MARY'S GENEALOGY TREASURES
Ondrey Kocej (Andrew Kucey) born 1893, emigrated from
The family reunited and settled down to life in the community.
"After the explosion we threw away our dinner pails and crawled
With the approach of World War 11, Andrew joined the RCAF
After the war, Andrew worked for the Lethbridge Municipal
His daughter Sonja married John Buck in December, 1944
Maria Kucey became ill and passed away in Edmonton
Cyril Kucey married and resided in Vancouver, British
Andrew Kucey lived in quiet retirement to the age of 79,
John Buck died in April, 1978, and Sonja Buck in
near the small farming village of Marikova, Slovakia
(Czechoslavakia) to the mining community of Coalhurst,
Alberta since the year 1929. He found work in the
collieries and saved in order to buy a small house for his
family who were still in Europe. Wife Maria (nee Kapitanik)
aged thirty-eight, son Cyril twelve and daughter Sidonia (Sonya)
aged nine, sailed aboard the S.S. Bremmen in 1933 to join him
in Canada.
With the start of the depression, work was sporadic in the
collieries, but it was still the major work for the majority of men.
Andrew Kucey was working in the mine on the evening of
December 9, 1935 when disaster struck. The Coalhurst mine
explosion left Andrew Kocej injured but lucky to be a survivor.
From his hospital bed, Andrew recounted the story for a
reporter from the Lethbridge Herald. "We had just passed
other men going into mine about three minutes before explosion.
We were coming out. As we passed pipe man by name
of Gresl he said, "You go home?" I answered "Yes". We
went about fifty feet. We saw sparks and fire. Then fire
came like mighty wind. There was terrific explosion. Knocked
me down. Threw me on rails. Cut knee to bone. I thought
air pipe had broken, but that wasn't it. " Kocej's belief is that
a spark from telephone wires in the mine ignited gas in the mine,
causing explosion. His clothes were bumt, his hair singed his
eyebrows burned off, face blistered and his arms and hands
are swathed in bandages.
on hands and knees for 20 minutes to reach the shaft. The
smell of gas was terrible. I choked, couldn't breathe for some
minutes. Fire, rocks, dust all over, big noise, couldn't see.
Covered face with hands and crawled."
as a cook and was stationed in Lethbridge, to where he moved
his family which had grown with the addition of a son, Frank.
Airport until his retirement in 1958.
and they made Edmonton their home where John established
his own electrical business.
University Hospital in 1954.
Columbia until his death in November, 1974.
and passed away in Lethbridge in October, 1972.
December, 1981, in Edmonton.
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