Francis Plourde

“You have two stories, one about a group of Chinese protesters for the independence of Tibet in front of the Vancouver Public Library, the other one about a stolen trash basket in front of the French Cultural Centre. Which one do you pick?” a senior reporter at Radio-Canada once asked me. His answer: “Don’t hesitate, take the story about the trash basket.”

He was kidding, of course, but his little joke summarized what a reporter faces when working in a French environment in Vancouver. I quickly faced issues that I never expected when I started working for Radio-Canada, my previous experience being in print reporting.

At Radio-Canada, the French arm of the national public broadcaster, I’ve found that newsworthiness is often tied to French language proficiency – something which may seem superficial to the majority of the population of Vancouver, but which is crucial to our audience, a small enclave of francophones in an anglophone world. As I’d soon realize, these challenges are compounded when the medium is radio or television.

Being a French reporter in Vancouver is a little bit like being a foreign correspondent. But unlike foreign correspondents, who have a mandate to tell what is going on in a certain country, and to talk to local people for a far-away audience, we have to interview people from the community for the same community. Which often makes things complicated.

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The safety regulations in the Mines Act need an update. That's the conclusion the jury at the coroner's inquest into the Sullivan Mine accident reached on Friday.

After a week of testimony from 25 different witnesses, the five-person panel made 16 recommendations to the B.C. Ambulance Service, Teck Cominco and the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum resources.

The most important recommendations were aimed at the ministry.

The jury asked the ministry "to amend the Mines Act regulations to meet or exceed the WCB standards with regards to confined space provisions in the Occupational Health and Safety regulations."

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If workers at the Sullivan Mine in Kimberly had been equipped with a $100 device commonly used in the oil industry, four people might still be alive, a coroner's inquest has heard. The air monitor wasn't required gear because safety regulations for mine workers are out of synch with those of other hazardous fields of work, an expert witness testified.

As the coroner's inquest into the Sullivan Mine deaths resumed its fourth day of hearings, the families of the four victims made a joint statement to say that they were generally satisfied with the recommendations made from several experts.

They are now waiting to see those recommendations put into effect. Four hundred and twenty-one days after losing his wife, Kim, George Weitzel said progress is too slow. "We're already marching towards the next tragedy," he said.

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For Bill Roberts, the men and women who plied their trade in Kimberley's Sullivan Mine were the best in the world. Toiling in the wet and the heat, the Sullivan miners dug over 160 million tons of ore out the mountain site in over 90 years of operation, building along the way a reputation as hard, safe producers of iron and zinc.

So when four people died on the site last May, five years after the deposits ran dry, Roberts was shocked. "It [Teck Cominco, the mine's owner] has been one of the safest companies to work for," the former miner said. "If there was an accident or a complaint about a safety issue, it would be fixed."

A coroner's inquest into the four deaths has captivated the small town of about 7,000, which sits in the Kootenay Mountains five hours southwest of Calgary, since it began on Monday. For while the mine closed in 2001, even today it's hard to find someone in Kimberley who didn't either work for Sullivan, or know someone who did.

For a town that has made a rapid and successful transition from resource to tourism, the deaths served as a harsh reminder of the industry that made them what they are. And for this week at least, Kimberley, with its lush green golf courses and picturesque Bavarian buildings, is once again a mining town.

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[Editor's note: Tyee reporter Francis Plourde will be reporting this week from Kimberley, B.C., where an inquest into four deaths at the nearby Sullivan Mine gets underway today.]

Family and co-workers of four people who died in an underground shed at the decommissioned Sullivan Mine site hope to finally get some answers this week as an inquest into the deaths begins in Kimberley, B.C.

Bob Newcombe, Kim Weitzel and Shawn Currier all died trying to rescue environmental contractor Doug Erickson from a water sampling shed at the mine in May 2006. A mine inspector's report released last October found the accident to be "unprecedented" and largely unpreventable. But the report did not satisfy many close to the victims.

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