By Susanna McLeod
Special to Ontario Construction. News
Workplace safety procedures and regulations are occasionally improved the hard way, forced by deadly construction catastrophes. Such was the case on March 17, 1960, at the Hogg’s Hollow tunnelling site in Toronto. Five workers were killed in the disaster, all Italian immigrants. The result was the introduction of the 1964 Industrial Safety Act, leading to the national Canada Labour Code of 1967 and improved working conditions.
Named in the mid-1800s for the Hogg family, the North York community of Hogg’s Hollow was nearing completion. Installing services for residents, a large watermain was under construction in 1960, “built under the Don River to connect a pumping station with the water distribution on the other side,” said Canadian Labour Congress. (CLC) “The work was done mostly by hand, in cramped and confined quarters 10 meters underground.”
Suffering contractor problems, faulty equipment, and other delays, the project’s schedule was pushed off by close to a year. The pressure was on the construction contractor to complete the essential job. Corners were cut for speed.
Workers did not have safety equipment such as hard hats, steel-toed boots, flashlights, and sufficient number of air compressors. The tunnel project “lacked fire extinguishers and resuscitator, the timber supports were not strong enough (and) grout was not used on the floor of the tunnel to keep out sand and silt.” Somehow, the jobsite still met the safety standards of the time. As work progressed, the deficits transformed into life-threatening problems.
Proceeding with work into the dinner hour on March 17, 1960, a crew of a dozen men was welding steel plates when the workers smelled smoke. A cutting torch spark had ignited a rubberized cable—fire and billowing smoke erupted in the cramped workspace. “A valve that would have allowed the smoke to blow out of the tunnel would not open,” CLC noted.
One worker ran out then returned and attempted to rescue his colleagues. “Due to the intense heat and the water rapidly filling the tunnel, he was forced to retreat,” said Laurel Broens, contributing historian with Defining Moments Canada in 2022. The alarming conditions hindered any early efforts to save the crew. Three hours later, one worker was brought out, still alive. “Before losing consciousness, he had crawled through the smoke and fire toward the tunnel entrance, and within reach of the rescue team.” The other five men could not get out.
Trying to recover the trapped workers bodies, rescue teams turned off the tunnel’s air compressors. With the air pressure lowered, water flooded in. The tunnel floor turned into a mire of mud and parts of the tunnel collapsed, considerably slowing retrievals. One worker’s body was brought out in about eight hours, but “it took rescuers nearly five days to retrieve the other four men.”
The workers succumbed to heart-wrenching deaths. “The official cause of death was ruled acute poisoning by carbon monoxide and suffocation due to the inhalation of smoke, sand and water,” stated a 1960 Toronto Daily Star article on March 16th. Buried in silt and trapped under nearly a metre-wide watermain, the bodies of three brothers “were found kneeling beside each other in the posture of prayer.”
One day after the shocking accident, the Ontario Attorney General announced an inquest that opened less than two weeks later. The enquiry found many deficiencies at the Hogg’s Hollow project… and in the provincial construction industry in general.
“A lack of training and instruction in Italian was a common concern,” said Broens, and “many of the workers were inexperienced, and unqualified for underground work and did not fully understand their health and safety rights.” The coroner’s jury made its rulings on April 2nd that year. The deaths were preventable, and the jury concluded that “failure to adhere to regulations directing work under compressed air conditions had caused the deaths of the workers.”
Recommendations included establishment of a study on health and safety under compressed air; safety literature in the language of the workers; Department of Labour inspections for underground work; and that “when a contractor cannot complete a project, the authority awarded the contract is responsible for ensuring the job is completed by qualified persons.”
The Italian community was infuriated. Meetings were held and construction workers were organized to demand justice in the workplace. “The next year a massive strike wave saw a rally of 17,000 construction workers held at the CNE stadium,” said Cartwright. A Royal Commission on Industrial Safety was established to bring urgently-needed change.
Modernizing labour codes and safety regulations, the province also examined compensation law. Particularly advancing the healthy and safety standards, Ontario introduced the Industrial Safety Act in 1964. The important Act became the foundation of the Canada Labour Code, enacted in 1967.
Hogg’s Hollow Disaster was commemorated with several plaques, beautiful memorial quilt, and at the Italian Fallen Workers Memorial.
© 2025 Susanna McLeod. She is a writer specializing in Canadian history.