Doomed Miners' Day in Court (Conclusion)

Human error. It has always been with us, always will be.

For the 19 miners of the Pacific Coast Coal Mine on the morning of Feb. 9, 1915, someone’s slip-up cost them their lives.

19 men died because someone screwed up; because someone misfiled the plan showing the conversion of scales between the abandoned and flooded workings of the Southfield Mine, and the working PCC Mine.

The plans that clearly showed that the miners weren’t 440 feet from danger as they believed, but within just a few feet of disaster.

Clearly, someone was responsible for an oversight that bordered upon criminal negligence. But if not PCC Mine manager Joseph Foy, one of the victims, who?

The B.C. Attorney-General’s office was sure enough where the fault lay that it pressed criminal charges against two of the principles involved in the tragedy. That one of them was the PCCM’s Managing Director J.H. Tonkin probably came as no big surprise to many.

But the Chief Inspector of Mines, Thomas Graham?

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PHOTO: Sam Wardle, one of the miners drowned when they broke into the abandoned Southfield Mine. —Courtesy Helen Tilley