Blood on the Coal, page 17
Gordon, who was fifty-nine, had been in and around mines all his life. Scottish born, he was seven years old in 1907 when his family had immigrated to Canada so his father, an executive with DOSCO, could take up a management position in Sydney. In his youth, Gordon had worked as a pit boy in a coal mine before he attended McGill University. After he earned a degree in mining engineering in 1923, his father helped him land a job with DOSCO back in Cape Breton. Gordon then set about working his way up through the management ranks. The thirty-five years he’d spent behind a desk hadn’t dimmed his ardour for underground work. In 1956, Gordon led the rescue teams that saved dozens of miners after the devastating explosion that rocked the No. 4 Springhill mine. Now he was ready to don draegerman gear once again and do whatever he could to direct rescue operations and save any men trapped in the shattered No. 2 mine. As it turned out, there wasn’t much he could do this time around, at least not initially.
Gordon returned to the surface at 10:30 a.m. after having spent more than three hours underground. He’d explored parts of both the 13,400- and 13,800-foot levels; however, he’d been unable to enter the tunnel at the 13,000-foot level, which was blocked with rubble and full of gas. This was especially frustrating since Gordon and many miners in the rescue crew thought most of the missing men who might still be alive would be trapped there.
When Gordon emerged from the pithead, he was stone-faced and blackened with coal dust, his jaw clenched. He strode along the muddy path that led to the wash house. Gordon said nothing, but the fact his customary bounce was gone from his gait told onlookers he was downcast. Why that was so would soon become all too clear.
When Gordon found C. Arnold Patterson, DOSCO’s Montreal-based public relations director, waiting for him in the wash house, he instructed Patterson to arrange a media conference for one hour hence. Gordon had bad news to share with the 137 journalists—Arnie Patterson kept a count—who’d descended upon Springhill and were ravenous for any information that would provide fodder for the breathless dispatches they were churning out. News of the Springhill mine disaster was generating headlines and attracting attention worldwide.
In addition to the expected rush of reporters that Springhillers were accustomed to seeing whenever there was trouble at the mine, a television crew appeared in town. The live, on-the-spot news reporting they did was a first for Springhill and for Canada. There’d been a radio news reporter on hand in April 1936 when a cave-in trapped three miners in a gold mine at Moose River, Nova Scotia (an hour’s drive northeast of Halifax). Days passed as rescuers struggled to find a way into the mine that wouldn’t cause a disastrous cave-in.7
On April 20, eight days after the start of the crisis, a mustachioed, pipe-smoking reporter with the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission (the forerunner of the CBC) named J. Frank Willis arrived on the scene. Making use of the shared telephone “party line” that was the only one available in the area, Willis forged international broadcasting history. For almost three days, each half-hour, he aired live two-minute updates on the rescue efforts. In doing so, Willis created North America’s first twenty-four-hour “news event.” It’s guesstimated that as many as 100 million listeners across North America and around the world heard his dramatic live reports.8 Radio news reporting would never be the same. A similar phenomenon happened when that CBC television crew came to Springhill to report on the town’s latest mining disaster.
The CBC had launched its television broadcasting service only six years earlier. On September 6, 1952, Montreal station CBFT went on the air, and two days later Toronto station CBLT followed suit. Two years later, CBC television programming came to Nova Scotia when, in October 1954, station CJCB began operations, and then on December 20, 1954, CBC station CBHT began broadcasting over Channel 3 in Halifax.
Until 1958, CBC had a monopoly on domestic television broadcasting in this country since federal law prohibited the creation of private television networks. Television broadcasting was still very much in its infancy in 1958, news broadcasting even more so. On July 1 of that year, Dominion Day, a network of 139 microwave towers—the world’s longest—began beaming television signals across the country to forty privately owned stations and eight that were operated by the CBC—those two stations in Nova Scotia being among them.9
It was impossible for anyone to miss the bulky Canadian Broadcasting Corporation cameras, the technicians, the glaring floodlights, and the trench-coated reporters with microphones in hand who showed up in Springhill in the wake of the Bump and eagerly began interviewing mine officials and locals. First on the scene was Keith Barry from CBHT, and then as interest in the story grew, Lloyd MacInnis and Jack MacAndrew flew in from Toronto. “This was the first time that television covered such an event,” MacAndrew would recall many years later.10 He was right about that.
