Photo Credit: Matt Lennox
“When tragedy struck, the Civic Hospital was ready.” Those words were written by Ottawa Citizen reporter Mike Fitzgerald more than 50 years ago, describing the hospital’s response to Ottawa’s worst industrial accident.
On a hot, sunny day in August of 1966, a span of the Heron Road Bridge, then under construction, collapsed while workers were pouring concrete. Nine men died and dozens more were trapped amidst the concrete, tangled iron, and wood.
Micheline James was only ten years old at the time and was picnicking with her family at Vincent Massey Park when “we felt a rumble and a roar, and we saw the bridge go right down and all the men with it.”
Micheline’s father Marcel Ouellette was one of dozens of bystanders who jumped into action, digging to try to free the workers. “I was so proud of my dad,” says Micheline, whose father, a clerk at the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, would remain at the scene for two days to help out.
Bystanders jumped into action, digging to try to free the workers and using their own cars to help transport the injured to the Civic Hospital, where a massive medical response was underway.
Martin Skuce of The Ottawa Journal wrote at the time, “In minutes, this merciful, army of medical men and women was operating like a well-oiled machine. Calmly, quietly, efficiently.”
Margaret Milne was working in the Civic’s Food Service Department at the time and vividly remembers the sights and sounds of that horrible day. “We were told to get ready to be anywhere and do anything asked of us because there had been a disaster in Ottawa,” says Milne. Her job was to get urns of coffee ready for the families of the injured.
“I can still see the badly injured men in the hallways waiting for treatment and the crying women drinking coffee.”
Today, when tragedy strikes, The Ottawa Hospital is always ready. Our Civic campus is home to the only adult Level 1 Trauma Centre in our region.
