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THE DIARY
BIOGRAPHY
I'm a 26 year old graduate of the University College of Cape Breton. I'm employed as a youth worker in Glace Bay and in my time away from work I direct plays within the U.C.C.B theatre program. I intend to live in Cape Breton for as long as I can.
Latest installment of diary:
Sept. 11, 2000
In early August I received word that my job's funding was at an end. It was time to look around at this home of mine with a close eye. An eye on the very themes I've been discussing for the past two years in these pages: I face unemployment in Cape Breton and ask myself what I should do.
What have the miners done? In truth, at the beginning it looked like everything was over. Doomed to economic despair, their prevailing thought was to pack their bags and get out. And many have. Many homes are for sale, many storefronts vacant, many schoolrooms have more empty seats than ever. But hope always remains for the brave. The absolute destruction hasn't happened.
The government seems to have found an American company to buy the Devco resources. A mine co-op has been formed in an attempt to work on behalf of the remaining men, and Bruce Outhouse's report extended pensions and severance packages for many miners. But the community's loss is different. The cultural disintegration is quickening. And with it there are the reluctant victims. In mid-August the miners union was lost. UMW District 26, the group that defined the industrial discourse in Cape Breton for almost a century died from lack of membership.
Perhaps Devco's story is complete. In the last week of a dry short summer I buy my ticket for Toronto. The day before I'm to leave I re-visit the Lingan Mine. The paint is chipped and the windows broken. The fence is chained tight but in the distance I see two figures on the grounds. I follow along the long dilapidated fence and find another gate open, a link from the rusted chain lost somewhere out of sight.
There is an old man and a boy picking up scrap fallen from the giant pithead. I watch them for a moment and I am about to approach. Out of nowhere the sky pours open. Rain makes us run for cover and they disappear before we can speak. It is time to go. A huge storm is coming in from the sea, drenching the former coal town of New Waterford. The figures run for shelter ahead. I don't know their story and all I can do is wonder. I surmise instead of inquiring, I imagine and walk away.
July 24, 2000
After the severance news of the past few weeks the mining community has been in an uproar again. Though the federal arbitrator reaffirmed Devco's commitment to every miner, the government appears to have left out a large group of men. The whole situation was confusing to many others and to me.
What went wrong now, I wondered? Just when it seemed that this story was resolving itself we are confronted with another wave of confusion, disparity and controversy. I wasn't satisfied with the reports in the media. I had to go to the source to find out what happened.
I walked down to what remains of our downtown district the other day and met with a man known to my family for years. He is a former miner who applied for a severance and found himself to be another name on a list far longer than anyone imagined. We bought some coffee and took a seat in the corner of a small coffee shop. "What's going on?" I asked him. "I thought this severance deal would look after everyone." He began to explain the situation from his first-hand perspective.
After the federal government enhanced their pension offer to Devco miners with 25 years service or more, they believed that the mine they're privatizing would employ about 500 others. Their amended severance package would look after the few hundred or so younger miners who would not have the seniority to work at the privatized Prince Mine. The assumption was that the older, more experienced miners would jump at the idea of working in a privately owned pit.
The severances were announced and they received 600 applications for roughly 500 available severance packages. This man was five-hundred-and-sixty-something, or thereabout. "No one wants to work in that pit," he told me. "It'll never make money and we all know that. When the option is to work there or take a load of cash and look for a job, then the older guys took it. Oxbow won't make it and then where will they be? No severance and no job. What did the feds expect?"
Oxbow is short for Oxbow Carbon and Minerals Incorporated. This is the company from West Palm Beach Florida assumed to be buying Prince Mine. "The men aren't stupid. We've worked at Prince long enough to know it's doomed. It takes an hour to go down and another hour back up. It's not going to make money. If we know that then so do they. They want the coal contract with Nova Scotia Power."
He went on to explain that a popular belief among the miners is that Oxbow will shut the mine down in time. They'll keep it going long enough to get the coal piers and wash plant and then import coal from somewhere else at a profit. That's why 600 applied for a severance.
We talked about a few other things over our coffee and were joined by another man from Devco's workforce. He told us that it would be announced that the government would extend the severance to privatized Prince workers for two years after the mine opened to allay any possible fears. They argued over the certainty of this and we talked more. They talked about work possibilities in B.C. They talked about Stockwell Day and the Alliance's disgust at the policies that are cushioning the economic crunch in Cape Breton. Then we all parted.
Leaving the shop my friend told me that he hoped this two-year extension was real, because he would be in real trouble without this severance. "But nothing like the trouble that'll come if this American company pulls what the boys think they'll pull."
"What do you mean?" I asked him as he walked away.
"You know exactly what I mean, don't you?" Unfortunately, well versed in the labour riots of the past, I do.
July 10, 2000
Last week the Cape Breton Development Corporation announced that the first of the mining severance packages were being processed. After almost two years of fighting for an enhanced program to comprehensively cover all of Devco's long term miners, the first letters of confirmation would be in the mail.
The headline made me smile, I'm not sure why. Personally, I think that I felt some part of me was in turn part of my community's history. I've always been inundated with the history of our mining men and their struggle for a way of life. Now, I felt like I played a role in this story, perhaps just a sentence in this new chapter, maybe only a punctuation mark, but a role nonetheless. Of course, in Cape Breton nothing is that easy.
