How Three Torontonians Trapped In A Mine Changed News Forever
Plus a new Canadian history course, a Canada Day tour, and more...
It began with an ominous rumbling. Three men from Toronto were standing more than a hundred metres beneath the surface of Nova Scotia. They'd come to visit the Moose River quartz mine, having just leased it. But while they were down there inspecting the tunnels on that Easter Sunday in 1936, a distant noise caught their attention
The three men didn't have a lot of experience with mining. Dr. David Robertson was chief surgeon at the Hospital for Sick Children. Herman Magill was a lawyer who lived in Forest Hill. Alfred Scadding was their bookkeeper and timekeeper. They don't seem to have realized how unsafe the mine was; it had long been out of service and only recently reopened. But even they knew that rumbling sound couldn't be good.
They ran.
All three rushed back to the lift and piled in, pulling the cord to call for the operator to bring them up. But at that same moment, the rock above them came crashing down. As they leapt back into the safety of the tunnel, the roof collapsed with a chaotic roar. And when the dust cleared, they found to their horror that the shaft had been blocked. They could pick their way up through the rubble for a while, but ultimately every exit was cut off. There was no way out. The Torontonians were trapped.
All they could do now was try to survive long enough to be rescued. They hunkered down in a tunnel with a solid rock ceiling that seemed less likely to collapse, a space of just a dozen square metres. They managed to start a small fire using a miner's lamp and the wood from old dynamite boxes. But after sixteen hours it died. So did the miner's lamp. And their only lantern. From that point on, it was darkness.
By then, they'd started getting sick. Robertson and Magill were vomiting. Scadding's joints were causing him terrible pain. They had no food, and they were soaked through by the water that dripped and poured through the mine. All three were suffering from trench foot; they could barely stand. They huddled together in the dark, spooning each other for warmth, waiting hour after hour, day after day, until all hope of being rescued had nearly been extinguished.
On the surface, hope was fading too. The rescue efforts had begun immediately. On the first day, whisps of smoke had been spotted coming from below; a hint the men might still be alive. Miners from across Nova Scotia rushed to the site, while the government of Ontario flew in its own crew of northern gold miners to help. Icy rain had turned the rural roads around Moose River into a nearly impassable soup, but crews pushed and pulled their vehicles through the mud. Bridges were reinforced so heavy equipment could be moved in. Before long, more than 150 miners were risking their own lives to find the Torontonians, in danger of being crushed by fresh rockfalls as they searched for some way into what they called "The Death Shaft." An entire team was nearly trapped by a cave-in. Another rescuer was seriously injured unloading a tractor. An emergency field hospital was set up.
By the end of the third full day, there had been little to no progress. No one had been able to reach the shaft. The smoke had disappeared and there was no further sign of life from within the mine. As two of the men's wives arrived on the scene, doubts were growing. The odds of finding anyone still alive in that mine were growing longer by the hour.
But that's when Billy Bell showed up.
Bell knew what it meant to be trapped underground. He worked at a mine in nearby New Glasgow and while he was only in his thirties, he'd been working in the tunnels since he was a young teenager. He'd already been trapped twice, including two harrowing days as a thirteen-year-old. He was determined to help save the Torontonians, so when his request to join the rescue effort was turned down, he refused to report for work until the decision was reversed. He arrived at Moose River in the dead of the night with a diamond drill and a crew of three men.
At dawn on the fourth day, Bell got to work. It was incredibly slow going. But he was a hard-nosed man, known for chewing tobacco and smoking cigarettes at the same time. He wasn't easily discouraged. Hour after hour, he kept at it. And after two full days of drilling, he finally broke through into the Death Shaft. He'd done it.
The rescuers shouted down into the hole, hoping the trapped men would shout back. But there was only silence. They sent down a flare, then a flashlight, but still nothing. They fired a stream of hot steam into the depths. No response.
The men below didn't realize what was happening. “We saw the first flare," Scadding later remembered, "and I rushed over and stamped it out. We thought the mine was catching fire. If a flashlight came down we didn’t see it... We felt the steam in the blackness, of course, but again thought the mine might be catching fire. We’d been there so long that I suppose the thought of rescuers didn’t occur to us right off."
And so, as another night descended on those working above, there was still no sign of life. It seemed as if all hope was lost. "More desolate than any time all week," The Toronto Daily Star reported, "under a drizzling rain, a few lonely figures wandered about, resigned to the belief that only the dead lay beneath those greasy rocks.”
