There is a fake house in Burnaby that has fooled even some of its closest neighbours since 1967. Rumours have spread that it’s everything from a government safe house to an animal crematorium, but the truth is far more interesting.
South portal of the Thornton Tunnel. Angus McIntyre photo, 1975
The Fake House:
The house is actually a huge ventilation shaft that’s hidden in plain sight. It is set in a nicely landscaped garden, and sits about 45 metres above the CN tracks at the midpoint of the Thornton Tunnel. Instead of a kitchen and dining room, ventilation machines and very big fans operating inside. The tip-off is the metal “keep out” wrought-iron fence, the absence of windows and the concrete barriers where a front porch would typically be.
CN’s fake Burnaby house at the corner of Frances Street and Ingleton Avenue. Eve Lazarus photo, 2020
The Tunnel:
The Thornton Tunnel took CN two years to build. It opened in 1968. The tunnel is 3.4 kilometres long and runs from the south end of the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge, under Burnaby and comes out at Dawson Street behind some warehouses.
Larry Lundgren was a switchman for CN from 1967 to 1972 and frequently found himself stuck at the wrong end of the train after a 10 to 15 minute ride through the tunnel. “As sure as heck a ship would come along and the bridge span would be lifted and you’d be sitting in the caboose just gasping,” said Larry.
Entrance to Thornton Tunnel, built in 1968. Eve Lazarus photo, 2020
The Bridge:
Then, as now, marine traffic has the right-of-way and the wait could be up to 40 minutes for a train wanting to cross Burrard Inlet. Larry says when he worked for the railway it wouldn’t be unusual to take an 80-car coal train through the tunnel with a crew of four—two in the front and two in the back. “It was pretty hazardous because the engine is spewing stuff and there is only so much the fan could take out of there,” he says.
Nowadays, there are two crew members per train and they sit in the front. It takes up to 20 minutes to clear the exhaust so that there’s enough air for the occupants of the next train. That limits use of the tunnel to about two trains an hour. People who live above the tunnel tell me that you can hear a “clickety-clack” or a “banging” sound and feel the vibrations when the trains go through.
Southern portal of Thornton Tunnel, below Dawson Street. Eve Lazarus photo, 2020
The Ironworkers Memorial Bridge collapsed June 17, 1958 killing 18 men, and one diver the following day. It is the worst industrial accident in Vancouver’s history. Thanks to Bruce Stewart for sending photos that his father Angus shot of the tragedy.
Taken from Bates Park, Vancouver at 4:47 pm June 17, 1958. Angus Stewart photo, courtesy Bruce Stewart
Bill Moore:
Bill Moore died on June 17, 1993—exactly 35 years after he survived the collapse of the Ironworker’s Memorial Bridge. His daughters Cheryl and Sandy were by his side. “He rarely spoke of the day the bridge came down, it had a profound effect on him for the rest of his life,” says Cheryl. “He passed away on June 17, 1993, after suffering a stroke a few days earlier and was unable to verbally communicate but he kept tapping his wristwatch. My sister Sandy figured out that Dad was asking for the date. That was June 16. He gave us the biggest smile and in the early hours of June 17 he squeezed our hands for the last time and passed away.”
Ironworker Bill Moore, August 1986. Courtesy Bill’s daughters Cheryl and Sandy
Sandy adds: “Our Dad was an incredible person, and we miss him every day. The bridge collapse did have an everlasting impact on him. He never missed a single anniversary that took place at the memorial site at the base of the bridge.”
Angus Stewart photo, June 17, 1958. “By the time my dad arrived at the old tidal pool near the grain elevators (Wall Street) the twin rotor rescue helicopter was making its way to the scene. Curiously, the young man in the pool is still enjoying his swim,” says Bruce Stewart
Sounded like an explosion:
Some described the noise of the bridge collapsing into the Second Narrows as gunfire or an explosion, others as a rumble or a loud snapping sound. On June 17, 1958 at 3:40 p.m., people from all over Vancouver stopped to listen, as two spans collapsed, tossing 79 workers into Burrard Inlet and killing 18 of them.
“I heard a loud bang, then everything crashed around me,” Bill Moore told a Vancouver Sun reporter the day after the accident. “I thought Sam (Ruegg) was dead—then to my surprise found him alive, cuddled up close to me.” The two ironworkers had been standing on the concrete pier that stands between the two fallen sections.
Angus Stewart photo likely taken the morning of June 18, 1958. Courtesy Bruce Stewart
Rescue Operation:
The massive rescue operation that followed was modelled after a worst-case scenario plane crash at YVR. Some of the men were identified by the brand of cigarettes that they smoked.
Phil Nuytten, the North Vancouver entrepreneur, scientist and inventor of the Newtsuit, was only 17 at the time, and one of two divers sent to recover the bodies. The other diver, Len Mott, 27, became the nineteenth person to die on the job as a result of the bridge collapse.
“The two sections that fell can be seen clearly, with the southern section partially completed,” says Bruce Stewart. Photo Angus Stewart, taken three months before the collapse.
Twelve-year-old Gerry Parrott was walking home from Hollyburn Elementary in West Vancouver. “We were outside and we thought the 9:00 o’clockgun had gone off by accident. My grandmother would never travel over the bridge. She said: ”It has fallen down once, it could fall down again.”
Lasted a few seconds:
Robert Hall worked for the company that had the contract for the concrete work. “I was on East Hastings Street heading for the bridge which was about five minutes away. It was a deafening sound but it only lasted a few seconds as the whole thing went down,” he wrote in a comment on my blog June 17, 2017.
“To access the north side, it was necessary to cross the old bridge which was known as the ‘Bridge of Sighs’ as it was so often open for river traffic causing long delays to both road and rail traffic. I knew some of the men who perished, most of whom worked for Dominion Bridge and there were two who were painters and worked for Boshard. I also knew the resident engineer and his young Australian engineer who both went down with the bridge.”
Calculation Error:
Photo courtesy JMBCA LF.00977. This comment was left on my blog by Charles Sayle on June 17, 2019. “I was working at Swan Wooster when the Bridge Collapsed. Our Project Engineer in charge of the Bridge Design and Supervision, BillC told us that Dominion Bridge had refused to let him review their calculations for temporarily installed supports (also called False Work) and after the Collapse he found the Calculation error. In your included diagram, you show “False Bent N4 composed of Piles, Bottom Grillage, Top Grillage, and Bent Post. This is where the Calculation Fault Occurred. There would have been a pair of False Bents, one under the West Chord and the other under the East Chord. In the ‘50s Engineers used Slide Rules which didn’t give a Decimal Point so the Engineer had to do separate decimal calculations. BillC told us that the Dominion Bridge’s Assistant Engineer had calculated 9Kips for Lateral Displacement when it should have been 90Kips (a Kip is 1000 pounds). The error would have been in the “Grillage” in your diagram. Both Dominion Bridge’s Engineer and Assistant Engineer were killed in the Collapse.”
In 1994, the bridge’s name changed to the Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing to honour those who died on the job that day. I’m sure that would have made Bill Moore very happy.