I arrived home from work that day and set out for a walk to tidy up my grandparents' gravesite, sweep the leaves and weed around the edges. The walk took my directly in front of Glace Bay's General Mining Building.
The building has been the scene of many scenarios in this story. The press conference to dispose of Devco was on its top floor. The men gathered on the ground floor to protest. They broke down the doors and occupied the second floor to demand a fair severance for all miners who would not get a pension after serving their country underground.
Now the bottom floor has converted itself into the miners' Career Development Office. Here, the men arrived a few weeks ago to apply for the enhanced severances they fought so hard to have, the severances that a federal arbitrator said they would receive. It seemed that everyone would walk away with a piece of the future tucked inside his wallet.
But as I approached the parking lot I noticed a truck parked by the road and two men sitting in the back holding poster boards. I made my way to the sidewalk in front of them, passing through a group of teenagers playing road hockey. There were news cameras around the truck and the men were speaking to a reporter.
It was my understanding that Mr. Outhouse, the federal arbitrator, confirmed Devco's responsibility to offer something to each federal employee that signed on to Devco, but according to these men - Devco employees up until the last layoff - this was not the case.
I shared this thought with a woman standing just on the periphery of the scrum. She smiled and shook her head. She was about 40 or so, very tall and slim. She wore a man's Devco hockey team jersey from the colliery league and smoked a cigarette. Her voice was shaky and it looked like she had been crying or perhaps hadn't slept for a very long time.
The tired eyes I've come to recognize as the wife, sister or mother of a Devco man. She told me about the man in the truck. He's an injured miner. Leg broken so many times he can barely walk. He stands in front of the camera like an old veteran. I watch him talk to the reporter and her voice is in my ears as his lips move. She tells me that when the severance packages were announced and the calls came for application, he put his things together and got in the car. His limp slowed him down and his bad back gave him reason to pause whenever the pain shot through his coal-mining spine.
He lives in New Waterford, 15 kilometres or so from the Devco Building. He arrived here 60 minutes or so after the others. He carried himself out of the car and made the painful walk to the door to see hundreds of others in front of him. He was placed on a list of first come, first served. Like Dollar Forty-nine Day at Woolco. No rain checks. He was five-hundred-and-fifty-something on a list that, as it turned out, will only give out around 400 severances. This man will have nothing now.
She said, "I thought everyone would be looked after, that's what they said." Her eyes were heavy as she lit another cigarette; I was still watching the man in the truck. "He lost everything working there," she continued. "First come, first served. My three-year-old girl is fairer than that. She understands decency."
I couldn't believe what I was hearing.> The most in need left alone because of an hour. Why didn't they just have a race to see who would get the severance? A Devco feats-of-strength competition.
I turned to share this with her but she was gone. I don't know where she went but she was gone. I was left with the sight of this man in the foreground, and a group of young boys shaking hands after the winning goal in the background.
July 01, 2000
The mythology of Cape Breton includes the tough, fearless miner. Giant men tearing away at the earth without fear. As a child I believed this. Over the past year, reality has started to display the miner's human side. A side sometimes heartbreakingly human.
Last week I went to visit a former miner and friend of mine in the hospital. A week before, he had undergone a series of tests that were ordered by cardiologists. I stepped into the room and he was alone lying on his side facing the window.
He's in his early 40s, tall and lean from more than 20 years working in the Devco pits. Although we've always known each other, the events of the past year and a half have bonded our lives in a different way. And since Devco cut him loose, he's never been the same.
I say hi and he slowly turns around and returns my greeting with a quiet smile of his own. I half expected to see machines plugged into his chest or those tiny suction cups applied to his torso. But none of that. He explains that he's suffering from some allergy. I know otherwise.
From speaking to his wife on the phone the other day, I know that he doesn't sleep. He rarely eats. He can't stop thinking about how he'll feed his children if he can't find work. His knee is busted and arthritis fills his joints. No severance in the world will increase his employment prospects.
We talk for a minute. Mostly me just making conversation as he looks out the window onto the ocean waves storming in the distance. I tell him it'll be fine. It sickens me to patronize him. I barely spit the words out. "Yes. Fine." he replies. "I'm never going to be hired by anyone. No one. I left my knee in the pit. It's over."
At that moment a nurse hurried in asking me to leave. Visiting hours were over. I was speechless. My inability to say the right words made me sick. The curtain closed around him and I walked out the door.
After that I met with a friend and we went for a walk on the boardwalk of Dominion Beach. A picturesque Maritime beach, Dominion sits in the heart of Cape Breton coal mining towns. Siting on its sand you can see the chiselled cliffs of Glace Bay on your right, and on your left stands the Town of New Waterford. On the skyline that lays beneath the infinite layers of cloud are church steeples, the coal powered Lingan Power Plant and the lifeless pit head of Lingan Mine.
We walk along the shore and the beach is empty. It's early evening and the signature of the beach washes up against my ankles: it's coal. The water here is full of it. It has washed up here, wave upon wave for generations upon generations. Ahead in the distance some figures gather around a small fire. We get closer and it's two men sharing a drink they produce from a tiny blue cooler.
