THE WHOLE WALL JUST CAME DOWN ON ME'
Salt miner's catastrophic injuries on job site have taken a devastating toll on his life — physically, mentally and financially
It was a routine morning for Joe Bosley, deep underground at the K+S Windsor Salt Ojibway Mine. Until the rock wall beside him collapsed.
An invisible fault sparked an avalanche of stone, crushing him under its weight.
Bosley sustained catastrophic injuries in the workplace accident that almost took his life.
Almost two years later, he lives with constant pain and deep anger at having his ability to work taken from him.
Bosley and a team of miners were preparing to blast away sedimentary rock composed of the mineral halite, commonly known as rock salt, 1,800 feet below the surface on April 8, 2020, while they were working to open a new salt vein.
Following the regular morning briefing, the three-member team gathered supplies — a powder rig, caps, explosives, lead wire — and readied to blast the first round of the day.
An experienced development miner, Bosley was tasked with putting sticks of explosives into holes drilled into the face of the stone wall while his partner packed the material in tightly.
“We number a sequence so that it blasts the proper way,” Bosley said. “You want it to start in the centre, blast out and then after everything blasts out you want it all to blast in a certain way so that it all falls (in a sequence).
“I knelt down on one knee and we were putting these sticks of explosives in because we use these special ones, they're kind of wrapped in a plastic tube and they can be detonated underwater.
“So I was putting those in and my partner was stuffing them in. And as I was doing that, the whole wall just came down on me.”
The solid wall of stone — as heavy as a small car — suddenly broke free, falling on Bosley, crushing his body, breaking multiple bones and fracturing his skull.
Stunned but conscious, Bosley was dragged out face down from under the stone that broke into pieces as it hit him and the ground around him.
Bill Wark, president of Unifor Local 1959, which represents Windsor Salt workers, happened to be in the mine that morning while industrial hygiene testing for air quality was being conducted.
“We were actually coming down (to where the team was working),” said Wark, when he was notified the accident had occurred.
“It was kind of surreal, because you don't expect something like (that). It would be just like sitting here talking to each other then next thing you know you walk out there and the tree limb falls on you,” Wark said. “And there he was lying face down in the water and all sorts of bad stuff.”
Bosley said the wall fell in an instant.
“My partner said that all he could see was a little bit of my coveralls on my hips after all the rock fell,” he said. “I was buried.”
Bosley believes there must have been a void behind the front stone “that didn't get knocked down as we used our mechanical scaler or our hand scaling,” a process of removing loose rock.
The incident happened around 8 a.m. By 9 a.m., Bosley had been lifted out of the mine and was being rushed to Windsor Regional Hospital.
“There were pretty significant visible injuries,” Wark said. “A couple of us did the immediate first aid, damage assessment. (Another worker) ran up to get some more help and we needed the transportation to come back down.
“We got him bandaged up and got him on a ... backboard and the (rescue) basket. We went up 400 or 500 feet, carried him on to where the next landing was.”
“Six guys carried me,” said Bosley, who stands five-foot-nine and was 240 pounds (109 kg) at the time of the accident.
His injuries were extensive — a broken femur, shattered pelvis, damaged kidneys, seven fractured ribs, a punctured lung, three broken bones in his right arm and a broken elbow, both shoulders broken.
Bosley's C7 vertebra, left scapula, orbital socket and nose were broken. He had multiple skull fractures, bleeding in the brain and air on the brain.
“Virtually any one of those injuries could have killed somebody, could have been fatal,” Wark said.
“They thought he was gonna die,” said Joe's wife, Jodie Bosley. “No one thought he was going to live.”
The day of the accident is a blur for the family.
Jodie said at first no one seemed sure whether he was still alive.
She raced to the hospital but due to tight COVID -19 restrictions, she was instructed to go home and wait.
With her sister Kim Fields, and children Aliyah Allard, 19 and Lucas Allard, 17, by her side, they waited for news from the hospital.
“All I wanted to do was go see him because I knew that it was rough. I knew that he might not make it,” said Jodie, an officer at the South West Detention Centre.
Bosley was having difficulty breathing and needed emergency surgery.
As they were wheeling him into the operating room, one of the doctors called from his cellphone and put it on speaker so Bosley could hear Jodie's words of encouragement.
“Joe doesn't even really remember that. I just knew that he was on his way into surgery and I was just saying, you know, be strong ... you're going to be okay, we're all here, you can fight it.
“But his voice was so jumbled. They had him on so much (medication) to try to control the pain.”
Bosley spent 10 days in an induced coma, 17 days on life support.
“The first two weeks were touch and go. We didn't know whether he was going to survive,” she said. “The hospital staff were fantastic. They kept in touch with me, I don't know probably five, six times a day they called me for permission for everything.”
Once he was in the intensive care unit, Jodie said she pleaded with staff to let him speak with her via an ipad.
“They wouldn't even let me see him because his facial injuries were so bad,” she said. “I pleaded, please let me in to see him, because there were so many things that I felt like I never got to say to him.
“But it didn't matter. Anything that I tried I couldn't get in to see him and then not even being able to see him on the ipads ... because of the facial trauma, that was difficult too.”
Bosley spent almost three months in hospital — six weeks at Windsor Regional and the remainder at Hotel-dieu Grace Healthcare. He had numerous surgeries including facial reconstruction, lost 46 pounds (21 kg) and had to learn to walk again.
Jodie, who took seven months off work after the accident, said once Bosley left the Ouellette campus and went to Hotel-dieu Grace Healthcare for rehab, they finally got to see him but visiting was only allowed outside and at a distance.
“I remember when we got to see him for the first time,” his daughter Aliyah Allard said. “There was two fences between us but it was better than anything.”
