Thanks to Jim and Susanne who told us about this place and Ties and Terry who took us there the first time, we had to stop in Nanton at the candy store. We did manage to restrain ourselves but some licorice fell into our bag. They did have ice-cream but it was a bit too early in the day even for me for ice-cream.
Our next stop was the Frank slide. Greg and I have been there before but we wanted to revisit it. It is still hard to grasp the damage that was done by the rock slide in 90 seconds. We watched two short films: one on the political and social events of the time (1903) and the other on the rock slide itself. Excellent films.
What was so powerful in the second film is that at the end they listed the names of all the people who died. What was sad was that there were several people whose names they didn’t know. There is some speculation by the scientists that there will be another slide, only this time it will be on the south face and no one is allowed anywhere in that area. The entire face is being monitored with Lidar systems.
Again, as frequently has been the case on our journey of exploration across this massive country, we unearthed another little known and almost forgotten significant part of Canadian history.
However, first we are going to look at how things can be interconnected on an unimaginable scale, how an event on one side of the planet can effect a seemingly unrelated event on the other side of the planet. “Sherman, set the way-back machine to September 26, 2018”. Marion and I are touring the city of Sarajevo. We are standing at the site of major historic event that occurred on June 28, 1914. We had no idea that just months later on July 16, 2019 we would discover an event that occurred in Alberta that would be impacted by what happened in Sarajevo. Read on…
Just down the road from Frank, this valley was not done with throwing hardship and misery at those who dared to eek out a living by excavating her bowels. On June 18, 1914 the worst ever Canadian mining disaster happened in Hillcrest, Alberta when the mine exploded and killed 189 men.
According to HillcrestMineDisaster.com “…Of the 189 men, 17 were born in Canada and of those only 2 in Alberta. The remainder were immigrants, the majority of whom arrived in Canada between 1910 and 1914. The men were from Great Britain, France, Belgium, Italy, Austria, etc.. Many of the men listed Austria as their home county, but previous to 1914 Austria meant the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and those listed as from Austria came from Ukraine, Hungary, Poland, Galicia and Bukovina. There were no miners from what is now known as Austria…Why is this not a story that all Canadians know?….”
Well, now we go back to event in Sarajevo (have you figured it out yet?). Exactly where Marion and I were standing on September 26, 2018 was the spot where Franz and Sophia Ferdinand were assassinated on June 28, 1914, The Shot That Was Heard Around the World. Ten days after the Hillcrest mine explosion, the dust was still in the air, and the world found itself in a world wide war and the 189 miners were mostly forgotten about. To read our blog from that day in Sarajevo (click here)
Our destination for the next two days is Fort Steele. Kind of neat to look out our RV window at the mountains.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>