March 19, 2010

“What initially attracted me to the project were the stories and circumstances leading up to the accident,” says quilt artist Laurie Swim.

Hogg’s Hollow tragedy | 50 years later

Commemorative quilt also a story of victims’ families

VINCE VERSACE

staff writer

With every stitch and cloth piece in the Hogg’s Hollow tragedy commemorative quilt, Laurie Swim wanted to recognize not just the event itself, but all the good that came from it.

“What initially attracted me to the project were the stories and circumstances leading up to the accident. Also, the incident actually motivated citizens, government and labour to change safety regulations,” explains Swim. “I was fascinated by all those aspects and started to visualize a blueprint.”

That blueprint resulted in Breaking Ground, a quilt that depicts the five Italian immigrant workers who died on March 17, 1960 in an underground accident in Toronto. The five workers, known as “sandhogs” for their tunneling work, were Pasquale Allegrezza, Giovanni Battista Carriglio, Giovanni Fusillo and Alessandro and Guido Mantella. They died from a horrific combination of carbon monoxide poisoning and drowning in silt and water, 35 feet underground in a watermain tunnel, after a fire broke out.

The 7-foot by 20-foot quilt is now on permanent display in York Mills subway station and came about thanks to the hard work of volunteers, COSTI, an immigrant services organization, Labourers Local 183 and the Central Ontario Building Trades. The City of Toronto provided seed money in the form of a Millennium Grant in 2000. The quilt was originally unveiled at the 40th anniversary of the tragedy but just now found a permanent home.

“As the project evolved, more people came forward, it came together so beautifully,” recalls Swim. “As the families of these men came forward 40 years later, giving us their stories, the quilt became just as much about them and how their lives were changed with the death of these young men.”

In the quilt, the five men are shown in a tunnel with the Mantella brothers depicted together in positions of prayer, as they were found after a three-day recovery effort. A pinkish silk material was used to create a brick wall effect which frames the men in the tunnel in their last moments. “Although it commemorates such a tragic occasion, it is a beautiful and powerful work of art,” says John Cartwright, president, Toronto and York Region Labour Council. “For those involved in making it and raising the finances to ensure it will be recognized, it is a public testament to those men and the changes they enabled.”

Participating in and helping support the creation of a permanent display for the quilt is an honour in itself, says Durval Terceira, business manager, Local 183.

“This is history we do not want to forget — it changed laws and made construction safer,” says Terceira. “We do not want something like this to happen again.”

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