She directed her next memory to Bosley: “The first time I saw you, because obviously you looked so different, it was just a sense of relief getting to see you, you know.”
“Our first time seeing him, they wheeled him down in a wheelchair and he looked completely different,” Jodie said. “He had lost so much weight and, you know, he looked different to say the least.”
“But he was still the same, cracking jokes. It made me feel better,” Allard said.
For Bosley, it was a lonely recovery.
“It was hard. You're trying to do your rehabilitation. Normally you'd get support from your family. The only support was talking on the phone.”
The couple's first touch some three months after the accident was the day before he was discharged from hospital.
Bosley, 50, was born and raised in the northern Ontario city of Elliot Lake, where his family and friends were miners. Avid hunters, the Bosleys would regularly travel north for vacations.
But since the accident, Bosley is no longer able to sit in a vehicle for more than half an hour. Nor can he stand for very long. He has no use of his right arm or his dominant right hand. It's now a sedentary life. He has flashbacks and terrifying nightmares. And he is unable to fish or hunt.
“That's been something that's been really difficult for him to deal with,” Jodie said.
Not being able to work has also frustrated Bosley.
“It's hard to deal with, not working,” he said. “I used to work six days a week constantly and if there was a seventh that I could (work), I would do it. Like, I lived there. I love my job. And the kids are old enough where I didn't have to be at home with them.”
“There's so many people in this world that hate their jobs,” Jodie said. “Not Joe, he absolutely loved his job.
“He worked as much as he could. He worked as much overtime as he could. He's provided a certain lifestyle for us. And now he gets a fraction of the pay, like it's really a fraction. It's not fair.”
The Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) deemed Bosley catastrophically injured.
He now earns a percentage of his base pay and receives the maximum WSIB offers an injured worker.
Workplace insurance pays workers 85 per cent of their take-home pay up to a maximum insured wage of $100,422 in 2022. The maximum was $95,400 in 2020.
The compensation is calculated on salary, not overtime hours.
“There's no jackpot at the end. There's no lottery. There's nothing. It is what it is,” Bosley said. “It's no fault of your own and you go to making less than half of your pay. It's very frustrating.”
“There's no legal recourse,” Jodie added. “The salt mine is protected by WSIB. This accident was no fault of Joe's. There was no negligence on Joe's part whatsoever. And there is nothing that we can do.”
Jodie feels the company has not done enough for her husband.
“The union has been there to support us and all of Joe's close friends at work have been there, like overwhelming support from his co-workers,” she said.
“I'm not really too thrilled with WSIB'S performance the last couple years,” Wark said. “It's been a fight to make sure he gets the adequate benefits.
“WSIB needs to step up to the plate. If you can give billions of dollars to an employer in rebates, you can increase the benefits to a guy that shouldn't even be here,” added Wark.
“His quick evacuation from the mine, the excellent medical care, Joe's overwhelming desire to live and the sheer grace of God is the only reason why he's here.”
K+S Windsor Salt changed hands since the accident and is now called simply Windsor Salt. More than 225 people are employed at the Ojibway Mine, which opened in 1959 as part of the Canadian Salt Company Ltd.
The company produces rock salt for commercial and consumer de-icing of roads and sidewalks, plus salts for water softening and other uses.
Windsor Salt is currently facing nine Occupational Health and Safety Act charges from the incident, including one count of interfering with evidence, six counts of failing to carry out measures and one count each of failing to provide supervision and failing to provide protection.
None of the charges has been proven in court.
A Justice of the Peace agreed Monday to put over provincial offences charges related to the accident as resolution discussions continue between the Ministry of Labour and representatives of Windsor Salt. The next court date is April 11.
Interviewed Tuesday, Windsor Salt general manager Pierre Girard told the Windsor Star he was unable to comment while the case is still before the court.
“We are working towards a resolution and out of respect for the process and for those involved, we do not comment on ongoing investigations or litigations,” Girard said. “Once we have resolution, I'd be happy to follow up with you.”
“At the end of the day, when (and if ) the salt mine gets fined, 10 per cent of that fine goes into a kitty for victims,” Jodie said. “That 10 per cent doesn't come to Joe.
“I would love for at least that 10 per cent, which is still just no comparison (to what his lost earnings are). That would be nice to go to the actual victim.”
If there's one bright spot, the accident prompted the couple to finally tie the knot.
“We've been together going on 15 years. And we had been engaged for several years before the accident happened. It was just not so important for us to actually pull the trigger and do it,” Jodie said.
“Then the accident happened and Joe said, `As soon as I get out of the hospital, even if we sit on the couch in our pyjamas, let's get it done.'”
The couple married on Field's farm in Amherstburg with family and a few of Bosley's best friends in attendance.
The accident has taken an emotional toll on everyone involved.
“WSIB did ask if the kids and I need counselling, which we do,” Jodie said. “So at least they're recognizing that this isn't just Joe. This happened to all of us.
“I'm not taking anything away from Joe but the kids and I constantly cry about it. It's hard on a daily basis for us.”
“It's not something that ever goes away. There's nothing to make it better,” Allard said. “It happened and it sucks but it still hurts. We all love him so much and we're all so deeply affected by it.”
Bosley thanked the mine rescue personnel and all his co-workers who have done so much to help the family since the accident.
“And the union guys, they've been great. Taking care of a lot of paperwork and fighting for us,” he said.
“We just wish that the salt mine would step up more as a company,” Jodie said, adding they haven't spoken to her husband or offered any further financial help.
“We're looking for some kind of compensation, something. We just want what's fair.”
There's no jackpot ... It's no fault of your own and you go to making less than half of your pay. It's very frustrating.