Darlene Engelquist recalls the day with perfect clarity.
It was sunny, a beautiful bluebird afternoon in August. Engelquist, then eight years old, was outside on the porch of her family's North Vancouver home playing with her dog. That's when the announcement came over the radio. It changed her life forever.
We heard the mill exploded, she said.
On Aug. 18, 1963, shortly after 3 p.m., a 80-foot boiler at Woodfibre mill blew up, flattening 120 feet of housing and transforming a section of the plant into a jumble of metal. Engelquist's father, Barry McKay, was one of eight men killed in the blast. He was 34 years old and left behind a wife and four young children, including Engelquist.
Fifty years has passed, but when I think about it, it still feels like yesterday, Engelquist said. And then I become that eight-year-old girl again.
On Sunday (April 28), Squamish will join hundreds of communities worldwide in a day of mourning to honour workers whose lives have been lost or who suffered injuries in the workplace.
In 2011, 142 British Columbians and more than 1,000 Canadians died because of work-related injuries, Carl Walker, Squamish and District Labour Committee member, said at the District of Squamish's Committee of the Whole meeting last week. Those figures are simply unacceptable, he said.
Sadly, the number of workers killed on the job across the country is far too high, Walker said.
Initiated in Canada in 1984, the Workers' Day of Mourning is meant to draw awareness to workplace safety and reducing the number of worksite deaths, he noted. Squamish first recognized the day in 2000, when municipal and labour committee officials planted a tree in the fallen workers' memory. The following year, a monument was place into Pavilion Park.
We hope the annual observation of the day of mourning will strengthen the resolve to establish safe conditions in the workplace for all, Walker said. It is as much to remember the dead as it is a call to protect the living.
A ceremony is planned on Sunday at 11 a.m. at the monument in Pavilion Park. Everyone is welcome, Walker said. For many, it's just another note on the calendar, but for Engelquist it's when she thinks about her father.
For many, many years I thought something should be done to remember those men, she said.
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