"Coal's thick tonight boys," I say laughing. My friend knows them and we sit. One of the men is a miner and knows my hospital-bound pal. We talk about him for a moment. "It's not simple. Look at my situation." He offers me a drink and continues, "my severance is 60 grand. But I've got one of the guaranteed jobs in the privatized Devco they're talking about. Problem is, I take the severance, and I can't work at the mine. If I take the job and the mine closes, what do I do? Sometimes it keeps me up, gives my ticker a strain, too."
It's a gamble. A gamble that has taken the toll on men. We thank them and walk on. The sun sets brilliantly over the coal filled waters and the church steeples. Orange and crimson swatches disappearing into night.
June 17, 2000
Like everywhere else in the world, June 11th landed on a Sunday this year in Cape Breton. But in the mining towns of the island, this Sunday was no ordinary day. It was Davis Day, the day these towns remember the Miner and his sacrifice, the Miner's wife and her loss, as well as the inextricable link we all have with the industry. And this Davis Day stands out among Davis Days of the past. This could very well be our last with the coal industry alive.
Like every year, we gather as a community to remember the men and women who laid down the foundation of this island. The Miners' Memorial Park in New Waterford is filled with parents and children, old men with canes and older women with sun hats. At the microphone, a familiar face is about to greet the people. It's the union president. I feel a slight tension from a few men around me.
It's only a few days since the arbitration details have been disclosed but ever since, words have been exchanged and some lines have been drawn. And not just between miners and their union, but between numerous others around town. Those standing around me today are examples. An hour ago I spoke to the man on my left. His name is Doug and he's a miner, 48 years old. Thanks to the arbitration results, he'll get a pension. He's happy with the deal and wants the union to accept the arbitration and concentrate on working out severance details for those with less than 25 years' service.
The woman in front of me is a storeowner married to a man who has 23 years service. He'll either receive a severance or attempt to find work with whatever remains when the privatization of Prince Mine occurs. She sneered at the comments Doug made and praised the union for fighting for all miners, regardless of age. Doug snapped back, "He wants to keep his job and he wants to keep his office, Linda." (Apparently they knew each other, this is Cape Breton after all.) He continued, "He doesn't get a pension, so he'll have to go underground. He should support the arbitration. We deserve it."
Her response was lightening quick, "And we don't? You're so cynical." She went on to express her admiration of the union and their intentions, citing years of evidence and testimonial. The two were hammering away at each other. It became increasingly heated. Doug agreed to disagree and stretched out his hand. Linda looked at it, and then dropped her head toward the ground. Doug looked at me and then walked away.
These last two weeks have been significant. Conversations like this one have been commonplace. I sat in front of my television and watched the House of Commons pass third reading on Bill C-11, the dismantling of Devco. I have sat at coffee tables and watched with the naked eye friendships breaking because of the division this arbitration has produced. And I have felt some of its wake myself. A mining friend I have visited many times in these articles - a friend whose family has moved since he lost his job, a man who sold his home and so much more - was rushed to the hospital last week. He thought it was a heart attack, the doctors think it was anxiety. I think it's Devco. The stress. The pressure. Maybe not an attacked heart, but surely a broken down one.
June 05, 2000
A local politician once described Cape Breton as the Third World of Canada. Needless to say it was as much rhetoric as truth, but our community is in bad shape economically.
Last week a young man visited me at work. His father died a few years ago and his mother couldn't support him any longer. She had two younger girls and asked this boy, barely 18, to leave. He came to me for help and I took him to the office of community services. We set him up with a social worker and began the social assistance process.
While sitting in the waiting area I was saddened by what was around me. The room was packed. There were young parents in front of strollers, elderly men hanging their heads and middle-aged men staring into the wall in front of them. It was a capacity crowd. The social worker half joked when we spoke about the numbers of clients, "We're the only growth industry in Cape Breton. Now, with the Steel Plant and Devco leaving, we're going to need a back shift."
I walked out the door of the provincial building and stood directly across from the local union hall. A crowd had gathered into the hundreds. There were police everywhere and there were media bustling about. For a second I thought maybe there was a parade gathering, but then I realized what was going on. This was the day the Devco arbitrator announced his ruling. He was asked to end the severance /pension debate.
It was the moment of truth for several hundred families. Previously, anyone under 50 years old, regardless of the number of years they'd put in, would not receive any pension. I met a man with 29 years service who was 49 years, 11 months on December 31, 2000 and would not originally have qualified for the pension. Others with a third of that service, but older than 50, would get a pension. It was widely believed to be unjust.
Months ago the miners held a work stoppage and a hunger strike. This arbitrator was appointed and ever since, the families, union and government have all lobbied to support their position. I stood in the parking lot and saw a man I recognized as my 49-year-old neighbour. This decision was incredibly important to his family. He told me the miners had won the arbitration. Pension privileges would be extended to any miner with 25 years service or more regardless of age. The deal involves over $50 million and affects 250 miners.
"I'm 49. I won," he said. "But the new pension's pro-rated. Every year you're less than 50, you lose a percentage of your benefits."
I said he must be happy, but the words were barely out of my mouth when a group of men walked by in a rage. One relatively young man turned toward the union hall and yelled, "This isn't right, we're gonna shut this island down."