Before this time, television cameras had never ventured outside the controlled studio conditions to broadcast the drama of a live news event. The technical quality of the CBC broadcast was poor, yet despite the darkness of the video and the garbled audio that sounded as if it were coming to earth from another planet, it made for exciting viewing.
Today, we tend to take for granted the technology that makes such live news reports possible—whether broadcast over the airwaves or streamed online; at times, the report even seems quaint, maybe a tad primitive. What’s surprising nowadays is that with smart phones being ubiquitous, we’re taken aback if a video of every event or disaster isn’t readily available to view on social media or television. The world was a very different place in 1958. A live television broadcast of on-the-spot news “from the field” was cutting-edge. And it was very much a novelty.
CBC newsman Jack MacAndrew (centre) and two of the technical crew taking a break from their remote live news broadcasting of the Springhill mine disaster. (Springhill Miners’ Museum)
The live coverage of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on June 2, 1953, is widely regarded as the event that made television a mainstream news medium. More than twenty million people tuned in to watch the broadcast. The CBC’s television coverage of the Springhill disaster didn’t draw nearly that many viewers, but it is similarly memorable since it was the first news broadcast with real-time on-the-spot coverage of events as they happened. While the technical challenges were immense, the CBC production people pulled it off, going live across Canada and even beyond.
It’s no exaggeration to say the public broadcaster’s coverage of the Springhill mine disaster marked a milestone in television coverage of breaking news, even if those who were involved in the broadcast—like media observers generally—seem not to have been aware of it at the time.11 That the CBC made such an effort to air its coverage of the events in Springhill speaks volumes about the perceived level of public interest. Indeed, the world was paying attention. Television networks in the United States and Europe carried reports of the disaster. The impact of this was coverage as remarkable as it was unprecedented. Television viewers globally tuned in, and what’s more, they sent more than forty thousand letters and postcards,12 as well as gifts of food, clothing, and even cash to the people of Springhill. By the end of October, almost a million dollars had been received and added to the miners’ relief fund that had been established.13
From London, the Queen had sent a message of support to the people of Springhill and offered her condolences to those who’d lost loved ones. Prime Minister John Diefenbaker in Ottawa dispatched a similar message, as had Nova Scotia premier Robert Stanfield before he left Halifax and rushed to Springhill. While such sentiments were appreciated, they did little to brighten the mood in the town. It seemed the only news coming out of the No. 2 mine was bad news.
When an overflow crowd of journalists packed a meeting room in the DOSCO offices for Gordon’s press conference, they listened in stunned silence as the manager gave his assessment of the situation in the No. 2 mine. Speaking slowly and in a voice that at times was quavering and barely audible, he delivered a frank assessment of the situation underground. “I regret to tell you that I consider there’s no hope for any of the men on the 13,400- and 13,800-foot levels,” he said.14 After pausing a moment, he then added a chilling afterthought: he had only “the faintest of hopes” for the eighty-three men who were still missing.
Louis Frost (middle), DOSCO’s chief mining engineer, and company vice-president and general manager Harold Gordon (to Frost’s left) held daily press conferences at the DOSCO offices as company public relations chief C. Arnold Patterson (in hat) looked on. (Nova Scotia Archives)
None of this was what anyone wanted or had expected to hear, certainly not the miners or the people of Springhill. Most locals didn’t believe Harold Gordon’s words. They didn’t want to, and they refused to do so. In houses from one end of town to the other, the families of the missing miners kept the lights on, figuratively and literally. They prayed their loved ones were still alive and would be coming home. Even when she went to bed at night, Margie Kempt kept all the lights burning in the Kempt family home on Herrett Road. Her husband, Gorley, the father of her two children, was among the missing, and never—not even for one moment—would she let herself think he wasn’t alive and wouldn’t be coming home. “Mum was emphatic that despite all the bad news, Dad would survive, and so she was symbolically keeping the lights on day and night,” Billy Kempt recalled. “She said that if she turned them off, it would look like she didn’t think Dad was coming home.”15
Hope. That was the vital word. It was all that Margie Kempt and the other wives and families of eighty-three missing men had to cling to. They couldn’t—no, they wouldn’t—ever give that up.
