Hardly a year went by, during the boom period, without tragic death or serious injury occurring in each mine in the prairie region. Prairie work places were generally dangerous because of long hours, poor working conditions and minimal safety regulations and supervision, but the mines were the most dangerous because of unpredictable hazards. In 1914, 189 people died in the Hillcrest Mine Disaster bringing the toll in Alberta's mines that year to 208 deaths and 34 serious injuries. Just a few kilometres away at Bellevue, twenty-one miners were killed in an explosion four years earlier. Although massive tragedies were widely reported in the press, individual deaths attracted less attention because of the isolated nature of the communities affected.
Here the coffins being taken to the cemetery have not gone unnoticed. The death of six newly arrived Englishmen in a 1907 fire at the Strathcona Coal Company was a considerable blow to the community of Strathcona, which later became southside Edmonton.
Courtesy: Public Archives of Canada (C 56689), McDermid's Studios, Ltd., Edmonton
