My grandfather, Charlie Angus, died on the job at the Hollinger Gold Mine. I was born a few months later. I got his name (and apparently his politics). My mother’s father, Joe MacNeil, broke his back in a mine cave in and then was slowly poisoned on the job because the McIntyre Mine had a policy of making men breathe aluminum dust every day as a bogus cure for silicosis. My uncle Lindsay was an international trade diplomat. It was quite the rise for a man who had quit high school to work in the mines. He got into university as an adult student after taking a Latin test. Lindsay was taught Latin on the night shift at the mine by a Russian “DP” (displaced person) who had been a professor. My uncle retired early after a distinguished career representing Canada around the world. He then fell sick and died from a virulent cancer. Doctors said the only way he could have gotten this cancer was from exposure to radiation.
It had been forty years since my Uncle Lindsay had driven the tunnels into the heavily radioactive uranium ore body in Elliot Lake. He thought he had left Elliot Lake long ago, but Elliot Lake had stayed in his bones. I tell these stories because April 28th is a day recognized worldwide to commemorate workers injured or killed on the job. It is a day to examine the steps needed to improve workplace safety. Despite vast improvements in health and safety, the accidents and deaths continue. Trillionaire Jeff Bezos has been accused of showing a total disregard for workers’ safety in Amazon factories. A 2021 study found the accident rate in Amazon warehouses was 60% higher than in other warehouses.¹ I have stood with Amazon workers who were fired on mass in Quebec for trying to unionize for safer conditions. Neither the federal nor provincial governments took any steps to hold Amazon accountable for their massive union-busting campaign.
And then there are the accidents in the oil sands. In January, Kenneth Joseph MacAulay was sent out in a vehicle at the Suncor Oil Sands operation north of Fort McMurray. His vehicle was swallowed up in the muskeg. It’s been three months since he went missing, and the company is refusing to say if the body has been recovered. Suncor’s lack of clarity on the situation is appalling. It represents a nightmare for the family, the co-workers and the larger community. It makes me think back to the horrific rock burst at Macassa Gold Mine in Kirkland Lake in 1993, when two miners, Leonce Verrier and Rob Sheldon, were trapped more than 6,000 feet underground. I remember the candlelight vigils outside the mine and how family members refused to leave the shaft room as the searchers went underground in dangerous searches into the blast zone to see if they could find the men. A woman I knew said she never slept during that time because her husband was one of the 150 men who put their lives on the line. The men went shift after shift in the unstable ground, trying to find their comrades. It took 77 long and excruciating days to locate their bodies. We learned that they had never had a chance. The seismic “event” obliterated a massive section of that deep mine. When the bodies were brought to the surface, the entire town was out for the funeral, and there was an honour guard of the mine rescue team.
Charlie Angus with the mine rescue team in Kirkland Lake, Ontario, 2024. As a member of parliament for a mining and lumber region, April 28th was always an important day in my calendar. The National Day of Mourning originated in Canada. It was established by the Canadian Labour Congress in 1984. Since then, the day has spread to countries all over the world. April 28th was chosen as the day for commemoration because that was the day in 1914 when miners from my town of Cobalt, Ontario, forced the government to bring forward the first workers’ compensation act to help injured workers and the families of those killed on the job. Big Jim McGuire led that fight. It is a name mostly lost to history but it’s a history we need to know.
Life was very cheap in the northern mines then. The work of the Cobalt miners to push for better conditions has continued through the decades, and we now have some of the safest mine operations in the world. As we approach April 28th, I think of how far we have come but how far we still must go, because the greatest riches that ever came out of a mine, factory, warehouse, or office were the workers going home to their families at the end of the day. I wrote this song about the hard rock miners of the north.  If any photos or images on this site are under copyright please let us know and we will give appropriate credit. Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting.1 The Injury Machine: How Amazon’s Production System Hurts Workers. Strategic Organizing Center. April 20, 2022. Thank you for reading Charlie Angus / The Resistance. If you’d like to upgrade to a paid subscription your support will help keep this project independent and sustainable. I’m grateful to have you here - thank you for your support.
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