He stopped to talk to us. There was a confrontation. "What do you want?" the older miner asked. The younger man said, "What they owe me. What they're responsible for." More words were exchanged between the men. The younger man seemed to think that the union and community wanted more. The older miner believed that this was a victory. This was fair because the arbitration said that the federal government was wrong in January, 1999 when they announced their inequitable pension/severance formula.
After their words, the younger man walked away as angry as before. The older miner turned to me saying, "The last mine is gonna need 400, maybe 500 men. Looks like they're all gonna walk away with something."
Across the street the cameras buzzed around the union hall. The union men stoked the fire and 250 men clenched a victory in their hands camouflaged as three pages of an arbitrator's report.
May 23, 2000
Last week I stopped off at a new employment office set up by Devco to help displaced miners find new work. The Devco Career Development Centre is sort of like a high school guidance office or Human Resources Employment Centre.
There are computers plugged into the Net, there are self-evaluation handbooks strewn across a makeshift bookcase and newspapers on an old coffee table. There are a few men talking near a window and a man in a shirt and tie buzzing around a desk.
The tallest man was a friend of my dad's. We struck up a conversation immediately. He's 43 and is nowhere near a pension. A Devco employee since he was 21, even 22 years service won't do it. He worked in the train department and spent almost no time underground. Like almost every Devco man I've spoken to however, he has a debilitating vocational injury. He's deaf in one ear, the result of his public service hauling coal along an ear-splitting track.
We walked outside the office with two other men who wanted to have a cigarette, and I asked them what they were at this office for. They were here to look for work, plain and simple. The other two men were even younger than my friend and there was no pension in their future. I sort of spoke this aloud when one of the strangers corrected me. "We'll see when the arbitration finishes. I'm not out yet."
I asked him his name and he blurted out some sort of nickname I missed, and I didn't want to ask him to clarify. The 48-year-old was 30 years into his federal employment with Devco and, under the present formula used to determine pension eligibility, he doesn't qualify. "There are men with a dozen years less than me getting pensions," he said. "It's not fair."
He explained that after the near riot in the fall at this very building, the federal government appointed a mediator to look into the pension/severance guidelines. The mediator is Bruce Outhouse and his decision is near. The men on the fence are nervous. This man wonders if the guidelines will be bent. The other men wonder how far the bend can go.
I ask them where the cut-off line will end if it's stretched. My tall friend interjects, "What's unjust is only in relation to the cut-off age. Now, it's 50 years old, so you think it's unjust. Outhouse drops it to 45?you're happy, what about the guy who's 44?" A short silence. He continues, "The truth is that no matter what Outhouse says next week or next month someone is going to feel ripped off."
We continue to chat and I leave the men outside the career development office calmly arguing. I walk down the street and pass the town theatre. That night there is a concert to honour the "Men of the Deeps" miner choir with membership into the Savoy Theatre's hall of fame. I come back that night. It is an evening of the island's finest entertainers paying homage to a legacy. Not only of music but of a symbol. In this town, every symbolic creation is of the miner. Our young boys wear the symbol of the miner on their hockey sweaters, the symbol of those men standing outside the career development office hours before.
The concert ends with the "Men of the Deeps". They enter, coal helmets lit, black from head to toe, singing the lyrics of our past and our present. I walk away wondering who will replace the miner on those hockey sweaters. Who will inhabit the lyrics of the future.
May 04, 2000
One of the biggest news stories since our mines were given a death sentence has been the 900-job call centre Jean Chretien hand-delivered to cushion the loss of Devco: EDS and their customer service business.
This week EDS Canada held their initial job fairs at our civic arena, Centre 200. In the early morning, groups of a hundred or so piled into the fenced-off foyer for a primary screening. This continued the better part of four days, a new group every 25 minutes or so. The numbers were unofficial but must have been into the thousands after the first screening alone.
Part of my job at my youth centre is to council young people towards employment opportunities. All too often this means checking out seat sales to the West.
But today, I was joining one of my clients at her interview with EDS. We checked in at the front desk and quietly waited with the others for a number to be called. It was like a championship hockey game was about to be played and we were waiting in line for standing room tickets.
The people were everywhere, inside, nervously flapping a resume by their face, and outside, pressed up against the glass, looking in for some cue, some sign that it was their turn to strut their stuff in hopes of landing a job. There were all ages and races, genders and appearances. When unemployment hovers (unofficially, of course) at 48 per cent, it is completely democratic. My client and I sat down as part of a group of 30 or so. In front of us were two men in their 40s. The man on the left had on a suit that he hadn't worn since the mid-'70s. The man on the right wore old corduroy slacks and a white shirt with an iron-burnt outline on his back. They were talking, and I felt I had to say something.
"Sir? Hi? uh? maybe you should throw your coat on before your interview." We laughed about it and began to talk. He was a laid-off miner of 20 years. I asked him what he thought of the call centre coming to town. I expected anger, maybe just cynicism or a hint of depression. But he was very happy. "This could be long term work. Not call back after call back. And clean work, too."
