Coal Black Heart (33 page)

The Alexander MacGillivray quotes come from his testimony to the Royal Commission on the Relations of Labour and Capital, April, 1888—quoted in
Cape Bretons Magazine,
46 (August 1987), pp. 54-57—as does Duncan MacIntyre’s testimony.

The description of the company store is from Mellor,
The Company Store: J.B.
McLachlan and the Cape Breton Coal Miners 1900–1925,
pp. 12–15.

The Gordon MacGregor quote about the company stores comes from “The Pluck Me… Life and Death of the Company Store,”
Cape Bretons
Magazine,
Number 3, p. 3.

The general information about Harris comes from Robert Tuck,
Gothic
Dreams: The Life and Times of a Canadian Architect, William Critchlow
Harris, 1854-1913
(Toronto: Dundurn Press Ltd. 1978), pp. 230-231. The section about Broughton mostly comes from pp. 165-174 in the same book.

The date of the mine closure comes from a Canadian Press story from July 2007 and the website of the Cape Breton Highlanders Association (
http://faculty.uccb.ns.ca/highlanders/index.htm
).

My main sources about child miners were Robert McIntosh,
Boys in the Pits: Child Labour in Coal Mines
(Montreal and Kingston, Ont.: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000 and Ian MacKay, “The Realm of Uncertainty: The experience of work in the Cumberland coal mines 1873-1927.”

The material about young miners crying on the way to the pits, etc., comes from a variety of sources including family members. This anecdote about young miners still believing in Santa Claus comes from Ian MacKay, “The Realm of Uncertainty: The experience of work in the Cumberland coal mines 1873-1927,” p. 27.

The photo of the young miners appears in
Cape Bretons Magazine,
issue no. 3, p. 9, where the fact that Allie Mackenzie died in a World War I gas attack was also noted. The information about Tius Tutty comes from
Cape Bretons Magazine,
June 1974, pp. 5–11.

The quotes from Edgar Bonnar, George Dooley, Lybison MacKay, Ray MacNeil, Bob Hachey, Joe E. Tabor, Jimmy Johnson and Archie MacDonald come from Lawrence Christmas,
Coal Dust Grins: Portraits of Canadian Coal Miners
(Calgary: Cambria Publishing, 1998).

The quote about the changing status of boy miners comes from MacKay “The Realm of Uncertainty: The experience of work in the Cumberland coal mines 1873-1927,” p. 26.

The constitution and by-laws of the Sydney Mines Friendly Society is on file with Nova Scotia Archives.

The quote from the federal Department of Mines report comes from Gray,
The Coal-Fields and Coal Industry of Eastern Canada, A General Survey and Description,
pp. 51-52.

The numbers of deaths inside the Nova Scotia colliers come from the Nova Scotia Mine Fatalities 1838-1992 database compiled by the Nova Scotia Archives.

The quotes from Gerald McGregor comes from
Cape Bretons Magazine,
no. 3, p. 3 and p. 9.

The newspaper account of the young miners morning ritual is quoted in MacKay, “The Realm of Uncertainty: The experience of work in the Cumberland coal mines 1873-1927,” pp. 26-27.

The anecdote about Johnny Miles and the rats is found in Michael J. Bailey’s obituary of Miles that appeared in the
Boston Globe
after Miles’s death on June 14, 2003.

The Sid Timmons quotes come from
Another Night: Cape Breton Stories True
& Short & Tall
(Wreck Cove, N.S.: Breton Books, 1995), pp. 185-94.

Dan J. McDonald told his story to Ed Payne in “Farewell to Coal: Into the mines as a Child” in
The Atlantic Advocate,
August 1967, pp. 21-23.

The description of coal mining in Nova Scotia in the early 1900s comes from MacKay, “The Realm of Uncertainty: The experience of work in the Cumberland coal mines 1873-1927,” pp. 13-15.

The description of work and pay rates in the mines comes from Cameron,
The
Pictonian Colliers,
pp. 107–111.

The information on Pictou Twist comes from Kevin Newman’s article on the subject posted on the History of Pictou County website (
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~nspictou/elect_text/pictou_twist.htm
).

The words of Huey D. MacIsaac come from Lawrence Christmas,
Coal Dust
Grins,
p. 238.

The line about roaming around in the dark comes from Dan J. McDonald as told to Ed Payne, “Farewell to Coal: Into the mines as a Child,” p. 21.

The description of the Springhill disaster of 1891 comes from “A terrible mine disaster, probably one hundred lives at least are lost,”
New York Times,
Feb. 22, 1891. The ages of the dead are noted in MacKay, “The Realm of Uncertainty: The experience of work in the Cumberland coal mines 1873-1927,” p. 29.

