Memorial – East Malartic Tragedy
Credit: Société d’histoire de Malartic
Remembering the Missing Miners
On October 1st, 2011, a memorial monument was dedicated to victims of the tragedy at the Musée minéralogique de l’Abitibi-Témiscamingue, located in Malartic. The structure is a reminder of the East Malartic # 4 Headframe.
This project is the result of a collaboration between Osisko (now Canadian Malartic Mine in 2014) and the Malartic Historical Society. A list of victims to the tragedy that shook the city in 1947 is prominently displayed:
- Traian Lucaci;
- Fernand Morel;
- Héliodore Aubin;
- Prosper Cossette;
- Jean-Charles Rheault;
- Gérard Dubé;
- Marcel Chabot;
- Albert Beaupré;
- John Gunn MacDonald;
- Robert Poitras;
- Angelo Dontigny;
- Edgar Lacroix.
Tragedy Strikes Again
On October 7th of the same year, four other miners lost their lives at East Malartic Mines. During repair work on Shaft #3, the elevator winch breaks causing the miners to fall down more than one thousand feet. Death of these miners brings the total fatalities at East Malartic to sixteen in 1947. Victims include:
- Leonard Armstrong;
- Leo Culhane;
- Romeo Tardif;
- Johan Yerkovich.
A Royal Commission of Inquiry was initiated as a result of these events. One of its recommendations was to create a mining rescue organization in Quebec to better protect workers in the event of fires. Mine rescue stations began in 1948 and were managed by the Department of Mines. Today, the CNESST (Commission des normes, de l’équité, de la santé et de la sécurité du travail) oversees mining rescue services in Quebec.
These tragedies will remain engraved in the collective memory of the community.