After a four-day inquest into the mining death of a 64-year-old man revealed he spent his last moments gasping for breath, partially buried and pinned against a steel railing by a run of muck, a jury has now ruled the death of Edouard Gallant “accidental.”
They issued their recommendations to the Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development, Workplace Safety North and Impala Canada (a Thunder Bay-based mine operator) calling for improvements to mining regulations and updates to mining common-core education, hoping to avoid similar incidents.
Gallant was working as a mechanic with SCR Mining on the mine’s elevator, which was connected to a near-vertical underground tunnel called an ore pass, when he was partially buried and pinned against a steel railing by a run of rock material, called muck. SCR had been hired by the mine’s owner, Impala Canada, to repair the walls of ore passes.
Gallant was pronounced dead in a mine ambulance on Highway 527, while en route to the hospital on May 27, 2020. His cause of death was determined to be positional asphyxia, a type of suffocation caused by abdominal compression.
The inquest jury heard from seven witnesses, including other miners there at the time of Gallant’s death, who testified in the virtual inquest that was held Sept. 22-26.
Inquest parties given standing to question the inquest witnesses including counsel for the Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development, Gallant’s employer, SCR Mines Technology, and Impala Canada, which owns the mine.
Impala Canada was fined a total of $350,000 in 2023 for this fatality and another incident in 2020 that critically injured a worker at the mine.
The Lac des Iles Mine is set to close in May 2026. Impala is blaming it on lagging palladium prices.
At the centre of the inquest is the victim himself. Gallant was a husband, father and grandfather from Dunlop, NB.
Born in Moncton in 1955, Gallant is survived by his wife, Constance, son, Ricky, daughter, Stéphanie, and four grandchildren, Julie, Patrick, Xavier and Cassandra. He is also survived by five brothers and seven sisters.
“Edouard worked for over 30 years in the mines,” his obituary states. “He was a much-loved colleague and mentor. He adored and cherished his little family, who will miss him greatly.”
What happened that day
“Workers were trying to draw down the pile of muck inside the ore pass to expose that next section of the wall, but the pile of muck was not lowering as much as expected,” said inquest counsel Jai Dhar in his opening statement. “While they were working on this, the material in the ore pass suddenly and unexpectedly dropped, overwhelming the protective gates that were designed to hold it back.”
To the surprise of the workers, Dhar told the court Sept. 22, the material that flowed out of the ore pass did not look like usual muck. Instead, “the material was muddy and wet.”
This mix of water, muck and shotcrete entered an open work area known as a loading pocket, where Gallant was standing and using a radio to pass messages to the work crews about how much to evacuate from the overpass, said Dhar.
Gallant’s longtime friend and fellow miner, Charles Laforge, testified at the end of the first day of the inquest to his attempts to help his friend that day.
“I’ve worked in mines for 42 years; I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said of the texture of the muck.
“The material from the ore pass flowed into the loading pocket, partially burying Mr. Gallant and pinning him against a steel railing,” said Dhar in his opening. “Several workers, including a mine rescue team, attended and were eventually able to extricate him, they administered First Aid, transported him to the surface, and he was put into an ambulance for transport to hospital.” Emergency Medical Services took over en route, but determined that he could not be saved.
The jury’s recommendations were addressed to the Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development (MLITSD), Workplace Safety North, Impala Canada Mining, and the Mining Tripartite Committee.
The jury has recommended:
To the Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development (MLITSD):
- Conduct a review of the Mining Regulation and develop a plan to clarify and strengthen measures to protect workers from an uncontrolled run of muck or run of material. As part of this review, the ministry should consider whether to:
- Amend the mining regulations to provide that no worker shall be positioned so that he or she may be endangered by an uncontrolled run of material, and/or
- Create more prescriptive requirements in section 84 of the Mining Regulation
- Conduct a review of protocols for sample acquisition in mining investigations to ensure a robust analysis of data is possible.
To the MLITSD and Workplace Safety North (WSN):
Consider additional methods of raising awareness in the mining industry about how to recognize the risks of a run of muck or run of material and how to safely respond to that type of event. This could include:
- Hazard alerts
- Enforcement campaigns
- Root cause analyses
- Training programs including continuing education
- Updated guidelines on water management
To MLITSD, WSN, Mining and Impala:
- Share learnings across the mining industry with respect to the hazard control steps that SCR and Impala implemented to address the safety concerns related to this incident.
To WSN:
- Consider updating mine rescue training materials including, but not limited to, the Handbook of Training in Mine Rescue and Recovery Operations to include training on how to safely respond to a run of muck or run of material including how to respond to a variety of consistencies of material.
To the Mining Tripartite Committee:
- Review, assess, and, as necessary, revise the basic and specialty modules, including the performance objectives, for the Underground Hard Rock Miner Program to ensure the content addresses any updated learnings and best practices related to risks associated with uncontrolled runs of material.
- Review the need for workers to engage in continuing education at a regular interval to refresh their knowledge.
Jenny Lamothe is a reporter at Sudbury.com.