The Day the Mine Blew Up

Sunday before last, Belinda and I spent half a warm afternoon poking about the coal mine sites of South Wellington; something I’ve done a hundred times but a first for her. 

It was a bus man’s holiday for me as I’m finally—finally—writing the book I’ve been researching, in archives and in the field, for 25 years. To do that, I need to know what changes if any have occurred since my last visits of a year ago. 

Because things do change, more and faster all the time, it seems.

We’d already visited Extension, a ‘ghost town’ just southwest of Nanaimo that I’ve been to more times than I recall. Which made my rifling through my B.A. McKelvie file (Chronicles readers have met him before) a happy coincidence: I’d forgotten that he wrote about Extension before I hit the editorial scene.

That was in 1957, in the magazine section of the Vancouver Province.

So, in next week’s BC Chronicles I’m going to let Mr. McKelvie, who was considered to be B.C.’s premier historical writer in his day, tell you the sad and dramatic tale of The Day the Mine Blew Up: Ladysmith’s Day of Horror, October 5, 1909, when 32 men perished.

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PHOTO: These Extension miners were photographed at work in 1908; a year later, a devastating explosion would kill 32 of them. —BC Archives