The Wake

by Linden MacIntyre

  It was a classic and insoluble dilemma, which made many of the decisions regarding outcomes in the miners’ cases dependent on the subjective disposition of the person or persons handling the claims.

  The other catch was that prior to 1954, there was no hospital in St. Lawrence. Precise medical records were nonexistent in many cases. “Numerical validation” was problematic when there were no numbers to consult.

  And there might have been yet another factor in the medical conundrum: Did the men of St. Lawrence, who welcomed Walter Seibert and his promises, have another weakness that would make them especially vulnerable to both tuberculosis and silicosis?

  Throughout the thirties and the forties, Newfoundlanders—in spite of all the fish and berries—suffered from a range of malnutrition-related illnesses, including beriberi. In 1945, a team of eleven British, American and Canadian doctors confirmed Newfoundland’s shockingly high incidence of tuberculosis and other serious diseases, all presumably aggravated by the profound economic depression in the years in which the economy and politics of the dominion were disintegrating.

  A 1947 report by another British doctor, D.P. Cuthbertson, noted that infant mortality in Newfoundland was two to three times the rate in the United States and almost double that in Canada. The overall death rate from tuberculosis was, as other studies have reported, a shocking three times that in Canada. Dr. Cuthbertson observed that Newfoundland women “appear to age quickly” due to drudgery and malnutrition because the families had “insufficient income to buy food they couldn’t produce for themselves,” and that “undernourishment in general lowers resistance to the disease [tuberculosis].”19

  And on and on it went, the interminable discussion: Were Newfoundlanders unusually vulnerable to serious disease because of structural poverty and malnutrition? Were miners in St. Lawrence even more vulnerable to lung and gastric illnesses because of workplace dust and a lack of sanitation? Did the workplace cause tuberculosis or did tuberculosis, perhaps a consequence of hunger, leave the miners more likely to suffer from silicosis?

  As early as 1950, the federal health department had been interested in establishing a profile of industrial health in the new Canadian province. The study was “observational” and involved 350 industrial sites. Members of a survey team spent three weeks in St. Lawrence, and while there, they met Dr. John Pepper. This was two years before his audacious autopsy of Isaac Slaney, but he was already convinced that the ill health of so many miners was related to the workplace.20

  The federal representatives listened, but there’s no evidence that they paid much attention. And when Dr. Pepper later wrote directly to the government of Canada, asking for a formal investigation, he was told, effectively, to buzz off—that Ottawa would respond only to an official request from the health authorities in the government of Newfoundland.

  By 1954, Dr. Pepper was gone. He’d been largely ignored by the federal and provincial health establishments and stonewalled by officials of the mining companies, who complained that he seemed to be pursuing a “vendetta” aimed maliciously at them.21

  His legacy of activism remained, though, and ultimately became a force that could no longer be ignored. In 1954, officials of the departments of health and mines in St. John’s were conferring earnestly about the results of dust monitoring in the St. Lawrence mines, and they were committed to producing a code of mining practice for prevention of silicosis.

  But it wasn’t until 1959, after six years of dust measurement and dry official meetings—and nine years after Dr. Pepper first relayed his concerns about dust and silicosis to public health officials—that the code of practice became law.

  By then, there was a whole new protocol for testing the air that miners had been breathing underground for decades, and a brand-new and more sinister cause for worry among people working in the St. Lawrence mines—a far more urgent situation.

  Eight

  The Daughters of Radon

  38.

  A history of hardship and self-reliance toughens people. Toughness is evidence of character and strength. We admire toughness and character, especially when they produce perseverance in the face of hardship, and when they contribute to an admirable and preferably silent personal and cultural forbearance.

  For Newfoundlanders, the first half of the twentieth century had been a dizzying succession of catastrophes: natural disaster; horrific wartime casualties; poverty, plagues and riots; the collapse of a democracy and a divisive national debate about the political future of the island.

  Now it was becoming obvious to almost everyone that the island had another problem—a sinister and creeping menace that was mysteriously killing men who had been working in the St. Lawrence mines. Tuberculosis and malnutrition had offered easy explanations, excuses for a weary resignation. But evidence of silicosis produced another, generally unwelcome, possibility: a deadly mix of negligence and naiveté, which raised hard questions of responsibility.

  The process of accountability and blame inevitably involves a bitter dialectic, a chorus of retrospective accusations—who should have done what and when—and the political antithesis, the contrite apologies and assurances. Lessons had been learned; compensation would be guaranteed, if necessary.

  In the end there might be accommodation, but first, there would be tension and unpleasantness, bad publicity and angry fallout, both political and economic—and therefore a reluctance to initiate, never mind accelerate, correction.

  And so, even in the face of growing certainty that St. Lawrence had a problem and it was related to the workplace, the human impulse to evade responsibility would persist for years. The instinct to delay the reckoning—to forestall a painful, costly process—would prevail throughout the fifties and into the next decade, fuelled by factors that would become more significant than self-preservation.