He went on to explain that as an employee of Devco he'd never known more than four or five months work at a time. "In all my time there, I've never seen the place run like it was a business. It was always a political thing. That's not the miners' fault or nothing, but I'm glad it's gone." As we talked he explained that in his time off he's upgraded his skills. He took a night course in bookkeeping and accounting. It turns out he's got a year of employment insurance and then a small severance that he's still deciding what to do with.
"But what about the community?" I asked. "What about the hundreds of families who won't get work here? Will this call centre be enough?" He thought for a second. "No offence, but do you know what drives me crazy about your generation? You think you're the first generation that had to move, that couldn't find work. We're an entire island of migrants. We're just lucky we were able to stick around this long. It's never been easy. It's time to stop complaining and move on. Get what we can get."
I asked him if he thought this was an answer for the families on welfare, or the small businesses that need a workforce. Suddenly there was a loud knock on the window outside. It was his wife and 20-year-old son. "They're in the next group," he said. "Who knows, maybe this'll be a family business after all."
April 16, 2000
I've come to know several men and their families over the past year and a half. It has been a sort of blessing in disguise, this Devco closure. For me, I've found a greater appreciation of what they do underground and how difficult their lives have been. It has been enlightening.
My father and I sat down with one of these men last week. He's a friend of the family who wanted some advice. Next year he'll be receiving his severance package and he wants to invest it for his children's education. He has two kids, one 16 and the other 13.
We talked about his options at a coffee shop in a tiny strip mall just outside Glace Bay. This, however, is not the kind of strip mall found in urban Canada. No Wal-Mart or Sam the Record Man here. There's the cafe a credit union and a museum. It's also home to a new initiative called the Miners Co-op. Within this co-op, a different kind of investment option is being considered.
As we enter the coffee shop, there are two men out front, intensely arguing over a parking spot. Our friend identifies them as his buddies at work and chuckles as we walk by, "Actually, they're brothers, you should see them in the pit."
I ask him about the co-op next door and he tells me the story. Twenty years ago, the federal government was investigating coal options outside of its existing operations. The Oil Crisis of the '70s made it necessary for the federal resource policy makers to have a cheap backup to oil and gas. Coal was the natural option and the Donkin Mine was born. Its development was stunted however when the coal industry was being dismantled in the years to come.
The possibility of this mine's viable operations has always been a light at the end of the tunnel for many displaced miners on the island and the union that represents them. As my father and I talk options with our friend, another man walks into the cafe. He's a prospective member of this new co-op, and we discuss what's going on: in partnership with a local economic development agency in the community, about 20 miners have signed on to invest their pensions in purchasing the rights to mine Donkin. The co-op miner goes on to explain some of the particulars.
The Donkin mine is a portion of Devco's assets that are currently on the auction block. The co-op initially was not considered on the short list to purchase any of the rights contained in these options. Therefore, they've been lobbying the parties involved for a re-evaluation of their business plan.
The Donkin co-op would employ about 300 men underground. The mine, although flooded at the moment, could be fully operational in under a year. The co-op miner explained to us that the roof is solid and high, the walls safe and the seam contains a rich, cheap and easily obtainable source to feed the coal orders of Devco's main client, Nova Scotia Power.
"We want to keep 300 men working. With a private mine at Prince with another 300, we'd have 600 working underground and 600 spending their money on the surface. Now if everyone else in the community would come on side, we'd have a shot at swaying them to sell us the leases."
He talks a little while longer and after glancing at his watch realizes he's an hour late picking up his son at hockey practice. I ask my dad's friend if the co-op is an option for him. "I can't afford to think that way," he says. "I've got to have certainty." He explains that he received his first employment insurance cards in the mail after his final layoff in December. "That will do me a year, then the severance. I've got to have some work."
He asks me to find out some information on the new 1,000-job call centre. "The wife and I could work there now that the kids are older. They're not jobs with the kind of money in the pit, but I won't be worried about the roof coming in on my head either."
I ask him what he thinks about these call centre jobs that the federal government has brought in. "It's a new time. We've got to change, that's how we'll give our kids a future. That's how our community will survive. The union won't like it. The opposition politicians won't like it. But I'm thinking about my kids."
As we walk away and into our cars I notice the same two men arguing over the same parking space. Neither one budging and neither one parked.
April 4, 2000
Political secrets are often the worst kept. A week ago the rumour mill was on fire with reports that the federal government was arriving on Friday to announce a major job initiative in Cape Breton. On the day of the announcement, Jean Chretien himself landed at a local hotel to give the word. Inside the inner sanctum of the hotel, surrounded by an invited audience of "community leaders", the prime minister announced 900 jobs for Cape Breton over the next five years, and likely 1,500 in the five years following.
A Texas company, EDS Corporation, will move its "Customer Service Professional Services" from North Carolina to Cape Breton. The staff will make between $10 and $15 dollars an hour and receive a comprehensive benefits package. As far as government contributions to the company, the numbers are lengthy. The facts are still being gathered but you can bet there are huge amounts involved, possibly as much as $13 million federally and over $8 million provincially.
The community will need a few days to gauge what's really going on here. Is it just a carrot in the face of next year's voters, a Liberal plan to win Atlantic seats the next time around? Is it another in a long line of tax funds invested in soon-to-be-departed foreign companies?
