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Just off the Trans-Canada, 200km from Halifax and 30km from New Brunswick, SPRINGHILL is an Appalachian lookalike, its tangle of modern buildings set amidst a vast forest that rolls over the surrounding hills. A coal mine was first sunk here in 1872 and it was coal that dominated the local economy until the last mine closed in the 1970s, leaving the town's population - which now numbers about 4000 - pretty much high and dry. Of all the coalfields in Canada, Springhill's was the most disaster prone, with three major tragedies grabbing national headlines: 125 miners perished in an underground explosion in 1891, 39 died in a gas explosion in 1956 and in 1958 a tunnel collapse - or "bump" as it is known hereabouts - accounted for 75 more. As if this wasn't enough, in 1957 and 1975 fires wiped out the town's commercial district. A memorial in the centre of town - beside the junction of highways 142 and 2 - remembers the dead miners and there are contemporary photographs of the sites of the two later disasters at the Tour a Mine Springhill Miners' Museum , on Black River Road, 2.5km south of town just off Hwy 2 (mid-May to mid-Oct daily 9am-5pm; $5.20). The museum's outdoors section contains several wooden shacks looking exactly as they did when the pit closed in the 1970s. One is the lamp room and another the wash house, outside of which is what the miners themselves called the Liars' Bench - after, no doubt, a certain tendency to exaggerate their coal-cutting feats. What you won't see is winding gear: Springhill's coal seams were fairly near the surface and the miners walked down to the coalface - as visitors can do today in the company of a guide. Coalface or not, it's the Anne Murray Centre , 36 Main St (late May to late Oct daily 9am-5pm; $5.50), which pulls the crowds to Springhill - an exercise in organized sycophancy that tracks through the extraordinarily successful career of the Springhill-born balladeer. Murray shot to fame with her sugary song Snowbird in 1970 and her latest releases keep up the easy listening. Naturally enough, if you're a fan you'll love it - and you can feel good that all the centre's proceeds go to the local community.
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