There were 26 coal miners in the final hours of a four-day shift at the Westray mine in Plymouth, N.S., when a coal seam spit a jet of methane gas that somehow ignited. The explosion killed every man in the mine and tore off the metal roof at the pit entrance.
CANADIAN PRESS – NEW GLASGOW, N.S.—Twenty-five years after she lost her husband to one of Nova Scotia’s worst coal mining disasters, Darlene Dollimont-Svenson still finds it difficult talking about the life they once shared.
“He was a fabulous man, but I don’t know what to say about that because it’s 25 years later and you have all these memories, and one doesn’t really know if the memories are glorified fantasies or reality,” she said, drawing a deep breath and pausing.
Thirty-six-year-old Adonis Dollimont and 25 other miners were in the final hours of a four-day shift at the Westray mine in Plymouth, N.S., when a coal seam spit a jet of methane gas that somehow ignited.
Fuelled by volatile coal dust, a massive fireball raced through the tunnels at 5:18 a.m. The explosion killed every man in the mine and tore off the metal roof at the pit entrance. In the pre-dawn sky on a rainy Saturday morning, the blast erupted in a roaring blue-grey flash that shook houses more than a kilometre away.
On Tuesday, Dollimont-Svenson was among 200 people who marched through an industrial park in New Glasgow to the Westray Miners Memorial Park, which is not far from the sprawling tunnels where 11 miners are still buried. Led by a police car with flashing lights, the silent marchers carried bilingual banners with a message spelled out in black and white: “No more Westrays.” Beside that stark message, a demand: “Stop the killing, enforce the law.”
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