Workplace Deaths Before 1980

Question

Wondering if anyone has any leads on workplace deaths in Canada before 1980. The students are interested in the top five industries where the most workplace deaths occur. They're currently looking in journals and are looking to contact the Workmen's Compensation Boards - but I thought I'd try here as well.

Answer

I have asked the reference librarians in the Statistics Canada Library to confirm if they have any publications on this topic. I will follow up with their answer as soon as possible.

The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety and the Association of Worker Compensation Boards of Canada may have some historical statistics on this topic.

The following DLI product, which covers occupational mortality in Canada for 1965-1991, may also be of interest to the students:

Occupational surveillance in Canada : cause-specific mortality among workers, 1965-1991 (84-546-XCB)
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/dli-ild/data-donnees/ftp/osc-dmlpc-eng.htm

"This CD-ROM is the first Canada-wide publication of occupational mortality risks produced in Canada. A previous publication for the province of British Columbia (Occupational mortality in British Columbia 1950-1978) was published in 1986 as Statistics Canada catalogue no. 84-544 (ISBN 0-660-59382-32872-X).

This new publication helps identify occupational groups across Canada with excessive mortality due to specific causes. It also provides a Canadian monitoring system to detect previously unsuspected associations between, for example, cancer and occupation and provide a powerful tool for both generating and testing hypotheses.

The publication gives the results of a longitudinal follow-up of the 10% Canadian Occupational Cohort, a sample of 700,000 individuals, both women and men, in the Canadian workforce during the period 1965-71, linked to the Canadian Mortality Data Base (CMDB) for 1965-1991.

This publication is likely to be of interest to the medical and research community, workers' compensation and safety boards, ministries of health and labour, regulatory agencies and the general public."

Additional Information

The StatCan Library has recommended the following article which may be of interest to the students:

A job to die for. Perspectives on Labour and Income. Summer 1996, vol.8 no.2
(http://www.statcan.gc.ca/bsolc/olc-cel/olc-cel?lang=eng&catno=75-001-X19960022889)

The following sections seem particularly relevant:
• Data sources and limitations (p.26)
• Table 1: Fatalities and fatality rates by industry, 1976 to 1993 (p.27)