This past Sunday, June 17th, marked the 60th anniversary of one of the most tragic construction accidents in British Columbia history, the collapse of the Second Narrows bridge spanning Burrard Inlet. The tragedy claimed the lives of 18 workers that day, who plunged 200 feet into the swirling, twisted steel-engorged waters below, a 19th man, a diver, dying later while searching for the souls who perished that devastating Tuesday afternoon.
Sixty years on, pretty much all that remains of Vancouver’s worst industrial accident are old faded photographs, and a sign declaring the structure as the renamed, “The Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows” bridge.
For me, my memory of that day will reside in me always.
Just after 3pm, I had left Mrs. Goloff’s Grade 2 class, situated in a portable along Charles Street, outside Lord Nelson Elementary School proper, to return to my home at 2165 East 2nd Avenue. Of course, as per usual, there was no one home, so I decided to stay outside and play, at what I don’t recall — but as it turned out, it didn’t matter.
Because at 3:30pm on that sunny Tuesday afternoon, rumbling thunder could be heard reverberating throughout the city, a calamitous — and, to me, frightening — earthquake shaking the ground beneath me. I recall that day as clearly as I recall my first day of school, or the passing of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, as one of the signal events of my young life.
Respected documentarian George Orr’s new must-see documentary on the tragedy, The Bridge, features never-before-seen, virtually pristine full colour footage of the bridge during its construction phase up until June 17th, and the immediate aftermath of the collapse, chronicled through the 16mm film coverage shot by engineer and novice filmmaker Peter Hall, a draftsman who had been hired by the Dominion Bridge Company to document the construction of the Second Narrows bridge. Up until a year ago, the footage shot by Mr. Hall lay dormant, untouched and preserved on the shelves in the study of Mr. Hall’s Vancouver Island home.
Until, that is, the day documentarian George Orr came calling on Mr. Hall.
As Ken Eisner wrote in his review of The Bridge in The Georgia Straight …
In any case, Hall’s footage — burnished by time but still lively with rich, rose-hued colours — is unfailingly gorgeous. It does credit to the men who lived and died on the project, subsequently renamed the Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing (not in common parlance, regardless of what CBC great Rick Cluff insists here). But the movie best comes to life at the very end, when the talking stops and snippets of his material are married to a Stompin’ Tom Connors song recalling the event.
Following two sold-out June 17th screenings of The Bridge at the Vancouver International Film Festival’s Vancity Theatre, programmer Tom Charity — responding to public demand — scheduled six additional screenings of Mr. Orr’s efficacious, illuminating and at all times moving documentary …
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Sunday, June 24, 2018 at 12:30pm;
- Saturday, July 7, at 1.30pm & 2:50pm;
- Sunday, July 8, at 3.30pm & 5pm, and
- Tuesday, July 10, at 8.40pm.
Tickets for the upcoming screenings of The Bridge are available here.
Honestly, you must see George Orr’s The Bridge. You owe it to yourself.
June 17th, 1958, 18 workers died when, at 3:30pm, the under construction Second Narrows bridge collapsed into the waters of Burrard Inlet below. You owe it to the memory of the workers who perished that day, and to yourself, to take in one of the remaining Vancity Theatre screenings of George Orr’s moving documentary, The Bridge.
