Dugald Train Disater (Book review)

The Springfield Women’s Institute Dugald Train Disaster, Memories from 1947 (n. d., internal evidence indicates 2006 or 2007) 55 years ago, a train carrying people returning from the cottage country of Minaki to Winnipeg failed to take the siding at Dugald and crashed head-on into the eastbound Continental that was waiting for it there. The subsequent inquiry found that the Minaki special had been running too fast, and that the signals had been functioning, hence the engine crew were to blame. But a few details recalled by the survivors suggest that it was at least partly mechanical failure that caused the collision. 31 people, including the engineer and fireman on the Minaki special, are known to have died; some of the people quoted in this book think there were more.  The wooden coaches of the Minaki special burned; 23 people could not be identified and were buried in a mass grave, now marked by a cairn.
     The effect of these memoirs is heart breaking. The stories are factual accounts, with no or very little embellishment of the kind some writers use to generate horror. People are simply telling their stories, many of which sound as if they were transcribed from speech. It’s the omission of details and emotions that make these stories so effective. I have the impression that these survivors have lived with horror and grief for many years, and have coped with it by reducing their memories to as purely objective factual accounts as they could. That leaves the reader to imagine how it must have felt. It’s what we imagine of the scene at the time, and the aftermath of recalled horror, that makes us grieve, too. The sub-text throughout is that of a the happy ending of a carefree weekend turned into mutilation and death.
     The booklet bears all the evidence of an amateur production, but that makes it even more affecting. The Dugald disaster has been the background of daily life in that farming community for over 50 years. Not an easy collective memory to live with. ***