  ARGUABLY, the Burin Peninsula had, at least since 1929, been the most troubled part of the struggling economy, and patient perseverance seemed to have produced rewards. By the early forties, viewed from afar, the situation there was hopeful. There was a mining business up and running, and it was sending little ripples of optimism through the region, especially around St. Lawrence.

  Now, entering the second half of the century, there was something ominous about the situation there. But even with the new evidence of silicosis, there was a reluctance to point accusing fingers at the workplace. There was unquestionably an uncommon lot of sickness, but it was, perhaps, caused by an organic weakness in Newfoundlanders, a result of generations of poverty. It was particularly hard on miners, usually fatal. The most convenient conclusion was that they were just more susceptible to illness than other people. That wasn’t anybody’s fault. And of course, it was far from certain that everyone was equally vulnerable.

  As in every aspect of uncertainty in life, luck, more than anything, would determine outcomes—who would get the sickness, who would survive it. Luck was unmanageable and unpredictable. You had to look on the bright side, and of course have faith in God, in the mercy of the Ultimate Authority, the Custodian of Luck.

  IN the early fifties, even in St. Lawrence, residents, including the corporation manager, Donald Poynter, preoccupied with the daily imperatives of economic survival, might have been forgiven for attributing too much to the plague of tuberculosis, which was the fault of no one in particular. It was probably TB that had carried off Donald Poynter’s first wife. TB was a known killer. The place had been raging with TB. This could have been sufficient, for a while at least, to explain the spike in deaths and illnesses in St. Lawrence.

  It would also explain why even Poynter was dismissive, in the face of hard evidence, of the reality that, among the miners, TB and silicosis had joined forces to confound the people and the doctors by creating a hybrid illness that could not be cured.

  That it could have been prevented really wasn’t worth discussing—not yet anyway.

  What was the point in complaining? Of course, anyone with any basic knowledge of the mining in
dustry should have known the consequences of insufficient ventilation. The law, as of 1951, was clear: underground workplaces were supposed to be adequately ventilated. Even without the law, the top decision-makers in the corporation—and later, at Newfluor—could and should have built proper ventilation into their designs for underground production.

  But that was history. We learn from history. That’s worth something, isn’t it? Enlightenment?

  Progress is a learning curve. And now that people knew more about the perils accompanying the benefits of employment, the problems would be solved. Newfoundland, by 1950, had a real government. Legislators would lay down the law; inspectors would enforce the regulations.

  But people working for the mining companies were about to get yet another lesson in the reality of life in a resource-dependent economy. Hard-rock mines are not designed to last indefinitely, and they generally don’t. In the absence of stern, objective oversight, the powers that be will spend money on amenities like health and safety grudgingly, if at all.

  Almost twenty years into the relationship with the people of St. Lawrence, the St. Lawrence Corporation was inclined to take a hard look at any planning that might involve investment in a future that was starting to look shaky.

  Official oversight was, to say the least, tentative, if not myopic.

  39.

  BY December 1955, Seibert was again writing to Joey Smallwood, warning about looming difficulties—declining demand in the United States and foreign competition, especially from Mexico.

  There had been an unexpected surge in demand for fluorspar because of US strategic requirements during the Korean War. It had been a godsend for St. Lawrence. Without it, the mine would have been out of business. But the boom was almost over. Seibert was giving notice that if St. Lawrence mining jobs were to be protected, he’d need the help of government, again.

  “My firm belief is that in another 12 or 14 months the mining operations of the St. Lawrence Corporation at St. Lawrence will be closed down tight,” he wrote, “and approximately 250 men will be thrown out of work unless we do get some protection in Canada to keep out the flow of European and Mexican fluorspar.”1

  The obvious solution to the problem was a hefty tariff on imported fluorspar. The Americans had one. Why not Canada? “[L]et me assure you that I detest tariffs and I prefer to see the world on a free trading basis,” Seibert insisted, “but the future of St. Lawrence is extremely bleak unless something is done.”2

  There is no available record of Smallwood’s answer, but it’s clear that within a little over two years—when Seibert’s begging became explicit—he started running out of patience with the American. Surely Smallwood would have been aware that before his time in government, the commissioners who ran the island from 1934 to 1949 had expressed doubts among themselves about the competence of Mr. Seibert.

  And by 1957, Smallwood would have reason to entertain similar concerns. It looked like Iron Springs was phasing out. Blue Beach mine had a big role to play in the corporation’s future. But then, on an otherwise unexceptional morning in March 1957, Blue Beach collapsed. Miraculously there were no injuries or deaths. But it was an operational disaster, and an omen.

  It happened at the beginning of a shift after days of flooding and small cave-ins. Almost from the moment the workday started, at eight in the morning, miners sensed that something serious was happening around them. Strange sounds issued from the rock—snaps and crackles; stone breaking; the walls spitting granite; bits of stone striking bodies, striking faces. It was as if the miners were inside a living thing, a distressed and angry thing.

