TURNING POINTS: 1958 Springhill mining d isaster was a bump heard around the world - TheChronicleHerald.ca

Editor’s Note: This is the eighth part in a series highlighting crossroads in Nova Scotia’s changing relationship in Canadian Confederation. 

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6 & Part 7.

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On Thursday, Oct. 23, 1958, coal mine No. 2 in Springhill experienced a tremendous bump. At around 8:05 p.m. families in the wooden houses around town were huddled around their new TV sets watching I Love Lucy and laughing at the antics of the show’s star, Lucille Ball. Then, all of a sudden, it hit without warning, and for a 15-mile radius the ground shook and the mine caved in, trapping 174 miners far below the surface.

The only working mine left in Springhill, No. 2, was reputed to be the deepest coal mine in operation in North America. From the pit head to the bottom of the mine was a distance of 4,262 metres, or 2.7 miles, straight down. Having first opened in 1873, the mine was old and that meant that mining operations were carried on at great depth below ground.

Pressure had built up on the mine shafts in No. 2 as coal was removed; gas was being released underground and bumps or violent lurches were becoming increasingly common. Some 525 bumps had occurred before this one.

The power of the disturbance was incredible, and graphically illustrated in the Royal Commission report that followed the Springhill mining disaster. The bump hit with the force of 1,000 tons of coal being dropped 40 feet onto the ground. The ground shook with tremors detected at Dalhousie University’s Seismograph Station 119 kilometres awayand picked up on instruments as far away as Quebec City and Ottawa.

Coal was king

One of the veteran miners and a survivor, Maurice Ruddock of Joggins, had a premonition. “I told a fellow not long before it happened that a bad one was coming.” Then why did he continue to go down to the deeps? It was, he said, for the “comradeship,” but the truth was that there was little work to be found outside of the mines.

Coal was once king in the local economies of Nova Scotia outside of Halifax. Exploring the mining experience was, in a phrase popularized in John DeMont’s memorable 2009 book, like a journey into “the coal black heart” of the province.

Without coal, DeMont reminds us, Nova Scotia outside the city “might still be just a collection of scattered farms and fishing villages.” Mining it gave Nova Scotians, he added with a lyrical flair, “a sense of urgency” and a “spirit forged by a flame that comes from betting everything, year after year, on the vagaries of a single commodity.”

Townsfolk in Springhill lived on the edge in the 1950s. Shipping coal out on the rail line to markets in Ontario and Quebec had transformed Springhill into a mining “boom town” by the 1890s. A sleepy hamlet of 900 souls had swelled to a swollen town five times that size.

The first of its mining disasters hit in on Saturday, Feb. 21, 1891, when an underground explosion claimed the lives of 125 men and boys who worked in the mines. Money and aid came pouring in, totaling $70,000, mostly from larger Canadian centres and cities as far away as London, England.

Springhill, bruised but not beaten

The resilient town recovered from what Halifax newspapers described in late February 1891 as “the Springhill Calamity.” A year later an electric light system was installed. The loss of 182 more lives in some 125 separate accidents between 1892 and 1956 left Springhill bruised but not beaten. Townsfolk weathered a 1909 to 1911 coal mine strike and heavy losses in the two world wars. By the time of a 1956 explosion disaster the population stood at 8,000 with 1,585 employed in two mines, 1,200 of whom worked underground.

Somehow 19-year-old miner Ken Melanson survived the 1956 mine explosion. His harrowing story, nicely reconstructed by John DeMont, conveys deep insights into the subterranean life of a coal miner. The son and grandson of miners, Ken fell into that life as the better of two life options, earning $9.74 a day in the mines or settling for $4 a day in the woods. He tried his luck going down the road to Toronto, but — after four months of washing dishes — returned home.

His life almost came to an end on a beautiful autumn day, Thursday, Nov. 1, 1956 when he was one of 47 miners trapped after the underground explosion. His shift supervisor-tuned-saviour, Com Embree, built a protective barrier and diverted away the poisonous gas. After being trapped for more than 60 hours, Ken Melanson and his group were rescued by the Springhill draegermen, and emerged with blacked face to learn that 39 of his comrades had died in that explosion.

The Big One known as the “Springhill Mining Disaster” came two years later. At 8:06 on Oct. 23, 1958, the moment of the disastrous bump, some 174 miners were toiling underground. Seventy-five of them trapped in Mine No. 2 lost their lives, and 88 would eventually be rescued from that underground tomb.

