Page 12 By Kevin V incent While the Hollinger Mine fre of 1928 is widely regarded as the event that gave birth to modern mine rescue the concept of safety and emergency response mea sures albeit far removed from to day s practices was in evidence long before 1928 The Canadian Mining Institute known today as the Cana dian In stitute of Mining was formed 31 years after Canada was founded The Institute was incorpor ated in 1898 by an Act of the Parliament of Canada as the Canadian Min ing Institute In 1920 it became the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurg y and in 1990 the Canadian Institute of Minin g Met allurgy and Petroleum CIM s members convened from industry academia and govern ment help shape lead and con nect Canada s mining indus try do mestically and across the globe By 1912 sixteen years before the Hollinger Mine disaster the CIM was fghting with American regula tors and urgin g the Canadi an gov ernment to persuade American manufacturers to allow mine res cue equipme nt to enter Canada without duties and surcharges At the time rescue equipm ent was deemed to be made wholly or in part of iron and steel not other wise specifed and as such is sub ject to a duty of 15 if of British origin 25 if Internation al and as much as 275 depending on the country of origin Mining companies at that time were eager to get their hands on rescue equip ment but most of it was made in Germany and there fore subject to the 275 tarif A representative of the CIM argued that Mining machinery of this na ture or class made in Canada is of course dutyfree so are lifeboats and lifesaving apparatus imported by various societies to encourage the saving of human life This was a multiyear struggle for the CIM In 1920 the CIM argued with the government of Canada that the equip ment should be put on the tariffree list It wasnt Au thorities argued that they could not act on the request to classify mine rescue equip ment under lifesav ing apparatus and one ofcial is quoted as saying Machinery not manufactured in Canada which would be a simple way of getting around a difculty if there is one the request will be laid before the T arif Commission when appoint ed as a change in the tarif would be required to meet the views of the Institute Newspaper editors decried the re sponse as a fne exampl e of bu reaucratic red tape Mining companies could in fact apply to the government for a re bate of the import duty by sending a letter to Ottawa As one editor wrote T o the mere outsider it would appear the simplest thing in the world to make a ruling that would settle the question and sat isfy everybody Since this is not so importers must be content to wait until the matter has received the consideration of the tarif com mission which has yet to be ap pointed Y ears later in 1916 a miner was working a stope underground when the platform he was stand ing on gave way sliding him into the stope and he was burie d alive Remarkably the rock that as sembled around him landed in such a way that it neithe r killed him nor broke any of his bones A twohour rescue efort done mostly by hand managed to free the man from his frightening or deal The CIM used the incident from the Acme Mine in T immins to agai n press the governm ent to make changes so rescue equip ment could be brought in tarif free especially for smaller mines Their plea again fell on deaf ears This 1917 example of the Drae ger Self Contained Breathing Apparatus became the frst safety apparatus demon strated at the 1909 AlaskaY u konPacifc Exposition Page 10