Or is it an honest answer to the extermination of Devco and the hundreds of millions of dollars it's taking with it to the grave? Mr. Chretien said Friday that, "?this is not the end of all the work that has to be done in Cape Breton. We have a lot more work to do." I'll be interested in finding out what my fellow islanders think this work is for.
March 26, 2000
The first time that I walked down a mine shaft I was about 10 years old. A school outing to the Glace Bay Miners' Museum led me down an old tunnel guided by a retired miner. What I remember the most from that day is being led down in darkness, fixated on the disappearing light.
I travelled a similar road years later as an actor, portraying a miner at the now abandoned Lingan Mine. We descended into the mouth of the pit in an old rake, and although it was over a decade later, the same thought pervaded; the disappearing surface and the growing distance from the light seized me. In reflection of the past two years of life in Cape Breton, I find myself consumed with a similar feeling.
The report of the Cape Breton Economic Adjustment Fund was released last week. It was compiled by a special committee formed last year to study the community's opinions of how to spend the $80 million set aside by the federal government to cushion the collapse of our coal industry. A group of seven rode around the island listening to submissions from individuals and groups. Whether oral or written submissions, the committee was to gather every voice and present this input to the powers that be in Ottawa and Halifax.
I remember being at one of these meetings in Glace Bay. I talked to a few people in and around the building and asked them what they thought would come of it. Most were cynical. Many questioned how much local input would make it to the final draft, while others saw it as mere lip service, not believing that it would create any effect either way. One thing everyone agreed on was that there needed to be some short-term solutions to ward of a real crisis.
What did the report say? The committee must have listened to some of the same voices I did. The first element of the report stated that there needed to be a "Made in Cape Breton Solution." It stressed the importance of investment into the knowledge-based economy, tourism, petroleum development and the culture industry. The report goes on to claim that we need "quick action for short term solutions."
Not everyone is sure this will happen. A few days following the announcement of the report's findings I spoke to a man from the small community of Reserve Mines. While the two of us were waiting for the decrepit old jalopy that our municipal government refers to as public transit, I asked him what he thought of the report.
It turns out that he's a recently released miner. Too young for a pension, he and his family have already had their car repossessed and they aren't too far from a personal crisis. He told me that he felt the government money would be pilfered away through bureaucracy. With detailed understanding and retention of the report, he explained to me that the adjustment fund's report stated that the money be dealt out by a government agency already in place.
"That's what they call local control. Do you know how much government money has come down through these government agencies already? $80 million is a drop in the bucket, and they haven't solved a thing. Devco's entire history is the story of mismanaged government money. It's only gotten worse."
I asked him where he thought the money should go, and he talked about his inability to buy groceries last week. He talked about wanting to move but not being able to afford it. "I don't have time to come up with those answers." As his stop came he turned to me saying, "It's like the whole place is going down the mine together and somebody snapped its cable and we're not gonna have a way out, a way back, you know? The light's getting smaller and all we can see is it disappearing. Little by little, you know what I mean?" He left and I remembered those two experiences I had years ago, thinking to myself, yes, I know exactly what you mean.
March 12, 2000
Like many Canadians last week, I closely watched Paul Martin's delivery of Budget 2000. I sat with my boss and his friend Tony, a former miner now half blind from a rock fall years ago. As we talked about any possible good news for Cape Breton, Tony spoke out.
"Do you want to know what I think?" the former miner said, "I think the Liberals want one thing...a surplus. They know that'll get them elected forever. Shutting down Devco... that kind of thinking gave them the surplus. The surplus'll get them elected again. They're not gonna give back what they took." About an hour or so afterwards, I was still thinking about this connection between the budget surplus and Devco.
That evening I strolled downtown on a hunch. I had heard that there would be a public discussion of the budget at a nearby Legion. I approached the building and walked past two huge trucks complete with satellite dishes sitting adjacent to Branch 12. As I entered, I saw the cameras and black-clad technical workers buzzing around monitors and checking out shadows on a long table. CBC Newsworld's Counterspin was doing a remote in Cape Breton.
I stood around until a small audience took their seats and the table became inhabited by its panel: mining union president Steve Drake, former premier and present Liberal leader Russell MacLellan, a local businessman and a local community activist. Next to me in the audience was our member of Parliament.
The telecast began and quickly focused on this idea: When the finance minister stood in front of the House of Commons to spell out what good fortune lay in front of our wealthy country, he failed to mention that this fortune has come partiality on the backs of rural, resource-based communities like Cape Breton. The question was, what do we do now?
When the time came for the audience to query the panel, I immediately put up my hand. "You, as community leaders have agreed that the federal government has slashed away our employment base on the road to a new economy. You have each stated that with the disappearance of thousands of jobs over 24 months we are in a crisis. What are we going to do as a community to survive?"
The response was not what I expected, but I probably should have. The union blamed the federal government. The federal government blamed the province. Only the local businessman addressed my question, and his response was to brandish his $8 an hour tele-marketing jobs as evidence of a bright future for Cape Breton They continued to argue and bicker as the telecast wound down.
