Kianna S.

Vancouver, British Columbia

Vancouver Heritage Fair

Down Under:The Story of the Springhill Mine Disasters

My project is about the coal mine in Springhill, Nova Scotia and its three disasters. In total,these disasters killed a total of 238 people. This project is in the form of a news cast and is taken place in 1958.

 

 

What was the most interesting thing you learned about your topic?

I realized that coal is very hard to get and I have tried to cut down of my usage of electricity. I found it interesting that the mine had the three disasters and they didn't try to shut down the mine to help prevent the deaths of the miners. If they shut down the mine after the 1891 disaster, the mine would have saved 200 innocent coal miners and so much money from not using so much rescue equipment. Even though fossil fuel is very important, I think saving 200 miners lives should have been a bigger priority by far.

What important lessons have you learned that you want to share with other Canadians?

Everybody should know how hard it is to retrieve coal and other fossil fuels. Electricity generation, steel production & cement manufacturing are some of the biggest usages that involves fossil fuel like coal. These are some of the biggest industries in the world, and we should be more careful in using fossil fuel, it is very limited.

How would you compare your life today to the lives of those studied in your project?

Today, we have better rights because 10-13 year old kids are lucky to have education. Between all three disasters, the victims were as young as 10 years old. We are very fortunate that we don't define people by their colour. There was quite a bit of racism going on during the last disaster and I think we should be grateful that we live in better times today.