OUT OF THIN AIR

...the grim and yet heroic story of the Moose River Gold mine involved long hours of continuous transmission...one single continuous run lasting twenty-one and a half hours, another eighteen hours...in order to do this our transmitter and all apparatus involved must needs be functioning perfectly, and our thanks are due to our good Chief Engineer, Mr. John Q. Adams whose long shifts necessitated his hearing the brunt of much of the announcing as well. To Announcer Les Peppin too, we pass a bouquet...

The Moose River Gold Mine Disaster that Art McDonald wrote about began on April 12, 1936. Dr. D.E. Robertson, a noted Ontario medical doctor and HE. Magill, a thirty-five year old lawyer also from Ontario, were inspecting a gold mine they owned in Moose River, Nova Scotia. Guided by their timekeeper, Alfred Scadding, they had worked their way down to the 350 foot level. At this point, they heard the dreaded rumble of subsidence. The earth caved in on them, and thousands of tons of rock and Clay blocked their way out.

It was not known at first whether the three men were alive, but rescue operations were begun at once. Eleven Stellarton, Nova Scotia draegermen dug and burrowed their way through the blocked under- ground channels foot by painful foot without a trace or hint of the buried men. Discouraged, they were just about to quit when a thin whiff of smoke was detected wafting through a crevice. It was interpreted as a signal from the trapped men, They were alive.

Rescue efforts were vigourously begun anew. The Stellarton men were joined by miners from Cape Breton and by hard rock miners from Ontario. A special diamond drill brought in for the occasion bored a two inch hole through solid rock, through which food and medical sup- plies were lowered to the trapped men. The rescue team, now forty men, worked around the clock, and there was great hope that the three men would be brought out alive. But due to exposure to the damp and cold, Magill developed pneumonia and died eight days after the rescue work began. The men worked furiously on, because added to Magill’s death were new threats of cave-ins. In two days time they were only twelve feet away from the remaining two survivors and their dead comrade. Release was expected hourly.

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