I walked out the door and sat in front of the waterfront on a mild winter night. The coal piers stood like a skeleton on the horizon. And I didn't get angry at the lack of answers. For over a year now I've been looking for answers and blaming those I ask for their inability to come up with any. Maybe I've been wrong, or maybe it's just too late.
I took a deep breath of salt water air and was hit by this thought: Maybe there are no answers. Is it out of our control...have we spent over a year reaching for something that perhaps exceeds our grasp?
February 29, 2000
This week marks a full year of sitting down at this library's old computer and sharing my thoughts with those who double click their way into the stories of my community. Almost to the day when I was first contacted about this diary, a radio producer called with another request. I had the pleasure of being interviewed as part of an upcoming documentary on coal mines, miners and the communities who depend on them. We met at a local pub and he asked me questions about my town and about our ties to coal mining.
When he asked me why the miner was so important to the landscape of Cape Breton, I could only drift back to the men I've talked to in this year of waiting, fearing and hoping in Cape Breton Island. He suggested I read one of my entries as part of the recording. I picked one I wrote over Christmas, about a man from Glace Bay planning a move from the island. It always stayed with me, and after reading it I decided that I'd revisit Jimmie and his family.
That evening I knocked on his door. His youngest daughter giggled at the entrance and closed the door in my face. I knocked again and Jimmie opened the door with little Megan in his arms. He welcomed me in to his home and if my last visit hadn't been only a couple of months ago, I wouldn't have recognized the place. The family picture on the wall was missing, replaced by a faded yellow patch on the drywall. Gone were the hockey trophies that stood on the living room end table. Jimmie's wife sat on the only visible proof that this was indeed the same home, an old living room couch. A very quiet woman at the loudest of times, she sat with a first-aid kit in her hands while her husband limped over to the couch.
"Busted my knee at work," Jimmie said. It was a nasty gash from his kneecap to his foot. I sat on a covered milk carton full of old records in the corner of the room and replied, "Figured out where you're moving to?"
"Laura and the girls are going up with her brother in Ontario."
I asked Laura when she was leaving. She applied a soft moist cloth to his leg and simply responded, "Soon."
Without as much as a grimace, Jimmie looked at me as his wife rid his wound of any dirt "Laura's uncle and aunt from Calgary are buying the place. I didn't want to do it this way, but I could be out of work any day. Got to be ready."
I was quiet as they tended to their oldest daughter's crying in the next room. It was just then when I thought of a question the CBC interviewer had asked me earlier that day: If I felt that the miner was an important part of our culture and, in turn, of our understanding of ourselves, what will happen when he's gone? My afternoon response could never match the answers that this family gave. They're leaving. There you have it. Simple enough. The miners are taking their families and leaving. It's beyond blame. Beyond Devco. The mines are closing and my neighbours' homes are being emptied of their children. Replaced by retired aunts and uncles.
February 14, 2000
Like any youth worker, my job is a combination of tasks. Some days I'm a counsellor, other days I'm a janitor. The job description is as varied as the young people themselves. Lately I've been involved in the programming of a work experience project with 10 young adults in the community. I've talked to employers throughout the island and one of the places I've looked into is "Silicon Island".
Silicon Island is a high tech complex located in the middle of Industrial Cape Breton. Like a blade of grass that somehow grows between cracks in a sidewalk, this complex of glass and computers stands out in a community so long dependent on Dickensian coal and steel. Since the place was highly touted by all levels of government as the future for Cape Breton, I entered here last week looking for an open-minded business that would take a chance with my young participants. This complex houses the best and the brightest in Cape Breton's fledgling new economy. In this building you find Web Design firms, Multi-media software designers, Internet services of several shapes and sizes. Though it's been open for the past three years, this was my first visit to the complex. I roamed the foyer and pondered my first stop. A man was standing near a door eating an apple.
We struck up a conversation and Devco came up. He openly shared his thoughts and as the conversation developed it was evident that I was hearing an opinion seldom expressed out loud, but silently held by many. "These miners only talk about their future, what are we telling the children of our community?" I was silent and nodded my head. It made me a little uncomfortable and I stared at my feet for a moment. I may have even looked around to make sure there was no six-foot-five miner standing over my shoulder. "There's $80 million going to come into the economy, and they want bigger pensions. I feel sorry for the miners, but we've got to think long term here." He was referring to the promised federal-provincial economic development funds that have caused a controversy on the island.
I asked him about the miners. What are they supposed to do? "Retrain. Go back to school. North America's been downsizing for years. Do you think that these are the only 45-year-old men in this situation? The only thing they say is, give us a pension."
It has been one full year since this all began. Last January you would never have heard these sentiments. Just whispers. This goes to prove that the whispers have become louder. He took a bite of his apple and said "I'm from Cape Breton and I've lost my job before. There was no pension waiting for me. My world changed and therefore I changed. The miners will have to change too."
I discussed this with him for a while afterwards. I presented many of the stories I've heard over the past year, told him the names of the miners and the names of their children. I told him in detail the situations these men were in and he replied with a nod of his head. With that I had to go. I thanked him for his time and, as I walked down the hall, I passed a group of children with their teacher on what appeared to be a field trip.
Many of these children are the progeny of coal's last generation. One little boy about seven was showing his middle-aged teacher how to connect to the Internet. The boy and I exchanged smiles and I kept walking.
