This week, we wrap up our look at the Hollinger Mine fire of 1928, during our local history feature.
We’ve already heard from museum director-curator Karen Bachmann about the 39 miners who died underground… and how unions used the disaster to emphasize the need for on-the-job safety and rescue.
Now she tells us that both a Royal Commission and a coroner’s inquest found the company negligent.
“They were fined, and then there was a whole series of new measures that were put in. And there was a mine rescue station built in Timmins, and that’s when mine rescue really started, was from that disaster.”
Those measures were adopted by the mining industry across Canada.
“There’s a lot of sad legacy out of the Hollinger disaster,” Bachmann observes, ”but there’s also a lot of really good things that came out of it, in the sense that the mine safety became a priority and health and safety became a priority.”