The 1968 explosion that rocked Valour Road

© 2023, Christian Cassidy

1918 Henderson's Directory of Winnipeg

Canadian Liquid Air, a division of French company L'Air Liquide Société, set up shop in Winnipeg in 1916 with corporate offices in the Confederation Building and an oxygen plant at 1207 Pine Street between Sargent and Wellington avenues. (Pine was renamed Valour Road in 1925.)

The role of the plant was to super-cool air to a liquid form so that pure oxygen could be extracted and put into cylinders for use in applications such as welding, hospitals, and fire department breathing apparatus.

It may seem odd to have such a facility in a residential neighbourhood but this corner of the West End did not have a great deal of residential development at the time. The year before the plant was built, a water main had to be run to that block of Valour as there was only one residence on the street north of Sargent.

The area was also quite industrial in nature. Valour Road between Richard Avenue and Notre Dame housed both Prairie City Oil's warehouse and the refinery of C. C. Snowdon, manufacturer of oils, greases, lubricants and other chemicals. Two blocks north of the intersection of Valour and Wellington was one of the city's main incinerators and its accompanying ash dump, (the dump is what we now know as Garbage Hill.)

The nature of the work done at the Valour Road facility was risky due to the potential for explosions and it had its share of them.

The incidents started in 1919 when employee Robert McGee, 42, was killed when an air valve he was were inspecting exploded.

In December 1929, a silk bag filled with 2,000 cubic feet of oxygen exploded. It was reported to have "wrecked" the interior of the building and caused numerous fires that damaged equipment and woodwork. This happened after midnight and there were only a few employees at the plant. The worst of the casualties appears to have been the night watchman who had his clothes singed.

Another silk bag exploded in February 1930 and yet another explosion took place in 1939.

In 1952, a 100-cubic-foot oxygen tank was blown through the roof of the building and landed in the middle of Valour Road.

April 9, 1946, Winnipeg Tribune

The plant was an important supplier to many industries in the city and continued operating with little opposition. It was even allowed to expand in 1929 and 1937.

In April 1946, the city approved Canadian Liquid Air's request to build a nearly two-mile-long oxygen pipeline from the plant that ran north on Valour to Wellington, west along Wellington to the CPR track and then followed the track to the CPR Weston Shops.

The first signs of vocal opposition to the plant came in 1953 when Canadian Liquid Air applied to replace their oxygen pipeline.

The neighbourhood around the facility had changed greatly since the first pipeline was built. The incinerator closed and plans had been drawn up for a number of landscaping projects to cover over the old ash dump. Post-war home construction schemes were used to infill the streets around the plant with new residential development.

A delegation of nearby residents showed up at a city council meeting to oppose the pipeline renewal. They complained about the amount of truck traffic, noise and the risk of a large explosion. Despite this, council voted 11 to 4 in favour of the pipeline renewal.

November 19, 1953 Tribune

Alderman Lillian Hallonquist, who represented the West End on city council, kept up the opposition after the pipeline approval. She told colleagues, "I don't want to impede progress, but there's a residential area on all sides of the plant and surely as members of city council we owe something to the people there."

Later that year colleagues appointed her and Alderman J. Gurzon Harvey to a special subcommittee to explore the plant's future. It lasted just days before Hollinquist refused to work with Harvey saying that he had already made up his mind that the plant would not move. It led to an "explosive" debate between the two on the floor of council.

Aware of the growing opposition and realizing that it would never get permission to expand or modernize the Valour Road plant, Canadian Liquid Air eventually bought industrially zoned land at 58 Weston Street between Winnipeg and Bannatyne avenues.

Construction began on a new facility in 1966 and the Valour Road operation would shift to the new site once it was completed.

January 20, 1968, Winnipeg Free Press

There was one final disaster at the Valour Road plant just two weeks before it was to close.

Explosions rocked the facility starting at 4:50 pm on Friday, January 19, 1968. It was reported that they could be heard as far away as St. Boniface and the smoke could be seen for ten miles. One resident said: "It was like the war starting all over again ... like a munitions dump going up."

There were only a couple of workers inside the plant at the time as the majority of the seven man crew assigned to decommission it had left for home at 4:30 pm. 

Roland Blais, an acetylene operator, crawled out of the collapsing building after the first blast. Charles Wakesdale, who was at the opposite end of the plant, had his office door and windows blown out. He hit the emergency alarm and tried to call 999 but the phone line was dead. He jumped out one of the broken windows when more explosions began. A third man, a delivery truck driver outside the building, also escaped but his truck was destroyed.

University of Winnipeg Archives, Western Canada Pictorial Index,
Winnipeg Free Press Collection, 36132_a1206

The neighbourhood resembled a war zone with flames, explosions and raining shrapnel. Acetylene tanks landed in yards nearest to the plant. One smaller piece of metal went through a garage wall and the front window of at least one nearby house was blown out.

All of the city's police officers were dispatched to the scene. They evacuated homes within a one block radius of the site then did a door-to-door search to make sure nobody was injured inside their home.

Every available firefighter, some in street clothes, were called out. They fought the blaze despite the risk of more explosions coming from the rubble.

University of Winnipeg Archives, Western Canada Pictorial Index,
Winnipeg Free Press Collection, 35287_a1178

Two hours after the explosions began the only thing left burning was a flame from a calcium carbide tank. The rest of the 200 square foot site was just smouldering debris. Miraculously, there were no deaths or serious injuries.

The fire commissioner's office investigated the disaster. A leaking high pressure acetylene gas line was blamed for setting off the first explosion that triggered the subsequent explosions and fire.

Fire aftermath. Courtesy W. J. Smith family archives

Valour Road residents were relieved that the oxygen plant was finally gone from the neighbourhood though some living near the new plant expressed their concerns to the city.

The site was eventually cleared and sold off as residential lots. The four houses from 1199 to 1207 Valour Road, all built in 1970, mark where the oxygen plant once stood.

Air Liquide's Winnipeg plant is still located at 58 Weston Street.

Related:
Air Liquide Canada's History