After the shaking in the town had stopped, a mad rush to the mine began, recounted in detail by Roger David Brown in his aptly titled 1976 book, Blood on the Coal. The resident mine manager, George Calder, arrived first on the scene and began mobilizing rescue operations.

The volunteer rescue crew, led by Calder, ventured down to the bottom and discovered it blocked by debris and were driven back by methane gas. One miner put it succinctly: “The situation’s terrible.” A Springhill rescue worker was more graphic in describing the rubble: “It looks like a pile of spaghetti down there.”

The world was watching Springhill

Victim of Springhill 1891 explosion: A rare photo of a victim in the makeshift morgue following the infamous 1891 explosion that claimed 125 lives. (The Dominion Illustrated, March 7, 1891, Nova Scotia Archives)

On Friday morning, Oct. 24, the Halifax Chronicle Herald reported the dramatic news that some 72 men had been rescued alive and nine more were found to be dead upon discovery. “I don’t think there is much hope for them,” said one 14-year-old lad who did lose his father. The total number of miners rescued alive would eventually reach 81 before it was over.

On the following Wednesday, six days after the mine collapse, buried miners were huddled underground, breathing through makeshift air pipes, and tapping away in an attempt to send signals upward. Miner Gorley Kempt heard a pick or something click on the pipe and he started hollering.

The Chronicle Herald covered the rescue in minute detail and captured the moment when the last group was discovered. At about two o’clock in the morning, the superintendent and an engineer checked the air coming from the pipe pushed through to the exposed surface. The reflection of a bottle sent a shaft of light into the pipe. It was Kempt who first broke the silence: “We are alive in here — how about some water?”

The disaster attracted world-wide media attention and even prompted a fly-in visit by His Royal Highness, Prince Philip. While en route from Ottawa back to London, England, he stopped in Moncton bound for Springhill. He was greeted by an official delegation, headed by Springhill Mayor R.F. Gilroy and including Nova Scotia premier Robert Stanfield, federal revenue minister George Nowlan, and the Springhill MLA, Stephen Pyke, then minister of labour and public works.

The two-car convoy headed straight to the Springhill All Saints Hospital. After talking to the survivors one at a time, the prince was briefed at the mine by Dosco Mining Company’s general manager on the rescue operations. After his 2 1/2-hour whirlwind visit, the prince whisked past Springhill children dressed in their Halloween costumes on the journey back to Moncton airport.

Underground, unbeknownst to the prince or the searchers, another group of buried miners had yet to be found. Far below, a small band of survivors dubbed the Group of Seven was still alive, a week after the bump.

Thirty-five-year-old Herb Pepperdine survived the bump after being thrown six or eight feet downhill by the force of the jolt. Slowly the Group of Seven gathered and huddled together, entertained by sing-songs and drinking oil, and eventually urine, to stay hydrated in the sweltering heat of the collapsed shaft. Worried about leaving behind his wife and 12 children, Maurice Ruddick passed the time singing some of his favourite songs.

Nine days after the disaster, given up for dead, the Group of Seven were rescued and raised to the surface. The first man out was Byron Martin, found alone, moaning in “a little hole.” When Ruddick made contact with his rescuers, dazed by the nightmare, he blurted out, “Give me a drink of water and I’ll sing you a song.”

The famous Springhill Group of Seven, instantly crowned the “miracle miners,” were marked by that horrendous nine-day experience their whole lives. In a riveting 2003 book by American author Melissa Faye Green, Last Man Out, we learn more about what befell the unlikely band of instant heroes. Some were tormented by survivor’s guilt, struggling with post-rescue depression; a few experienced an epiphany and attempted to change the course of their lives. Still others were swept up by forces beyond their control.

One of the most bizarre outcomes was a dramatic act of American generosity that went terribly wrong. The global spotlight on the rescue of the first group in newspapers, television news reports and movie theatre newsreels catapulted the miners onto CBS-TV’s Ed Sullivan Show. In a strange twist, it also inspired a few highly placed officials in the administration of Georgia governor Marvin Griffin, a staunch segregationist, to invite the survivors and their families to vacation on the coastal resort of Jekyll Island, Georgia. It was, it turned out, a publicity stunt, dreamed up by Georgia state officials to market the Georgia coast as an alternative to Florida’s beaches.

