A friend told me about a crane that dropped its big, heavy hook on a construction site in downtown Vancouver. The impact shook the ground and sent up such a plume of dust that he thought the load had dropped.

Alden Andrews is a 35-year-old father who works for the City of Vancouver’s Waterworks Department. He and his baby son Alistair, 10 months, were photographed for the Slow Down campaign aimed at raising awareness of driving safely around traffic control people.

Congratulations to Francesca Alfano, a teacher/librarian in Hamilton, who has won a copy of Forget Me Not: Canadian Stories of Workplace Tragedy from the Families’ Perspective. Publisher Threads of Life sent me two copies of their new book. They asked me to keep one copy and give one away (hence the contest).

I saw an amazing video about a man who survived by staying calm. His bulldozer was buried in a coal pile, so he took out his self-rescue kit, adjusted the ventilation in the cab, and then waited calmly, thinking of his family.

A worker on a steep roof slipped and shot himself in the leg with a nail-gun. A softened shingle had torn loose under his body weight and, as he slipped, he shot himself just above the left knee with his air nailer – lodging it firmly into the bone.

Greg Shoesmith was only 22 when he died at work, operating a logging skidder near Barriere, BC. His story is featured in a new book called: Forget Me Not – Canadian Stories of Workplace Tragedy from the Families’ Perspective.

My friend Dave Dawson worked as a line cook at a busy Ottawa restaurant in the late 80s. He and his coworkers ran the kitchen with little to no supervision. One night a cook asked Dave to do something that seemed pretty sketchy.

The image kept replaying in his mind. My friend Reid accidentally chopped off his pinky finger with a table saw when he was cutting window trim at work. The flashbacks were really disturbing for a couple of weeks, particularly when he was going to sleep.

Once I went camping with some friends outside Bella Coola, in a beautiful spot, up a logging road – also known as a “resource road,” used by industry. The mountains, water, forest, and fresh air were amazing, but when a fully loaded logging truck thundered by, I got pretty worried.

A construction employer once told me about an attitude he sees on worksites. “People really don’t pay attention to how dangerous the industry is,” he said. “I see it all the time. It’s a leftover cultural thing where, to some degree, there’s almost a pride in avoiding some of the basic safety standards that are out there.”