray Miners Memorial Park, not far from the sprawling tunnels where 11 miners are still buried. Led by a police car with flashing lights, the silent marchers carried bilingual banners with a message spelled out in black and white: “No more Westrays.”
The early morning ceremony at the park featured prayers of remembrance and the reading aloud of each miner’s name and age.
“We gather to hold memories close to our hearts,” said Rev. Jim WebberCook. “We gather to fulfil those words that are enshrined here: ‘That their light will always shine.’ ”
Dollimont-Svenson said the mine was a source of great promise when it opened in 1991, offering well-paying jobs in an economically depressed area that saw its last coal mine close in the 1970s. However, most of the Westray miners knew the tunnels were unsafe, she said, recalling how a group of them sat in her living room to discuss the dangers — four days before the explosion.
In 1993, the RCMP charged Toronto-based Curragh Resources Inc. and two of its former managers with manslaughter and criminal negligence causing death. But the case eventually fell apart when the Crown concluded convictions were unlikely.
However, in 1997, Nova Scotia Supreme Court justice K. Peter Richard concluded the disaster was the result of “incompetence, mismanagement, bureaucratic bungling, deceit, ruthlessness . . . and cynical indifference.” Richard’s public inquiry found Westray management and its owner, Clifford Frame, were ultimately responsible for conditions at the mine.
To this day, union officials and relatives of the dead miners say justice was not served. Union leader Stephen Hunt said the families’ determination has led to big changes in regulations aimed at reducing workplace deaths, injuries and illnesses.
He said Nova Scotia, British Columbia and Alberta have all introduced new rules aimed at ensuring safer workplaces.