Saturday November 10, a day before the nationwide Armistice ceremonies took place, a new commemorative monument was unveiled in Drumheller’s downtown area. It is a massive steel and granite memorial designed to recognize the unfathomable loss of 207 men in the Drumheller mines throughout its seventy year history from 1911 when the Newcastle Mine opened to 1979 when the Atlas Mine near East Coulee finally closed. The memorial is a massive head frame wheel from the old Atlas Coal Mine and is mounted on a black granite base on which are engraved the names of those 207 men lost to a myriad of mining accidents, the most frequent of which was rock falls. The first man to die in the Red Deer River valley was Harry Holden in the Drumheller Mine in 1913. Holden was a tourist visiting the booming new town and was taken on a tour of that mine. Not only was this tour illegal, it was deadly, as the hoistman neglected to hitch the mine car he was riding in to the cable before sending it down the slope. According to the report, every bone in Holden’s body was broken. The last man to die was William Herman at the Atlas Coal Mine of a heart attack.
The memorial park that remembers these two men and the 205 others will be officially dedicated on May 4th 2013 when a special mural depicting life in the mine will also be unveiled. It will be a definitive moment for Drumhellerites in which the sum total of their sacrifice in getting the coal out will be permanently displayed for all to see. It is no accident that their formal dedication will occur in early May next year as the City of Drumheller has deliberately chosen to revisit and reacknowledge the significance of May Day, the true miner’s holiday. On May first 2011, miners marched down main street Drumheller once again, not in protest but in remembrance of their fathers, grandfathers and great grandfathers who earned a living underground. There were two Alberta MLA’s present and one mining family had over 25 members in the parade. One of the attendees in 2011 was a tough little former coal miner and working man’s advocate from Lethbridge by the name of Frank Toth, a man who has been working tirelessly for years to have communities across western Canada re-recognize May Day as the true working man’s holiday.
Frank came to me a couple years ago with the May Day idea and in a wide campaign throughout the next year pleaded his case to communities like Kimberley, Fernie, Sparwood, the Crowsnest Pass, Canmore, Hinton and Lethbridge. In some cases he was politely ignored, in others challenged because of the so called Communist tinge that history has painted this day with. But in Drumheller they have embraced this significant piece of history and set aside the old attitudes to remember a time when the miners’ fight for respect, safety and better working conditions needed every bit of help it could get. Here in the Pass that history was deliberately left out of our history books and unacknowledged for many years.
Frank was not deterred by most communities’ indifference and had special flags made (at his own expense) to give to each community in the hopes they would fly them some day. The flag is split into the three western provinces with a coal miner superimposed on one side. The municipality refused to fly it but the Bellevue Mine did!
And so it is that this important remembrance, spearheaded by the three year Atlas Coal Mine Historical Society research project, will bring not only a permanent reminder of the amazing Drum coal mining story but also the cost in lives of this history. That cost is calculated at 3.5 lives for every million tons of coal produced.
The story of Drumheller coal is a remarkable one with no less than 139 different mines being registered with the Alberta Government. Places like Midland Coal, Western Gem and Jewell, Maple Leaf Minerals, Monarch, Commander Coal Mine, Atlas Mine and Brilliant were located on both sides of the Red Deer River valley from Nacmine to East Coulee a distance of 35 kilometers. The coal was black, shiny, and hard and burned beautifully. Mining practices went from horse haulage to electric trolleys and small diesel locomotives. Both the CPR and the CNR built spur lines into the larger mines there and the valley was western Canada’s second largest producing region, second only to the Crowsnest Pass.
Here at Hillcrest the pillows that surround our granite monument contain the names of every disaster of three men or more lost across Canada from 1873 to 1992. On one pillow is the event listed as “June 24, 1941 - Western Crown Mine, East Coulee, AB. 4 Dead- Explosion”. It was written up in the Montreal Gazette two days later as: “The fourth major explosion since coal mining operations began in the Drumheller area...” Jack Waters, a fire boss aged 37, Robert Taylor, mine official, aged 70, and Chris Buzenus, mine electrician, aged 53 lost their lives in the explosion. The fourth victim was Harry Crowder, 54, the manager of the nearby Atlas Mine who died 70 feet from the surface leading a three man rescue crew.
Unfortunately my three men or more research for the Hillcrest pillows missed three other occasions of three men lost in Drumheller in 1924 at the Midland Mine, in 1925 at the Gouge Mine and in 1934 at the J. D. Thomas Mine. The Hillcrest Cemetery committee, that is hard at work planning for Canada’s worst disaster centennial here in June 2014, is aware of these missed events and they will undoubtedly be added to the commemorative pillows for dedication on this very important day.
Please attend the Rememberence Day ceremony and remember those brothers lost on both sides.