The summaries of Cape Breton disasters are from Rennie MacKenzie,
Blast! Cape Breton Coal Mine Disasters
(Wreck Cove, N.S.: Breton Books, 2007).

Con Hogan’s narrative appears in
Cape Bretons Magazine,
No. 21, pp. 5-6.

The Inverness county mining history is gleaned from chapter 11 of J.L. MacDougall’s 1922
History of Inverness County, Nova Scotia;
Douglas Campbell,
Banking on Coal: Perspectives on a Cape Breton Community Within an International Context
(Sydney, N.S.: University College of Cape Breton Press, 1997); and Mary Anne Ducharme, “Coal Boom & Bust in Port Hood” on the Inverness County website (
http://ww.invernessco.com/history_coalboom.html
). She is also the source for the Port Hood information.

The information on the Port Hood explosion comes from Rennie MacKenzie,
Blast!
pp. 58-67. He’s the source on the quote from the
Sydney Daily Post.
The information on the flooding in 1911 comes from a 2003 community profile completed by the Nova Scotia government.

The information on the size and cost of pit ponies comes from Gray,
The Coal-Fields and Coal Industry of Eastern Canada, A General Survey and Description,
p. 41.

Much of the general information on the ponies’ life in the pit comes from the Cape Breton Miners’ Museum’s website (
http://www.minersmuseum.com
). Patrick McNeil’s quotes come from “Horses in the Coalmines,”
Cape Bretons Magazine
32 (August 1982), pp. 36-43.

The information on John Briers’s experience in World War I came from my grandfather’s war records.

The figure for British coal production comes from Barry Supple,
The History
of the British Coal Industry, Vol. 4, 1913–1946: The Political Economy of
Decline
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), p. 4.

The “economic wonders of the world” line comes from Michael Dintenfass,
Managing Industrial Decline: the British Coal Industry Between the Wars
(Athens, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1992), p. 3.

The figure for Nova Scotia coal production is from S.A. Saunders,
The Economic History of the Maritime Provinces: A study prepared for the Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations, 1939,
p. 24.

That is also the source for the information on the state of the coal industry post-World War I and why Nova Scotia’s steel industry couldn’t adapt to the changing environment.

Nova Scotia’s 1913 coal production comes from “Canadian Production of Coal, 1867 to 1976,” Historical Statistics of Canada, Statistics Canada, Table Q1-5, found at
http://www.statcan.ca/english/freepub/11-516-XIE/sectionq/sectionq.htm
.

Sydney steel plant and coalfield production figures come from David Frank, “The Cape Breton Coal Industry and the Rise and Fall of the British Empire Steel Corp.,” pp. 122 and 123.

The minutiae of the Besco takeover comes from “Canada’s Great Merger,”
Saturday Night,
May 15, 1920, p. 18; an article in the
Monetary Times,
Nov. 14, 1919; David Frank, “The Cape Breton Coal Industry and the Rise and Fall of the British Empire Steel Corp.;” and David Schwartzman, “Mergers in the Nova Scotia Coalfields: A History of the Dominion Coal Company 1893-1940,” doctoral thesis, University of California, submitted Aug. 1, 1953.

The information about the miners’ growing political influence comes from M. Earle and H. Gamberg, “The United Mine Workers and the Coming of the CCF to Cape Breton,”
in Acadiensis,
Fall 1989, pp. 3-26, and David Frank, “Company Town/Labour Town: Local Government in the Cape Breton Coal Towns, 1917-1926,” in
Histoire Social—Social History,
May 1981.

The quote from Paul MacEwan comes from his book
Miners and Steelworkers, Labour in Cape Breton,
p. 59.

The information on strikes in Nova Scotia comes from Ian MacKay, “Strikes in the Maritimes, 1901-1914,” in
Acadiensis
13, 1982, pp. 3-56.

Information about the Italian experience in Cape Breton comes from Sam Migliore and A. Evo DiPierro (editors),
Italian Lives: Cape Breton Memories
(Sydney, N.S.: Cape Breton University Press, 1999).

I learned about the Jewish experience from the Glace Bay Synagogue website. Epstein’s story comes from
Pier Ties,
a historical newsletter published by Cape Breton University’s Beaton Institute.

