Springhill mining disaster may refer to any of three deadly Canadian mining disasters that occurred in 1891, 1956, and 1958 in different mines within the Springhill coalfield, near the town of Springhill in Cumberland County, Nova Scotia. In the 1891 accident, 125 died; in 1956, 39 were killed; and in 1958, there were 75 miners killed. The mines in the Springhill coalfield were established in the 19th century, and by the early 1880s were being worked by the Cumberland Coal & Railway Company Ltd. and the Springhill & Parrsboro Coal & Railway Company Ltd. These entities merged in 1884 to form the Cumberland Railway & Coal Company Ltd., which its investors sold in 1910 to the industrial conglomerate Dominion Coal Company Ltd. (DOMCO). Following the third disaster in 1958, the operator Dominion Steel & Coal Corporation Ltd. (DOSCO), then a subsidiary of the A.V. Roe Canada Company Ltd., shut its mining operations in Springhill, and they were never reopened. the mine properties, among the deepest works in the world, with the No. 2 mine reaching 14,300 feet. Now filled with water, are owned by the government of Nova Scotia, and provide Springhill's industrial park with geothermal heating. 1891 explosion Springhill's first mining disaster, the 1891 explosion, killed 125 miners, some of them child laborers between 10 and 13 years old. It occurred at approximately 12:30 pm on February 21, 1891, in the Number 1 and Number 2 collieries, which were joined by a connecting tunnel at the level (below the surface). A fire caused by accumulated coal dust swept through both shafts. Rescue efforts throughout that afternoon and evening were made easier by the lack of fire in No. 1 and No. 2, but the scale of the disaster was unprecedented in Nova Scotian or Canadian mining history, and the subsequent relief funds saw contributions come in from across the country and the British Empire, including Queen Victoria. A subsequent inquiry determined that sufficient gas detectors in working order had been present in the two collieries; however, the ignition source of the explosion was never determined, despite investigators having pinpointed its general location. The song "La Mine" (allegedly traditional) by the French Canadian folk group Le Vent du Nord on their 2009 album La part du feu relates to the 1891 explosion. 1956 explosion The 1956 explosion occurred on November 1, 1956, killed 39 coal miners, but 88 others underground