The rescuers began to pack up. Lighting rigs were being dismantled. Equipment was being driven out. Preparations were made to take the widows back to Toronto.
But Billy Bell wasn't going anywhere. He refused to give up, even when his boss ordered him to go home. He dropped a steam whistle down into the hole over and over again, letting it cry out for five minutes at a time, then putting his ear to a steel pipe to listen for an answer. He did it for hours, deep into the night, even as so many others were abandoning hope.
It was after midnight when he finally heard it. A tapping on the pipe. A response. The trapped men had heard the whistle. It took Scadding a while to find the pipe in the darkness, but when he did, he grabbed a stone and banged away. It had been a week since the mine collapsed, but all three men were still alive down there.
"My god," Bell shouted, "we've got them!"
As the rescue efforts ramped back up, the news began to spread. The Moose River Mine Disaster had been on the front pages for days, but now it became one of the biggest news stories on the planet. The Toronto Daily Star alone would print twenty-four articles about it the next day, with many more appearing in newspapers across Canada, the U.S. and the rest of the world. People were gripped. "In Toronto," Maclean's magazine explained, "businesses slowed to standstill and some advertisers decided to lift their ads until the city regained its sanity, on the theory that nobody was reading the advertisements — only the headlines and stories from the mine."
The reporters who'd gathered in the isolated community began fighting over who got to use the single telephone line out of town. At one point, punches were thrown between a journalist from The Toronto Telegram and a presenter from the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission (precursor to the CBC). The Minister of Mines for Nova Scotia was forced to step in and create a schedule: each member of the press would be allowed to use the telephone for a few minutes every half hour.
The radio presenter would put those minutes to especially good use. His name was J. Frank Willis. He'd gotten his start in the early days of Nova Scotia's first radio station, acting in radio plays and reading poetry over organ music. Radio was still a very new technology back then, mostly used for entertainment — not breaking news. But Willis and the mine disaster were about to help change that.
For those few minutes every half hour, Willis would broadcast live across that telephone wire, giving the world beyond Moose River an update on the latest developments. He kept at it for nearly three straight days, forgoing sleep in order to keep the public informed. People all over the country began tuning in. Many refused to sleep themselves, riveted by the drama of what was happening at the mine. And it wasn't just CRBC listeners. More than seven hundred radio stations across Canada and the United States began broadcasting his updates, and the BBC too.
Willis had no clue it was happening; there was no time for incoming messages. But thanks to his reporting, a huge portion of the English-speaking world had turned its attention to Moose River, Nova Scotia — and to the trio of Torontonians trapped beneath it. It's said that a hundred million people were listening. Those radio broadcasts have been hailed as the first 24-hour live news coverage in history.
But the men still weren't safe. "Like a living monster," The Toronto Daily Star reported, "the mine seemed intent on snatching them and crushing them, as if it had animate malevolence towards them as individuals." The Torontonians were terrified, worried the rescuers would accidentally cause another collapse as they rushed to dig them out. But time was running short. The tunnel was now flooding, filling with water so quickly they might only have a few hours left before they drowned.
Plus, they were still very ill, with Magill in the worst condition of all. Dr. Robertson knew the lawyer had developed a life-threatening case of pneumonia, but down there in the depths of the earth, there was nothing to be done but try to keep him warm and make him as comfortable as possible as he slipped in and out of consciousness.
Now, at least, there was a lifeline. Coffee, soup, and chocolate were all lowered into the mine; even a telephone the men could use to speak with their families. But for Magill it was too late. He couldn't keep the food down. The pain in his stomach got worse; his fever climbed. He suddenly sat up, cried out for water, fell back, and breathed his last.
"Herman Magill is dead," Willis told the world. "Two others… are still in the depths of Moose River Mine late this afternoon… Miners for the past week have fought and fought, grim-lipped, determined, every hour, every minute risking their lives a thousand times… in this satanic battle to save the lives of two Toronto men. And they are winning their battle. Inch by inch, the rock is retreating."
It was near midnight on the tenth day that the miners finally broke through. The two surviving men woke to the sound of voices and a shaft of light. After more than 240 hours, their ordeal was finally over. Both were brought up out of the mine and into the fresh air.
Scadding would need to spend six months in the hospital and have all his toes amputated, but he went on to live a long and happy life. Dr. Robertson was in better shape, able to climb up out of the earth on his own two feet. But he, too, would have to spend days in bed at Halifax General as he recovered. And it was while he was there that he found a way to turn the harrowing tragedy into a force for good.
