To the Editor,
Re: Mine blast rocked Nanaimo; Morden Mine restoration plan pitched to province: City’s history must live on, Opinion, May 1.
I commend the News Bulletin for its excellent coverage of the 125th anniversary of the No. 1 Mine disaster of May 1887, and the accompanying article on the ongoing efforts to save the concrete pithead at Morden Colliery Provincial Heritage Park as a memorial to the Nanaimo-area coal miners.
More than 600 men were killed in these mines over an 80-year period. How many more were injured or maimed is not recorded, but the number of accidents reported in the press and in official reports suggest that there were many.
Although, for family descendants, the scars of those tragedies still resonate collectively as pointed out in your editorial. We’ve not remembered our miners well and “we’ve abandoned our history as the coal barons abandoned us”.
This is precisely why the Friends of the Morden Mine is working so hard to save the last surviving Morden headframe/tipple – now a century old – as a memorial to Vancouver Island coal miners and their families. Although the six-storey-tall structure is deteriorating at an accelerating pace for want of maintenance and repair, engineering studies have shown that it can be saved.
Speaking as a historian (and, admittedly, as a non-resident) I urge Nanaimo residents to embrace their rich heritage. Theirs is one that is truly worthy of celebration, let alone its tourism potential.
Those of us who enjoy the benefits of their labours have a duty, I believe, to remember and to honour the men and, by extension their families, who worked and, too often, died to build the community that we, for the most part, seem to take as our due.
T.W. Paterson
Duncan