I Kissed Them and Said Goodnight: The Frank Slide

On a night of radiant moonlight, I had prepared for bed and went to say goodnight to my parents. My mother was sitting beside a table sewing. Across from her sat my father, reading. A coal lamp centred the table, which was covered with a red chenille table cloth [sic], after the manner of the day.
I kissed them and said goodnight.
I never saw them again.

- Jessie Bryan (nee Leitch)
- Winnipeg Free Press (WFP), October 15, 1950

Introduction

Coal mining was risky business in its early days. Explosions, bumping and cave-ins regularly ended miners' lives, leaving behind mourning families in nearby communities. But on April 23, 1903 at Frank, Alberta, fate turned the tables; workers inside the mine survived while the townspeople died.

Rockslide Avalanche

Until 4:10 AM that morning 600 people lived in Frank, a busy coal-mining town on the Alberta side of the Rocky Mountains' Crowsnest Pass. In 1901 Frank had earned the title "first mine in the Pass." Two years later, it earned a more infamous title as the site of "the only well-described, historic example in the English language literature of what Varnes (1978) has called a rockslide-avalanche" (D. M. Cruden and C.B. Beaty, "A Short Drive through the Frank Slide").

Rock Flowed Like Lava

On that crisp moonlit spring morning in 1903, the unstable middle peak of Turtle Mountain crumbled, and with a thunderous roar sent 82 million tonnes of limestone cascading onto the little town of Frank. Dust darkened the landscape. Rocks flowed like lava, entombing cottages, a construction camp, railroad tracks, and dozens of sleeping townspeople. When it was over, the rubble lay 100 metres deep and covered three square kilometers of the valley floor. The southeast section of Frank lay in ruins. At least 70 people were dead.

Warnings

Warnings of the impending slide had been present - some for centuries, others for days. An Indian chief's face, carved into Turtle Mountain by Mother Nature, reminded chert-mining natives not to camp at the base of the mountain. Some, like Jessie Leitch's mother, felt a foreboding unease in the mountain's shadow, an unease that proved well warranted. For the week preceding the slide, inside the mine dry timbers cracked. Ordinarily changed every few months, the timbers now needed changing almost daily. The mine shifted and shuddered like a ship rocked by waves. The miners spoke of the strange movements but no one guessed the shifts signalled a rockslide that would alter the town forever.

Bittersweet Survival

When the mountain peak collapsed, one hundred people were in its path. Of the seventy crushed, only twelve bodies were recovered at the time of the slide. And for far too many of the living, survival was bittersweet.

Foreground: Slide Debris

Background: Turtle Mountain Slide Scar (photo by Shirley Collingridge)

Seventeen underground workers dug their way out the side of the mountain. Ironically they had been retimbering the mine. These workers emerged into a holocaust-like landscape only to learn of lost families and homes. Charlie the horse survived for three days in the mountain, eating timbers, drinking seepage water and licking his harness for salt. Poor Charlie died when a rescuer fed him a celebratory mixture of oats and brandy.

Jessie Leitch lived to tell the horrific tale, "After the mighty roar that woke me . . . a terrific weight came down on us and I could not move . . . we could feel someone walking above us, as if on a board" (WFP). That physical weight was soon replaced by a heavier emotional weight; Jessie learned that her "parents and four small brothers were dead" (WFP).

Aftermath

For economic reasons the Frank mine soon reopened, producing its rich bituminous coal until 1917. The town itself gravitated north after a 1911 Royal Commission report warned of another potential slide. This time people heeded the warning.

2002

Today the area's landscape looks much as it did on that devastating night 99 years ago. But now an occasional tree pokes through, hiking trails weave throughout the rubble and visitors are awed by Motel Rock - one of the largest pieces of rubble within the slide.

Frank Slide today (photo by Shirley Collingridge)

For More Information

To mine the area's rich history, visit www.crowsnestpass.com/Tourism/historic/frankslide.html or www.frankslide.com; travel to the Frank Slide Interpretative Centre where history comes alive. While there, stop at the Hillcrest Millennium Memorial Monument to pay your respects to those who lost their lives in the Frank Slide and coal-mining disasters throughout Canada.

Did You Know

Frank was the site of the first mine in Crowsnest Pass
Three survivors of the Frank Slide were nicknamed "Franky Slide;" of them, the last known survivor Gladys Ennis died in 1995
Coal seams often run up diagonally, making work difficult work for ill-equipped early miners
By 1924, Alberta's provincial archivist reported, "every 100,000 tons of coal produced for the last fifteen years has cost a human life"
Frank Slide's unique geological landscape has been studied by studied by earth scientists worldwide
The Crowsnest Pass is also home to the Bellevue Mine, Hillcrest Collieries, Leitch Collieries and, purportedly, the Lost Lemon Mine
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