Robertson donated his story to the Red Cross. He propped himself up in his hospital bed to tell it, reliving those torturous hours of trembling earth and terrible darkness, all so that his account could be auctioned off to newspapers around the world. Each paper that shared his tale had to pay the Red Cross to publish it. And that money was used to fund new rescue facilities across Nova Scotia, so that the miners who'd saved the lives of those two men from Toronto might someday be saved themselves.
You can listen to some of J. Frank Willis’ coverage thanks to the CBC Archives here. You can read a Maclean’s article about the disaster in a book filled with the magazine’s writing about various Canadian disasters here (you just have to borrow the book for free online from the Internet Archive). There’s an online exhibit about the disaster put together by the Moose River Gold Mine Museum here. And legendary Canadian country singer Wilf Carter wrote a song about it, too:
Love, Death & Canadian History — My New Online Course!
Canadian history is much more than dry lists of dates and events. It's filled with gripping tales from the lives of historical figures who were people much like us — who fell in love, suffered broken hearts, were fascinated by death and devasted by loss. Those stories of love and death have a lot to teach us about our country. In this ten-week online course, we'll explore the history of this place from time immemorial to the recent past, uncovering torrid affairs and shocking scandals, duels, murders and executions. And we'll discover the ways in which those passionate and morbid tales have shaped the country we live in.
The course will kick off on the night of Thursday, July 22. And if you’re interested but concerned you might have to miss some classes, don’t worry — all the lectures will be recorded and posted to a private YouTube playlist so you can watch them whenever you like.
I’m Leading A Tour of Old Toronto on Canada Day!
This Saturday is Canada Day. To mark the occasion, a festival is being held in St. James Park — on King Street East, in heart of Old Toronto — and I’m going to be part of it! I’ll be giving a little talk followed by a tour of the neighbourhood. And while I’m still working on them both at the moment, I expect my talk will be about the strange history of our national anthem(s) while the tour will explore stories of love, death and Confederation.
You can find out more about the festival here. And you can follow me on social media (@todreamsproject) to get all the details about my talk and tour once I’ve finalized them.
When: Saturday July 1, 1pm
Where: Meet at the pavilion in St. James Park (120 King Street East). I’ll be giving a talk at the pavilion for about 20 minutes before we head out for a walk around the neighbourhood.
Price: It’s free!
The Toronto History Weekly Has Hit 100 Paid Subscribers!
Last week I celebrated a big milestone for The Toronto History Weekly as we hit 2,5000 total subscribers. This week, we’ve reached another one: the newsletter now has 100 paid subscribers!
Thank you so much to those of you who have already made the switch to a paid subscription. It’s thanks to you that The Toronto History Weekly exists. As I mentioned last week, only 4% of readers have made the switch so far, which basically means you’re giving the gift of Toronto history to 25 other people.
With every new paid subscriber, the newsletter lets a little bit closer to really being self-sustaining. It’s a ton of work, so we’re not quite there yet, but it’s not far off! If you’d like to join those 100 people who are supporting The Toronto History Weekly with a few dollars a month, you can do it by clicking right here:
QUICK LINKS
The best of everything else that’s new in Toronto’s past…
PRIDE NEWS — Friday was officially recognized as Jackie Shane Day in Toronto and a new plaque was unveiled in the place where she recorded one of the greatest live albums in Canadian history. I’ve written about her many times before, including a chapter in The Toronto Book of Love: not only was she one the city’s most celebrated soul singers in the 1960s, but also a Black trans woman who spoke pretty openly about her sexuality on stage, including during the recording of that live album. Read more.
UNMARKED GRAVE NEWS — Tanya Talaga shares the story of her family’s search for the place where her great-great-grandmother is buried. It led them to the cemetery of what was once know as the Lakeshore Asylum in Mimico, where more than 1,500 people are buried, dozens of of them Indigenous people laid to rest in unmarked plots. Read more.
MORE PRIDE NEWS — Avi Margolis digs into the LGTBQ+ history of Queen West, exploring the community’s evolution for Heritage Toronto. Read more.
TORONTOIST GOES DARK NEWS — Some potentially very sad news about one of the best sources for stories about Toronto’s past. It looks like the old Torontoist site (home to the wonderful Historicist column written by Jamie Bradburn, David Wencer, Kevin Plummer and others) has gone dark. It’s been years since it was a thriving publication, but the archives were still available — a vital resource that I used incredibly often as part of the research for my own work. Thankfully, Jamie has been posting many of his old Torontoist articles on his own site (which you’ll find here). Here’s hoping it’s a false alarm and the site is back up soon.
