
Death and Disaster: 1901
Friday, 15th of February
In mid-morning on the 15th of February 1901, a series of three explosions in the No. 6 Mine sent shock waves through the foundations of Cumberland.
Sixty-four men and boys had descended the shaft that morning.

It was the worst mining disaster in the town’s history. Believed to have been caused when ‘some of the men had struck a cave full of gas while working with naked lights’.
The explosion turned the mine into a blazing inferno.

Lamps were designed to light miners’ way underground and the working place. However, when the flame was exposed to gas, they would turn deadly.
Rescue attempts were futile. The last recourse of action, to flood the shaft, was taken.
This final act tore apart any slender hopes the women and children had of their loved ones returning home that day.
'Oh could they not have just left me one?'
Catherine Walker, in, Nanaimo Daily News (March, 1901).

Once a family of seven, Mrs. Walker lost her husband and two sons in the 1901 disaster, left to look after her three daughters, alone.
Of the sixty-four men and boys who descended the shaft that morning.
None returned.