Monday, Sep. 15, 1947

Death at Dugald

On the platform of Dugald station, a flag stop 14 miles east of Winnipeg, passengers from the Canadian National's crack transcontinental No. 4 stretched their legs. A bright moon shone on stocks of wheat in nearby fields. In eastbound No. 4's cab, Engineer J. R. Gibson was impatient to get going, for he was behind schedule. But he had to wait for a westbound special. It was 10:45 p.m., near the end of a peaceful Labor Day.

For some 800 passengers on the westbound Minaki Special, it was summer's end; from camps and lodges of the Lake of the Woods country, they were heading for Winnipeg and home. On red and green plush seats, fathers, mothers and children drowsed, while the 13-car special, behind schedule, pounded along.

The Minaki Special bore straight down the main line. On No. 4, Engineer Gibson and Fireman Hazen Lawrie saw its headlight. They waited a moment, thinking it would stop and go into the siding, as it was supposed to do. But it sped past the switch. As they jumped, they heard the shriek of brakes.

In the head-on crash, No. 4's steel held, but the special's wooden cars burst into a knot of wreckage. Shattered gas lights and exploding gas tanks beneath the ancient coaches spread fire the train's length, set two nearby grain elevators ablaze, leaped to an Imperial Oil Co. storage depot where 80 drums of oil took fire. Rescuers saved as many passengers as they could before the flames drove them away.

Later, after blackened bodies had been taken in gunny sacks to an improvised morgue, numbed relatives listened to undertakers' assistants: "Does a heart-shaped locket mean anything to anyone? Does a very plain wedding ring worn on the right hand mean anything? Here is a red linen handkerchief with the words 'Bonnie Scotland' on it, and a ruby ring." By week's end the dead were counted at 31, including the special's engine crew.

Not all had been identified, nor had all the bodies been found.

Nobody had a full explanation for western Canada's worst train wreck.* A preliminary report, from Ottawa's Transport Board, said that No. 4 had the right of way, that the Minaki Special had come into Dugald too fast. But no one explained why Canadian railroads are still using old gaslit, wooden hand-me-downs.

* The worst train disaster in all Canada, at Ste. Kilaire, Que., in 1864, killed 83. The worst recent wreck killed 36 at Almonte, Ont. in 1942.

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