The Springhill hero

Under the spotlight: Survivor Maurice Ruddick and one of his children pose for a picture while the miner recuperates in a hospital bed following the dramatic Nov. 1, 1958 rescue of the final Group of Seven survivors. (THE CHRONICLE HERALD ARCHIVES)

The discovery of the second group of survivors presented Gov. Griffin with a dilemma. The “last man out” was Maurice Ruddick, an African-Nova Scotian. Since all tourist accommodations in Georgia were segregated, state officials scrambled to find “alternative” arrangements for Ruddick in a trailer camp at the end of the beach.

The invited Springhill guests initially balked at the trip because of the state’s policy, but Ruddick eventually wavered and this persuaded his fellow survivors to take up the offer. News coverage in Canada and elsewhere drew attention to the living example of racial injustice and it was blown up in the press as an international incident.

The media, desperate for a hero, seized upon Ruddick, labelling him with the moniker “The Singing Miner,” and inflating his role in the drama. When the Toronto Telegram polled its readers for their choice as Canada’s 1958 Citizen of the Year, the Springhill survivor topped the list of 21 nominees with 51 per cent of the vote. The Jan. 22, 1959 edition of the Telegram anointed Ruddick as “an inspiration to his companions in their nine-day entombment before miraculous rescue came.” He returned from the Telegram awards ceremony (where Ontario Premier Leslie M. Frost paid tribute to his courage) so buoyed up he appeared, in Greene’s vivid description, “dazed with happiness.”

Ruddick returned to Springhill and faced new and unexpected personal challenges. Some townsfolk prized the recognition awarded their hometown folk hero, but many others, including his co-workers, were baffled, resentful, and felt slighted by the praise heaped upon him in the immediate aftermath. The smouldering resentment erupted in fits of disgust over one miner being singled out in a town where nearly every family experienced personal loss.

Ruddick’s fame quickly disappeared and he faced a difficult road ahead. The mine closed and, like most of his mine buddies, he could not find work. When his unemployment insurance ran out, Maurice and his family of 15 barely survived on the allowance cheques and the measly disaster relief payments of $88 per month and $35 per week.

The man tagged as “the Springhill hero” struggled and his life went downhill. Ruddick formed a musical troupe with his children, the Harmony Babes, and toured the Maritimes singing country songs. Toward the end of his life, spent mostly in a lonely existence, he was reduced to gathering loose coal from the abandoned mines and the nearby railway tracks to heat his house and keep his family from freezing during the winter.

Coal's legacy in Nova Scotia

The story of Nova Scotia’s coal industry after Springhill did not have a happy ending. Coal still hangs like “a black residue” over much of former mining communities in Cumberland, Pictou, Inverness and Cape Breton counties. Memories of those days linger on lives lived in the former “company houses" and become more visible the closer one looks at what remains of the “coal black heart” of Nova Scotia.

Mining some 500 million tons of coal under often terrible underground conditions took its toll in terms of lives from the early years up until 1969. It’s estimated that about 2,500 men, more than Nova Scotia lost in the First World War, perished in those mines, a death rate far higher than in the mines of modern China. Hundreds of others died a slower death, victims of emphysema, cancers and heart ailments contracted during a working life in the pit.

Halifax’s John DeMont, raised in a Cape Breton mining family, found something below the surface in his interviews with surviving miners, a certain “poetry in their lives.” “God knows,” he once said, “life was hard, but there was this immense endurance, and epic ability to put one foot down in front of the other and kind of soldier on.”

Digging Deeper – For Further Reading

• Brown, Roger David, Blood on the Coal: The Story of the Springhill Mining Disasters. Windsor, NS: Lancelot Press, 1976.
• DeMont, John, Coal Black Heart: The Story of Coal and the Lives it Ruled. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2009.
• Greene, Melissa Faye, Last Man Out: The Story of the Springhill Mine Disaster. Orlando, Florida: Harcourt Inc., 2003.
• McKay, Cheryl, Spirit of Springhill: miners, wives, widows, rescuers and their children tell true stories of Springhill’s coal mining disasters. Los Angeles, CA: Purple PenWorks, 2014.
• Nova Scotia Archives, Men in the Mines: A History of Mining Activity in Nova Scotia, 1720-1992. Online Archives at http://ift.tt/2i9sZS6

Paul W. Bennett, Ed.D., is director of Schoolhouse Institute and the author of eight books, two of which address Nova Scotia’s changing relationship with Canada since Confederation.