The Strangest Funeral Procession Ever

“The strangest funeral procession that ever passed on earth.”

So said Father Henry ‘Pat’ Irwin, Kootenay’s unofficial saint, of the 1885 avalanche that buried a 16-man train crew alive, and of the super-human efforts he and others made to recover their bodies for proper burial.

It was all in a day’s work for one of the most amazing pioneer men of God that British Columbia has ever seen. As you’ll see in next week’s Chronicles.

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PHOTO: A search for bodies from another avalanche, this one in Rogers Pass in 1910 which claimed 58 lives. —Revelstoke Museum