The Legacy of the #SpringhillBump

It's a divided highway that brings you from New Brunswick into Nova Scotia through a marshy area, one that a certain university's students tend to frolic in from time to time, or at least I've heard that they did.  Not too long after you pass the marshy low land there's a big blue sign at the side of the road picturing a man wearing a hat with a headlamp.  It's a sign for the Miners Memorial Highway.  Designated in the fall of 2008, leading up to the 50th anniversary of what is know known as the Springhill Mine Disaster, although there were many, the highway is described by the then Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal: "This highway designation will remind all Nova Scotians and visitors of the sacrifice generations of miners and their families have made across the province[.]" You can read the entire press release from which the above quote was taken here.

I could list the designations, plaques and sites related to mining history in Nova Scotia.  I could describe the pain of the weeks, months and years that followed the 1958 bump.  I could list the numerous mining disasters that have touched Nova Scotia, Canada and the world in the years since.  But as I listen to Bono belt out Luke Kelly's The Springhill Mine Disaster I feel compelled to simply provide you the link and let you listen for yourselves and reflect upon the way of life that mining was, and is, and the legacy that the industry has impressed upon the towns, the province and the region.

What I hope to have communicated with you through this blog post is that there are so many different ways to react to an event like the Springhill Mine Disaster, or to interpret the ways it is presented through YouTube videos, plaques, stories and Twitter projects.  I hope you're been able to connect on some level with the past, present and potential future reality of coal mining and the complex relationship that is has with the province of Nova Scotia.

I want to leave you with the most simple and poignant reminder of what happened.  A list of the men that died.
http://www.mininghistory.ns.ca/springhill/sp-r-a01.htm
http://www.mininghistory.ns.ca/springhill/sp-r-a02.htm

I hope you're learned and been able to engage with the story that I've related over the past week and a half.

Best,
Rebecca

Miracles & Heroes

The theme of miracles and heroes runs deep in the coverage of the Springhill Mine Disaster.  Through newspaper articles and editorials as well as news coverage like the idea that a miracle might happen was common.

Why?  In 1956 an explosion occurred in the mineshaft of the neighbouring No. 4 colliery.  Those miners who survived the initial explosion and onslaught of gasses were trapped below for days before they could be rescued. In the end 88 men were rescued while 39 perished including workers on the surface.  Throughout coverage of the two disasters, the drägermen are always heralded as the heroes.  The drägermen are rescuers who wear special breathing apparatuses due to the possibility of toxic gases below ground.  They are the heroes who figure prominently, yet work hard and remain largely silent in newspaper reports.  They are men, just like those trapped, and they stick to their Miner’s Code and don’t give up on one another.

The Ottawa Citizen described them and commented on the "Miracle in Springhill" on November 3, 1958: "The Heroes of Springhill"
Of the draegermen they said that "no name will shine forth more brightly"
"They continued their frantic efforts two miles beneath the surface of the earth, without pause, throughout the weekend.  Working around the clock, they sought still more survivors."

The double miracle of the 1958 Springhill Mine Disaster can be interpreted as an answer to the grief and sorrow and tragedy that had affected the town through previous mine disasters, a fire and then the bump of October 23, 1958.  It can be seen as an answer from some higher being to the question Why Us? Why so many times? Why so much sadness?

Although the double miracle can answer this difficult question for the 18 families whose ‘menfolk’ were found alive (Percy Rector died on October 28) it could not for the 75 whose men came out of the mine under cloaks of death.  In moments of mass trauma and grief, how do those who experience loss deal with the fallout?  Is it through believing and hoping for these miracles?  Does the hope alleviate the pain?

I like to believe in looking on the bright side during moments of intense grief or trauma.  It’s not always possible, or easy, and I’ve tried many times in the last few years to tell myself that things will get better, it’s all for the best and that life does go on.  It’s one thing to tell yourself that when something personal happens but it’s another to tell yourself that amidst a massive trauma that affects groups you will be able to stay strong.  How did 75 families even attempt to look on the bright side?  It must have been incredibly saddening to hear of the found men, not only once but twice, and not see your husband, son or father’s face among them.  This is something I cannot imagine and have no desire to experience first hand.

