Witness to Springhill disaster shares her story and learns of PWRDF connection

By Margaret Laking

At 8:06 p.m. on Oct. 23, 1958, the world as Sheila (Teed) Norton knew it ended. Her father died in the Springhill Mine Disaster — the tragedy that inspired the creation of the Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund. She shared her story with her parish family at St. George’s in McAdam on Have a Heart for PWRDF Sunday, Feb. 15, the day after Valentine’s Day.

Sheila was born in Pugwash, Nova Scotia in 1940 and was baptized at St. George’s in that community. When her father Henry Teed returned from the Second World War the family moved to Springhill and her father went down in the mines. She was confirmed with him when she was 12. A year later, when a rock fall caused the roof of the mine to collapse, she saw her father in the hospital with a broken shoulder and punctured lung — she saw him, for the first time, as a coal miner.

In early October 1958, 18-year-old Sheila moved to Moncton to work as a sales auditor at Eaton’s. On Oct. 21, as she wrote in her diary, the radio played in the background. “I thought they were reminiscing about the 1956 Springhill explosion that killed 39 miners,” she told the people at St. George’s in McAdam. When the awful truth became clear, she began to scream. The couple with whom she boarded rushed to her room.

“Once they realized what was happening they told me to get my things gathered up and they drove me to Springhill. When all the lights were out at my mom’s home and then at my sister’s, they drove me to the mines.”

She found her mother and her sister there. She wondered at first why her sister was at the mine, rather than at home with her five babies. Then she thought, “She’s just here for Mum.”

She was wrong. Her brother-in-law had switched shifts with a friend who needed that evening off. He too was trapped and killed.

“I lost my Dad, my best friend and my hero that night,” said Sheila. “Whoever says time heals all wounds doesn’t know what they’re talking about. There will never be a band aid big enough to cover this wound. But when you are brought up in the church, being in one means a great deal. When I walk in here I feel a peace wash over me. I ask God to take my hand and lead me graciously through every day.”

Until recently, Sheila’s sad and intimate knowledge of The Bump, as the 1958 disaster is often called, did not include the PWRDF connection. She learned about it Oct. 26, 2008, when PWRDF Executive Director Cheryl Curtis preached about it at a commemoration service at All Saints Anglican Church in Springhill.

She shared that knowledge with those who tend the Nova Scotia Miners Tribute pages. As a result a page was added. It acknowledges the 1958 disaster in Springhill caused the Anglican Church of Canada to recognize the need to channel assistance quickly in emergency situations. The result is what was then the Primate’s World Relief Fund, established in 1959.

 

 

Diocesan Communications
17 March 2009