More than a year after her son Gabriel Cabral died after being burned while working at Stelco’s Nanticoke plant, Pam Fraser says it’s still hard to believe it actually happened.
“How could it be?” said Fraser on Wednesday. “No mother, father, sister or brother or aunt should ever get that phone call when someone just goes to work.”
Cabral, 32, and his coworker Sean MacPherson died after being burned by steam at Stelco Lake Erie Works plant on April 25, 2023.
Cabral died weeks later, on May 16, while MacPherson held on for several months but died in November, according to members of his family. They were repairing steel cladding on a quench tower, a structure used for cooling hot coke used in the steelmaking process.
The Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development is investigating what happened, and quickly issued corrective orders to Stelco and John Kenyon Ltd., the sheet metal contractor that was Cabral’s direct employer after the deaths last year.
This month, on June 14, it laid charges under the Occupational Health and Safety Act against both companies related to the incident, spokesperson Manuel Alas-Sevillano told CBC Hamilton on Wednesday.
Stelco was charged with:
- Two counts of failing to take every precaution reasonable in the circumstances for the protection of a worker. “The defendant failed to ensure that the quench/mogul car was under the direct control of an operator who could ensure that the quench tower was free of workers before proceeding to quench the hot coke.” Related to the second count, “the defendant failed to ensure that adequate lunch and/or break periods were scheduled for the quenching process, to ensure that the quenching process did not take place while workers were performing work on the quench tower.”
- Failing to ensure the measures and procedures… were carried out. “The defendant failed to ensure…
The original: Edward Hicks (1780-1849), “The Peaceable Kingdom”, (1846). Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd 