Am keen to hear your ideas and reactions.  And your own thoughts on the miracles and heroes of the Springhill Bump as this project wraps up,

Best,

Rebecca

Good Will, Phil & Kate

On October 31, 1958 Prince Philip, the one and the same we know today, changed his plans and took a detour to Springhill, Nova Scotia to visit the scene of the mine disaster that had befallen the town but a week before.  The Washington Post reported: “Queen Elizabeth’s husband flew from Ottawa to Moncton, N.B. aboard a BOAC Comet […] Jet and motored the remaining 65 miles to Springhill.”

As the Ottawa Citizen reported the next day, “Informality was the keynote of the royal visit.”  The Prince met miners who had been in the mine when the bump occurred on October 23^rd including George Hayden who was still in hospital with a broken leg.  The Prince broke from tradition and signed a number of autographs during his visit, including one on Hayden’s cast.

On November 1^st the Halifax Chronicle Herald reported the people of Springhill as saying: “It’s nice of him to come,  - It was thoughtful – you know this wasn’t on his schedule at all.”

In July of 2011, during their first international official visit, Will and Kate, a.ka. the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, followed in his grandfather’s footsteps, and visited a small town ravaged by disaster.  The royal couple “specifically asked to visit the Alberta community of Slave Lake” reported the Toronto Sun on July 5.  On May 14, 2011 a wildfire started 15km east of the community.  Two days later 95% of the population had been safely evacuated.  They were allowed back beginning on May 27.  It is labeled as the second-costliest fire disaster in Canadian history.

Will and Kate’s visit is remembered by residents as uplifting, and the beginning of something new.  The couple spoke with families who had lost their homes, emergency responders and the public.  Slave Lake Mayor Karina Pillay-Kinnee described the couple’s visit to CBC: “They were very concerned, very caring.  Just wanted to reach out to the people of Slave Lake and we are just so grateful for them taking the time out of their day off to come touch our community.”

The parallels between Prince Philip’s informal visit to Springhill in 1958 and Will and Kate’s desire to meet with residents of Slave Lake in 2011 are strong and show a royal interest in not only the major players of Canadian society, but also in its most fragile and vulnerable people and places.

As this project wraps up I invite your comments and questions,

Best,

Rebecca

Women & the Mines

Although I’m a young woman I rarely look critically at an issue in the classroom from the perspective of a feminist, and I am almost never the first to consider the issue of gender when discussing whatever it is that grad students spend their time discussing.  That said, this blog post is all about the ladies.  Not just any ladies but the women of Springhill.  Aside from detailed reports from Springhill in the newspaper articles I read for my project, there was also a lot of description of those who awaited the men near the mine yard.  The women.

In the Ottawa Citizen on October 24^th, 1958 miner McManaman was quoted as saying that “It’s toughest on the women, the kids – it don’t bother them. They don’t realize yet what it’s all about.”

Women also figure prominently in Melissa Fay Greene’s “Last Man Out” – a novel-like storytelling of the disaster.  Many of the mentions of women in my tweets are thanks to her careful research for her book and I was able to gain insight into the lives of those affected by mining beyond the miners themselves.  This in depth look at the women of Springhill also painted a picture of the home lives of the miners as the women, particularly those with children, were often described in this setting.

The story of the young mulatto couple, Norma & Maurice Ruddick, with twelve children inspired me.  Having given birth shortly before the disaster, Norma was at home with twelve children while Maurice sat underground, toiled underground, sang underground, always with the hope of going home.  All the while Norma wouldn’t believe that God would leave her with those children and without him.  Norma Ruddick passed away in September 2012 and this news clip is worth a watch if you’d like to see some footage from the disaster as well as some kind words about the role Norma and other women play in the lives of miners, for the good and the bad.

The strength of the Springhill women is something I will comment on again through this blog and it’s almost unimaginable what they went through.  All of that said, these ladies were strong and the wives and families of miners continue to persevere through contemporary disasters.

Just last month there was a fire at a Potash mine in Saskatchewan.  Most workers were hastened into safe rooms to wait for the fire to be extinguished and the mine to be ventilated.  These safe rooms contained provisions and phones – so trapped miners were able to call their ‘womenfolk’ to let them know they were okay.  What a different world from that of Springhill 1958 eh?  And yet the women were still waiting at the mine entrance for their men to come up and go home at the end of their ordeal.