UNAUTHORIZED DEMOLITION NEWS — On Victoria Day weekend, one of the oldest storefront on Queen Street disappeared. The heritage building had been standing near Queen & Portland since the 1850s, and the City had ordered a stop to the work… but the owner demolished it anyway. It’s unclear what will happen next, but one possibility is that the owner could be ordered to rebuild it "in a historically accurate way." Read more.
CHOO CHOO NEWS — The Toronto Railway Museum has unveiled a new online exhibit that “explores the unique and everyday challenges of Toronto’s past and current railway workers. Hop aboard to discover the jobs of Canada’s sleeping car porters, the behind-the-scenes duties at Union Station, and other first-hand experiences of railway professionals.” Check it out.
TORONTO HISTORY EVENTS
PRIDE, PREJUDICE & PROGRESS
June 29 — 7pm — Toronto’s First Post Office — The Town of York Historical Society
“Enjoy this special presentation and learn about the history of the LGBTQ+ community in Toronto and Canada as our Museum Coordinator explores the legacy of laws that promoted prejudice, the reforms that allowed for change and progress, and the work that still needs to be done to achieve equality on a global scale. This presentation will take place in-person at Toronto’s First Post Office. Pre-registration is required and spots are limited!”
$6.66
TERROR IN THE TOWN OF YORK: WAR OF 1812 WALKING TOUR
July 7 — 10:30am — Meet at St. James Cathedral — Toronto’s First Post Office
“Imagine a Toronto where the tallest building is only three stories high, where Lake Ontario reaches Front Street, where the wagon wheels grind through the muddy roads, the air smells of smoke and animal, and the surrounding lands is farms, fields, and forests. This was what the neighbourhood looked like in the early 1800s. In this walking tour, join us as we explore the beginnings of the area that would become the Town of York, the events leading up to the War of 1812, the Battle of York, and its aftermath while we walk the original 10 blocks of the early city.”
$17.31 for non-members; $11.98 for members
THE TORONTO HISTORY LECTURE — THE TRAGIC FATE OF HURON ELLIOTT: A FORGOTTEN INDIGENOUS WORKER ON TORONTO’S WATER TUNNEL PROJECT
August 8 — 7:30pm — Online — Toronto Branch, Ontario Genealogical Society
“During the early 1900s, Toronto experienced rapid changes due to industrialization, migration, and the implementation of major infrastructure projects. One of the most significant undertakings of this time was the construction of the Water Supply Tunnel in Toronto’s harbour, which was also the site of a notable archaeological discovery. Huron Elliott, a miner from the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, arrived in Toronto in 1907 to work on this project. Tragically, he and three other workers lost their lives just days later. Eric Sehr will delve into the unique story of Huron Elliott, a rare account of an Indigenous person actively shaping Toronto’s growth and development in the early 20th century. Additionally, he will examine the significance of the Water Supply Tunnel project to commemorate the workers who died building the essential infrastructure that Toronto relies on today.”
Free with registration!
ON THE EDGE OF A CITY: TORONTO IN 1833 WALKING TOUR
August 19 — 10:30am — Meet at St. James Cathedral — Town of York Historical Society
“In this walking tour, explore the surviving built environment of the original 10 blocks of Toronto and discover how the Town of York, which started with a population of a couple hundred residents, became the City of Toronto in 1834, with a population of just under 10,000.”
$17.31 for non-members; $11.98 for members
DEATH, VIOLENCE & SCANDAL IN YORK WALKING TOUR
August 19 — 2pm — Meet at St. James Cathedral — Town of York Historical Society
“In this walking tour, explore the scandalous side of Little Muddy York as we walk through the surviving built environment of the original 10 blocks of Toronto and learn about the intriguing stories that would have been the gossip of the day.”
$17.31 for non-members; $11.98 for members
MR. DRESSUP TO DEGRASSI: 42 YEARS OF LEGENDARY TORONTO KIDS TV
Until August 19 — Wed to Sat, 12pm to 6pm — 401 Richmond — Myseum
“The TV shows of your childhood hit closer to home than you might think. From 1952 to 1994, Toronto was a global player in a golden era of children’s television programming. For over four decades, our city brought together innovative thought leaders, passionate creators and unexpected collaborations – forming a corner of the television industry unlike any other in the world. Toronto etched itself into our collective consciousness with shows like Mr. Dressup, Today’s Special, The Friendly Giant, Polka Dot Door, Degrassi, and more. Journey through Toronto’s heyday of children’s TV shows in this playful exhibition.”
Free!