Land and Sea - CBC Newfoundland & Labrador - Action News
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Land and Sea - CBC Newfoundland & Labrador
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Sep 4, 2011Gone on the Track

Gone on the Track

In Rushoon, on Newfoundland's Burin Peninsula, three men have tried to do right by something that went very terribly wrong.

It was 30 years ago. A bunch of young Newfoundlanders, mostly from the Burin Peninsula, were out west. On the prairies working for the Canadian Pacific Railway. Their job...to build and maintain the track.

It was the end of a shift. The boys were on a bus, on their way back to the bunk houses. The bus collided with a car and a tanker truck...the tanker was carrying hot asphalt.  The bus flipped and caught fire.  The young men on board were trapped beneath it.

Twelve Newfoundlanders were killed in that accident. This year, three of the survivors built a monument in their honour.  In Rushoon, the outport that suffered the biggest loss.

Gerald Synard is a survivor. In "Gone on the Track", he and the others tell the story that's stayed with them for 30 years.

 

 

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