As usual, I'm keen to hear your thoughts!

Rebecca

In Other News...

As much as we like to think it’s all about us, the disaster at Springhill did not dominate the news from October 24^th – November 2^nd, 1958.  It was present, but cover stories varied and there were a lot of other really important things going on around the world and at home in North America.

Here are links to some of the more salient stories. If you’re interested in learning more about what was going on around the time of the disaster at Springhill take a look at the following links or research them yourselves.

Oct 25 An explosion rocks downtown Ottawa at the Jackson building on Bank street

Oct 27 Coal mine explosion in Bishop, Virgina (USA)

http://www3.gendisasters.com/virginia/5999/bishop-va-explosion-coal-mine-oct-1958

Oct 28 Election of John XXIII as Pope

http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.ca/2008/10/pope-john-xxiii-50-years-since-election.html

You can also read newspapers yourselves through a Google project.  There are not issues from all newspapers on all dates but you can get a good idea of what was in the news. Happy Reading!

http://news.google.com/newspapers

Rebecca

Reflections on Narration

Wikipedia tells me that a narrator is responsible for storytelling.  Wikipedia also informs me that as a narrator I can tell the story from my point of view or as if I am a character in the story.  I remember learning about omnipresent narrators in English class in high school and know that plays can have narrators.

But what about when it comes to the online narration of a historical event, in tweets over a one and a half week period?  What are the rules?  How do I narrate, create, respond, and live my own, separate life, at the same time?

My narration experience with this Twitter project is very different from the only other Twitter project like this that I’ve done.  In February 2012 I tweeted, in ‘real-time,’ the fire at the Parliament buildings in Ottawa.  I literally sat at my computer all evening and tweeted at the right time about what was happening in 1916.  Even as I prepare this blog post, well in advance of the day it will be posted online, most of the narration for this coming project is done.

With the advent of social media tools like Twitter complementary tools like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck have been developed to help users of social media tools manage their accounts including the ability to schedule tweets, Facebook posts etc well in advance of the post time.  For this particular project I have used Hootsuite as it is the tool with which I am the most familiar.  There are pros and cons to using such tools, for example, through Hootsuite I am only able to post tweets at times ending in 0 or 5.  Therefore if something happened at 3:44am, as it does in the upcoming days, it is going to be posted at 3:45am. 

Technically readers will not know the difference and the likelihood that readers are awake so late, or early, in anticipation of said post, is so unlikely that by the time they are reading it around 7am or perhaps even later in the day, the ‘approximately 4 hours ago’ timestamp still won’t give me away.

This was a hard decision as a narrator.  My research had yielded several un-Hootsuite-able times including those for which I would probably not even be awake to tweet myself.  I originally turned to Tweetdeck but was overwhelmed by the multitude of tools and decided that it was worth the white lie to use one tool rather than two.  You may be asking, why not choose Tweetdeck?  I had already invested quite a bit of time in crafting my narration and entered these tweets into the Hootsuite publisher so it was an easy decision for me.

I could probably reflect on narration all night long, but as it stands for now, the above reflection is probably the most relevant for this project.  That, and I can only do so much story telling!

Best,

Rebecca 

Canada in 1958

What do the Montreal Canadiens, John Diefenbaker and Terry Fox have in common besides being Canadian?  They're all significant to the year 1958 among others of course.  Lots was happening around the world in 1958, and lots was happening here at home in Canada too.

The Avro Arrow made its debut flight

The Montreal Canadiens won the Stanley Cup in 6 games against the Boston Bruins #GoHabsGo

The Governor General was Vincent Massey 

John Diefenbaker was Canada's Prime Minister and in 1958 he appointed Canada's first Aboriginal Senator, James Gladstone. 

Nova Scotia's premier was Robert Stanfield

Canada's first female ambassador was appointed (she was assigned to Israel)

The Winnipeg Blue Bombers won the Grey Cup over the Hamilton Tiger Cats

Born in 1958: Jean Charest and Terry Fox

Died in 1958: George Orton and Camillien Houde 

Hope you've enjoyed this insight into the world and Canada in 1958.  Tomorrow a return to the present!

Best,

Rebecca

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