My primary sources for the section on Whitney Pier were
From the Pier, Dear!,
Whitney Pier Historical Society, 1993, and issues of
Pier Ties.
I also obtained information from Maude Barlow and Elizabeth May,
Frederick Street: Life and Death on Canada’s Love Canal
(Toronto: Harper Collins, 2000); Elizabeth Beaton, “An African-American Community in Cape Breton, 1901-1904,” in
Acadiensis,
Spring 1995, pp. 83-84; and Craig Heron, “The Great War and Nova Scotia Steelworkers,” in
Acadiensis,
Spring 1987, pp. 3–34.

The source for the material about the Whitney Pier bar proprietors packing pistols on their hips is Elizabeth Beaton, “An African-American Community in Cape Breton,” p. 95.

Mayann Francis’s stories come from her Lt. Governor’s Community Sprit Awards website (
http://www.communityspiritaward.ca/
).

The figure for British colliery bands in 1900 comes from the St. Austell (U.K.) Band’s website (
http://members.lycos.co.uk/staustellband/
).

General information on the history of brass bands in Cape Breton is from William A. O’Shea,
The Louisbourg Brass Bands
(Louisbourg, N.S.: Louisbourg Heritage Society, 1991).

The Nina Cohen quote comes from John C. O’Donnell,
And Now The Fields Are Green: A Collection of Coal Mining Songs in Canada
(Sydney, N.S: Cape Breton University Press, 1992), p. xi. The list of coal-mining song titles comes from the same source, as do the following excerpts from songs found there:

“I work in the pit, it’s a terrible hole …” (“I Work in the Pit,” collected by Ron MacEachern from the singing of Stan Deveaux)

“I gave my best to Besco/ They gave me their worst.” (“The Soreness of My Soul,” words and music by Leon Dubinsky)

“Deep down in the earth where we take out the coal/ The chill of the mine will soon enter your soul …” (“Down Deep in the Mine,” Marie MacMillan)

George Alfred Beckett from “Old Perl’can” is the title character in “George Alfred Becket,” collected by Ron MacEachern, which is also found in O’Donnell’s collection.

Archie MacInnis appears in “Coal Mining Days,” collected by John C. O’Donnell, in his book
And Now The Fields Are Green.

The Dawn Fraser poem reproduced is “He Starved, He Starved I Tell You,” found in Fraser,
Echoes From Labor’s War: Industrial Cape Breton in the 1920s
(Wreck Cove, N.S.: Breton Books, 1992), pp. 29-30. The autobiographical information about Fraser comes the same source, pp. 9-23.

My main source on the strike of 1922 was the
Sydney Record,
August-September 1922, and Donald MacGillivray, “Military Aid to the Civil Power: The Cape Breton Experience in the 1920s,” in
Cape Breton Historical Essays
(Sydney, N.S: College of Cape Breton Press, 1980).

Dawn Fraser’s poem “Merry Christmas to You Jim” is found in
Echoes From Labor’s War: Industrial Cape Breton in the 1920s,
p. 43.

All of the DeMont family material comes from the genealogical experts of the clan: Frank V. DeMont of Vermont and Allen DeMont of New Glasgow. The spelling of the various related names come from section on the 1751 Gale in The Palatine Project’s genealogical website (
http://www.progenealogists.com/palproject/ns/1751gale.htm
).

The account of the Great Windsor Fire of 1897 comes from the Windsor Fire Department (
http://www.fierygifts.com/wfd/fire1897.html
).

The stories about Clarie DeMont come from my father and uncles. A summary of his athletic accomplishments is found on the Nova Scotia Sport Hall of Fame website (
http://www.novascotiasporthalloffame.com/inductee_view.cfm?InducteeID=73
).

The infant mortality figures come from Donald MacGillivray, “Cape Breton in the 1920s: a Community Besieged” in B.D. Tennyson (ed.),
Essays in Cape Breton History
(Windsor, N.S: Lancelot Press, 1973), pp. 49-67.

The sources for the New Waterford disaster of 1917 were Rennie MacKenzie,
Blast! Cape Breton Coal Mine Disasters,
pp. 79-81, and Men in the Mines: Disasters in the Mines, a Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management website (
http://www.gov.ns.ca/nsarm/virtual/meninmines/disasters.asp?Language=English
).

The information about Humphrey Mellish comes from Philip Girard, Jim Phillips and Barry Cahill,
The Supreme Court of Nova Scotia, 1754–2004: From Imperial Bastion to Provincial Oracle
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), pp. 164-166.

The information on strikes in Nova Scotia comes from Ian McKay, “Strikes in the Maritimes,” pp. 10-19.

The account of the Matewan and Blair Mountain coal mine wars come from “West Virginia’s Mine Wars” on the West Virginia Archives and History website (
http://www.wvculture.org/hiStory/minewars.html
).