Chapter 17
Out of Everything but Hope
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24, 1958
5:30 A.M.
WHAT DO PEOPLE THINK ABOUT WHEN THEY’RE FACE TO face with their own mortality? In the romanticized Hollywood version of what happens, the dying person utters something pithy and memorable—“famous last words”—before shuffling off this mortal coil, as William Shakespeare put it. However, for the most part, the reality of death is a lot more banal than that.
The researchers who study such things tell us that when most people are drawing what they believe are their final breaths, they take stock of what they’ve done or haven’t done in this life. Last thoughts turn to home and loved ones. That was certainly the case for the ill-fated coal miners who lay dying in a firedamp-filled pit in Fraterville, Tennessee, in 1902. One poor soul left a note advising his sons, “Never work in coal mines.” Another miner scribbled a farewell note to his wife in which he said, “If I don’t see you any more [sic], bury me in the clothing I have. I want you to meet me in heaven. Goodbye. Do as you wish.”1
None of the dozen men, the Twelve, who were trapped at the bottom end of the 13,000-foot coal face, at the 13,400-foot level of the No. 2 Springhill mine, were ready to write a farewell note. Not yet, anyway. However, nine hours after the catastrophic bump that shattered the mine and upended life, their mood was as glum as mud. The gravity of their predicament had started to weigh heavily on the men’s minds. Understandably so. After all, here they were in the dark, entombed three-quarters of a mile underground. They had very little food or water. No one on the surface knew they were alive; and even if anyone did, no one knew exactly where to find them. Making matters worse, the air the men were breathing continued to be fouled periodically with toxic gas and with the constant, growing stench of the corpses that were already starting to putrefy in the warmth of the mine. The odour was overpowering. If there is such a place as living hell, this was it.
Harold Brine contemplated the misery of his situation as he lay on the uneven, sloping surface of the mine floor. It was a hard, uncomfortable bed, and sleep hadn’t come easily for him during the night or at any time. Brine had retrieved a watch with a luminous dial from the wrist of a corpse that was lying in the rubble, about 30 feet up the coal face; Brine knew the dead man and vowed that if he made it out of there alive, he’d deliver the watch to his widow. But for now, that precious timepiece was Brine’s only tangible link to the world of the living. Tellingly, when the time fell back to Daylight Standard Time on the night of October 26, the ever-conscientious Brine would remember to turn his watch back an hour—400 feet away, so too did Maurice Ruddick, who also had a watch with a luminous dial.
“Imagination,” the French writer Joseph Joubert once said, “is the eye of the soul.” Lying there in the dark in the wee hours of this Friday morning, Harold Brine allowed his mind to fly drone-like a couple of miles to the west of Springhill. In his mind’s eye, he could see the bungalow he was building. That house and his family were at the essence of his life, his soul. This early in the morning, he imagined that his wife Joan was still asleep with their infant daughter, Bonnie, snuggled in next to her. Brine wished with all his heart he could be there at home and in bed with them. In the next moment, the realization hit him: he might never go home again. He might die here in the mine.
If that happened, he felt certain that Joan would be all right. She was bright and pretty, and at twenty-four years old, she still had plenty of time to remarry or find a job, he reckoned. Maybe both. Then too, Joan would also collect widow benefit cheques—fifty dollars a month for life or until she remarried—and she’d also receive twenty dollars per month for their two-year-old daughter. “The one thing I really regretted when I thought about it was that if I didn’t get out of there, Bonnie was too young to remember me,” said Brine.2
That possibility was painful even to contemplate. Doing so stiffened Brine’s resolve to live. Dammit, he decided, he was going to survive this ordeal. Somehow. But he knew it wouldn’t be easy. As Levi Milley had bemoaned, “We’re out of everything but hope.” And even their hope was fading fast.