January 30, 2000
Last week I found myself walking along the coast in an area called Whitney Pier. This is at the mouth of Sydney harbour and home to the massive coal piers that served as a departure point for countless hull-loads of black rock. In the distance there was a small group of men standing at the shore just out of my sight.
I approached and recognized one of the men. This is a small town and everybody more or less knows everyone else, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out how I knew him. I walked next to them and watched them out of the corner of my eye, pretending to be looking at a huge boat across the water. They were talking about the boat and, as I heard his voice, something clicked: he was on the news last week. He was one of the Devco miners on strike outside Prince Colliery. I introduced myself immediately and asked the men what was so special about the massive red and white ship across the way. Before there was an answer, I felt one of them looking at me.
"I know you. Allen's son, Michael?" His son apparently prints out these diaries and gives him a copy. Another man asked what the diaries were and a very strange conversation started. Strange for me anyway. For some reason I never think anybody who knows me reads these thoughts and experiences. I wasn't sure how these men would react.
The fellow who recognized me said point blank "You don't talk a lot about keeping the mines open, do you Michael?" I replied, "I write what I see and hear. I can't make it up if it's not what I hear." He looked at me and laughed. "Who the hell wants them open? Sure as hell not me." He told me that the fight for him isn't about keeping any mines open; it's about compensating a man for sacrificing his body while on the government payroll. "I'm forty-five years old. I've had the ceiling cave in on me twice. Do you know what that's like? While I was employed by the federal government I had this leg crushed under a wall of coal."
He went on to describe how his brother was thirty-nine when a fan belt disengaged and hit him in the face, scarring him for life. This brother is also suffering from 50 per cent hearing loss after manning machinery underground.
Another man spoke up. "I read what people from the mainland say. They say we don't deserve a pension. They say our strike was a waste of time and that we should just shut up and stop complaining. We don't deserve compensation." He was quiet for what was only seconds but felt like an hour. "Maybe they find it funny that I can't walk through an airport metal detector without setting it off. I've got pins in my wrist and a plate in my leg. All of that happened while employed with the government. That's why I deserve a pension. And that's why we walked out."
I was quiet trying to memorize all that was said.
The oldest man walked a few steps ahead and pointed to the boat. He said it was unloading imported coal from a ship owned by a millionaire cabinet minister. "And they wonder why we don't trust the federal government?"
January 17, 2000
On Sunday, January 2, a group of men in Prince mine sat together before they were to go underground. They talked about their lack of power in the decisions that were shaping their lives. And they decided not to go to work that day. Today they would send a message up the chain of command straight to Ottawa.
The feeling spread and soon the entire shift walked out. Monday morning, several hundred men who showed up to work joined them and what the media called a "wildcat strike" was born. I immediately walked down to the Devco offices and found a couple hundred miners blocking the doors. The cameras gathered and into the early evening they stood like torch lights illuminating the miners' faces and catching their words. One miner spoke directly to the scrum: "Ottawa has to look in my eyes and tell me that I don't deserve any dignity now they're through with me."
The next day Devco ordered the men back to work. The Canadian Industrial Relations board demanded that the union, The United Mine Workers of America, communicate the order to the miners. The men replied by blockading the remaining Devco Properties. The irony was that this strike wasn't authorized by the UMWA. This was a protest born in the grassroots.
The union managed to get assurances from the miners that essential services would operate, including the Nova Scotia Power generating plant that provides power to thousands of the province's homes. Their coal stockpile was becoming low and the men blocked the gates to imported coal.
That night, I stopped at a friend's for supper. The local news came on and reported a rumour that caught my attention, that Devco was going to close the remaining mine because of the strike. My friend Mike went wild. His dad worked the pit for 30 years and, needless to say, the mine crisis was close to his heart. He spilt his tea to the floor and slammed the table. "They're blackmailing us!" Several expletives later, I excused myself and Mike just watched me leave. "There'll be trouble now," he said. "The men have nothing to lose."
The next morning 12 miners descended into the mine. They told their union they would not leave until the federal government came here to discuss a new deal. They took some water and little else down the hole into the mine. Hundreds gathered outside. Candles were lit and a group of women prayed. It was hard to gauge any collective emotion until the word spread that several hundred Mounties had been called in to stand ready. Seventy-five years ago the army was called in to end a mining strike. A man was killed in the streets, shot dead in the process. It is a part of our history not lost on a single soul that lives in the mining towns of Cape Breton Island.
That night I had a feeling I haven't felt since I was in grade school. I was very young and a siren ripped through the air signalling an explosion in the pit. A man who lived two blocks from my home burnt to death, died serving his country as a government employee. That day I wished the mines would disappear and, as the snow fell last week, I wished the same.
The next day the men cleared the way to allow imported coal into the power plant and the minister of natural resources agreed to sit down with the union. Tension was high everywhere as they announced a proposed settlement to the strike. Would the men accept? The government agreed to create a committee to re-evaluate the severance formula. That day in a tiny boxing club the men gathered and accepted the offer. Soon afterward the twelve men came out of the pit to a hero's welcome. "We've got some power after all" my Devco-employed neighbour told me. "I don't know if it's the answer we want, but at least they're listening to our questions".