1932 Cymbeline explosion tore family apart and remains one of city’s worst disasters.
CYMBELINE EXPLOSION killed more than 30 men, left immigrant family shattered
Molly Buchanan, 92, wants Montrealers never to forget June 17, 1932. She hasn’t and never will. It was the day her father, John Riddell, died in one of the worst workplace tragedies in Montreal history, the explosion of the tanker Cymbeline while it was being repaired at the Canadian Vickers Co. dry dock in the east end.
The initial blast at 4:20 a.m., thought to have been sparked by a rivet puncturing an oil tank, was followed by another an hour later, propelling bodies into the St. Lawrence and showering burning oil on anyone and anything in proximity.
More than 30 men perished, among them Montreal fire chief Raoul Gauthier and three other firefighters. Dozens more suffered burns and other injuries.
“I still remember the knock on our door in the night. It was my uncle Jim, telling my mother: ‘Johnny’s been in an accident.’ My uncle had a phone; we didn’t. When I heard that, I just froze in my bed,” said Buchanan, 11 years old at the time.
Her uncle escorted her mother from their home in Point St-Charles to the Western Hospital (now the site of the Montreal Children’s Hospital) for what would turn out to be the last time she saw her husband.
“My dad was alive but just barely. He was burned to the bone. The eyelets of his boots were burned into his flesh. The buckle of his belt was burned into him. His last words to my mother were: ‘Mary, take care of the children.’ ”
Riddell, 35, had emigrated from Scotland four years earlier hoping for a better life for his family. Mary joined him the next year with their two children, Molly and her brother, Alan.
“It was about a nine-day trip by boat, and my mother was seasick the whole way. I enjoyed all of it. I never missed a meal,” recalled Buchanan, who soon had another sister, Margaret, born in Montreal.
Life in Canada proved difficult for the family.
Her father was a tailor by trade, but initially worked at a farm in Western Canada, where the promised wages never materialized after a season’s work.
“His sister (Isabelle, who had settled in Montreal before him) sent him money to get back to Montreal. He made it as far as Northern Ontario, then rode the rails the rest of the way,” Buchanan said.
In Montreal, Riddell did a variety of odd jobs, everything from janitorial work to knitting wool.
“He was a proud man. He didn’t want to go on the breadline, so he’d shovel snow for the city for 25 cents an hour,” Buchanan said.
Riddell landed the job at Canadian Vickers only six weeks before the Cymbeline exploded, working the night shift as a riveter’s helper.
Buchanan still remembers one particular act of kindness from that bleak time, a Catholic priest showing up unannounced at the doorstep of the staunch Presbyterian family the day after the explosion and handing her mother $50. “My mother never forgot that.”
But Mary was never the same after her husband’s death. The family returned to Scotland for a few months, but came back to Montreal because the widow’s pension of $54 a month would have been terminated if they stayed longer.
“My mom rarely left the house after that. We didn’t recognize it then, but it was depression. Being the eldest, I was the one in charge, going to the bank, doing odd jobs. It was a lot of responsibility. It wasn’t the life a teenager should have,” Buchanan said.
For her, life began anew when she joined the air force on her 21st birthday. It’s where she met her husband, pilot Charles Stewart Buchanan.
“We were happily married for nine years,” Buchanan said. “He died in an air accident during a military exercise at Bagotville on July 22, 1952. I was 31, the same age as my mother when my father died. Like her, I had three children, one of them a sixmonth-old baby.”
Buchanan raised her three daughters and worked until 1980, when she retired from the Air Canada Credit Union in Dorval. She lives now in Nepean, Ont., near one of her daughters, but still has strong ties to Montreal.
And on the 17th of June, her thoughts always turn to the man buried in the National Field of Honour military cemetery in Pointe Claire, a proud Scottish Highlander who decades ago died a horrible death endeavouring to provide a better life in Canada for his young family.