WITH EACH PASSING hour, the headlamps of Harold Brine and his co-workers were growing ever dimmer. One by one, they faded to black. And as they did, it became ever more difficult for the Twelve to stay upbeat. Some of the men were already on the verge of giving up. Brine could hear it in the rising tide of desperation and fear in their voices, especially that of Larry Leadbetter. The youngest man among them was straddling that thin line between composure and panic.
Tunnel vision and loss of perspective are panic’s companions. Once it takes root—like fear, anger, or suspicion—panic becomes all consuming and spreads with the speed of summer lightning, especially in a confined space when nerves are frayed. That’s why it didn’t help when in a moment of despair Ted Michniak, who was in a bad way with his dislocated shoulder, told Levi Milley, “We’re not going to make it out of here.” It was as though he had broken a taboo.
A defeatist message wasn’t something the other men wanted to hear, even if they themselves were starting to think it. Joe McDonald, ever feisty despite his injuries and his constant pain, was the first to speak up. He’d done some boxing in his youth, had a quick temper, and liked to think he still threw a solid punch. He was in no condition to fight, of course, and Ted Michniak was a good friend and was lying not far away, but that didn’t stop McDonald from barking at him.
“Damn it, Teddy! I’m not ready to throw in the towel, nor is anybody else here,” said McDonald. “I don’t care if you think you’re not going to make it out of here, but the rest of us will. So stop with your negative talk.”
Fortunately, when Michniak didn’t respond, the tension that filled the chamber was short-lived; after a few fraught moments, McDonald took a deep breath and broke the bristly silence. “Let’s have something to eat,” he suggested.
Out of the darkness came the voice of Bowman Maddison. “Anybody know what time it is?” he asked. “I like a late breakfast.”
That comment prompted Caleb Rushton to check his watch. He did so and announced that it was almost nine o’clock, eliciting another lighthearted quip from Bowman Maddison. “I don’t get up this early,” he chirped.
No matter. The men had decided it was time for “an early breakfast.” Not that there was much to eat. Their meagre store of food consisted of a couple of stale sandwiches that the men had scrounged up while rummaging through the lunch boxes of dead co-workers. What little water they had, a pint or two, wasn’t enough to fill a water can. The men had entrusted their supplies to Levi Milley. He was one of the elders in the crew.
Milley had been a miner for two-thirds of his forty-seven years. As a young man, he’d dreamed of being a travelling salesman or a chicken farmer. Neither career option had worked out for him, although he still raised chickens and cackled with delight when he talked about his flock of fifty-five birds. He’d instead gone to work in the mine to help his widowed mother feed the family. Milley, a lean man with grey, thinning hair and a quiet demeanour, had a certain presence, and he was respected. Co-workers regarded him as being “a straight shooter,” someone who was trustworthy. As a result, it was to him that they entrusted their tiny store of food and water. They believed Milley would safeguard and apportion it fairly. He was diligent in doing both. This morning, he carefully broke one of the sandwiches into a dozen bite-sized portions. Each man got his tiny share along with a sip of water from an empty Aspirin bottle that Ed Lowther provided. It wasn’t much, but any food or water was better than none, and having it raised the men’s spirits.
Afterward, when it was quiet again, Fred Hunter slipped away into the darkness to visit the body he wrongly believed was that of his brother Frank. Doing so was an ordeal. Hunter’s injured leg had ballooned to twice its normal size, and the pain he felt was excruciating. Adding to his misery was the stench of the decaying corpse he visited. In the heat of the mine, the smell was already becoming overwhelming, so much so that Hunter tried to lessen its unpleasantness by breathing through his mouth rather than his nose. That didn’t work, and so he beat a hasty retreat.
