Wesdome Gold Mines Ltd. was fined 100,000 Canadian dollars after a loose rock from the hanging wall struck an underground miner at the Eagle River Gold Mine near Wawa, Ontario, Canada. The investigation found that the mine opening involved had insufficient ground support and had been excavated too narrow to allow installation of the required rock bolts. The ruling was handed down on August 21, 2026, nearly two years after the incident.
What happened
The incident occurred on September 22, 2024, at the Eagle River Gold Mine, an underground gold mine operated by Wesdome Gold Mines Ltd. near Wawa, Ontario, Canada. A miner was working from a work platform “scaling” a raise wall: loosening and removing loose rock to make the wall safe. During this work, a piece of rock broke free from the hanging wall above the work area and fell, striking the worker. The source article gives no details on the nature or severity of the injury, nor on the identity of the victim.
Inspectors from the Ontario ministry investigated the incident, which ultimately led to a prosecution before the Provincial Offences Court in Thunder Bay. Justice of the Peace Tobey Meyer convicted the company on August 21, 2026, and imposed a fine of 100,000 Canadian dollars, plus the mandatory 25 percent victim surcharge. The source article about the ruling was published on October 5, 2026.
Findings
The investigation revealed that at the time of the incident the raise had insufficient ground support. Between the stope brow and the raise’s second staging level, about five straps, fourteen rock bolts and eighteen pieces of reinforcing steel were missing. In addition, the raise had been excavated too narrow, making it difficult to install the rock bolts needed to keep ground conditions in the raise safe.
Wesdome Gold Mines Ltd. was convicted under section 25(1)(c) of the Ontario Occupational Health and Safety Act, which requires employers to ensure that measures and procedures prescribed by law are carried out in the workplace. This involved section 66(1) of Regulation 854 (Mines and Mining Plants), which requires that ground conditions be examined for hazards before work begins and be made safe where necessary.
Recommendations
As far as is known, no separate published investigation report with recommendations is available for this incident; the source article reports on the court case. The recommendations below have therefore been derived by the editors from the legal requirements underlying the conviction, not from a standalone recommendations report.
Section 66(1) requires that ground conditions be examined before work begins and that hazards be removed first. Applied to the findings, this means mine operators must confirm, before scaling work, that ground support — rock bolts, straps and reinforcing steel — is fully in place, and that any missing support is installed before workers are positioned under or near the wall. The findings further indicate that raises and similar mine openings must be excavated in a way that actually allows the necessary bolts and support materials to be installed.
Context
According to the provincial government, ground instability has caused many fatal accidents in Ontario mines. Regulation 854 therefore sets out extensive ground control requirements. These include a stability assessment as part of mine design, requirements for and testing of rock bolts and shotcrete, specific scaling protocols for safely removing loose rock, periodic workplace inspections of ground conditions, and quality control of the support installed. The incident at Wesdome Gold Mines illustrates why these requirements, detailed on paper, must be followed precisely in practice, especially in narrowly excavated mine openings where installing adequate support is harder. Falling rock is also a well-known risk in underground mining and tunnelling outside Canada, which makes the lesson from this case broadly applicable.
Source: Wesdome Gold Mines fined $100,000 after rockfall injures underground worker, October 5, 2026
Additional research: Ontario.ca — Ground control in underground mines