  After an hour of growing turbulence and anxiety, the miners gathered up their gear and retreated towards the shaft, signalled for the cage, piled in and headed for the surface. The assistant manager, Howard Farrell, described what happened next: “At 9.30 a.m. all hell broke loose, there were a succession of blasts accompanied by the rumbling of falling rock . . . [T]he caving continued all day and did not subside until 7.30 that evening.”3

  KEVIN Pike wasn’t especially concerned when he was summoned to the boss’s office late on the morning of June 6, 1957. He was the St. Lawrence Corporation warehouse manager, a job held by his father before him.4

  Kevin had been working for the corporation since he was eleven, doing chores and carrying messages from the office on the St. Lawrence waterfront to the various mine sites, like Iron Springs, which was two and a half miles away. When his dad, the disabled First World War veteran Tom Pike, died suddenly in 1949, Donald Poynter had held the warehouse job open until nineteen-year-old Kevin finished high school.

  Young Kevin and Donald Poynter respected each other and got along well, and while the call from Poynter’s secretary was unusual, Pike had no reason to anticipate anything out of the ordinary. This changed the moment he saw Poynter slumped behind his desk.

  The boss was distant. He was normally assertive and commanded any room he occupied. Now he seemed, as Kevin would remember, “emotional.” The first thought that entered Pike’s mind was that there was something wrong in Poynter’s family. His parents had visited St. Lawrence from New Jersey, and Kevin had met them socially.

  He asked the boss directly: “Is there something wrong back home?”

  Poynter studied him for a moment. “No, Kev,” he said. “I’ll be blunt.” He looked at his watch. It was ten minutes before eleven. “Go up and tell your people not to come back this afternoon.”

  Kevin laughed. Not come back?

  “I’m serious,” he said. “I just had a call from New York, from Seibert. We’re closing down.”

  Donald Poynter would convey similar instructions that day to the people running Seibert’s last two mines in St. Lawrence—two relatively small operations at Hay Pook and Hare’s Ears.

  IT WAS a tactical move by Seibert, and he clearly hadn’t shared the strategy with his local manager, Donald Poynter. Years later, however, Howard Farrell would acknowledge what was probably the real purpose behind the phone call. In a casually oblique reference in a historical account of the St. Lawrence mining saga, Farrell noted, without elaboration, that the shutdown was “an attempt [by Seibert] to get the industry subsidized.”5

  If Farrell was correct, it was blackmail, pressure on the government of Newfoundland and a blunt statement to Seibert’s employees in and near St. Lawrence. The prosperity they had helped to achieve by hard work and sacrifice was fragile. What they’d established in the course of twenty-five years could be eliminated by a single phone call from New York.

  The message wasn’t lost on anybody. It was loud and clear to the miners and the merchants in St. Lawrence, as well as the politicians and bureaucrats in St. John’s. And for a crucial four-year period, it would reset priorities in Newfoundland. Worries about livelihood would overwhelm anxieties about life itself.

  40.

  EVEN before he’d left town, Dr. Pepper had created a nervous buzz in St. John’s, but it didn’t last long. Senior people in the provincial health department were reassured by their own dust studies in the St. Lawrence mines, and satisfied that Dr. Pepper had been mistaken. There was, however, the troubling reality of a rising toll of sick and dying miners, and their problems all seemed to be related to their lungs.

  It was time, perhaps, to bring in the feds with their expertise and credibility. By 1956, St. John’s was ready for that federal dust study that Dr. Pepper had been asking for six years earlier. The feds had the technology and expertise to answer all the questions about dust. As would later be observed in the report of a royal commission, the motivation behind the 1956 request was essentially self-serving: “[M]ining inspectors had . . . found the dust concentrations were within the permissible limits. They wanted this confirmed.”6

  In 1957, the federal government dispatched one of the top occupational health specialists in the Department of National Health and Welfare, Jack P. Windish, to document the dust conditions in the St. Lawrence mines. By then, of course, access to the mines was seriously
compromised by the fact that most were idle. The Director mine, run by Alcan’s subsidiary, Newfluor, offered the only fully operating workplace for Jack Windish to conduct his studies.

  In mid-1958, Windish reported his findings, and the conclusions presented openings for argument—there were areas where the dust exceeded the limits for safe working conditions, but the readings were not excessive; on the other hand, particular circumstances could change long-term outcomes from exposure. There was plenty of material for debate, certainly for more discussion.

  Two observations, however, would give reasons for concern: where there was inadequate ventilation (or none at all), the levels of dust were potentially lethal; and Windish found such readings even where the water poured into the workspace nonstop, an explicit contradiction of past expert opinions that the water neutralized the dust and smoke and danger.

  These were precisely the conditions in which St. Lawrence miners had worked for years on end, all through the thirties and the forties, at Black Duck, Iron Springs, the Director and other mines. But that was yesterday. Now, in most places where men worked, the dust was tolerable. All good. Dust measurement continued.

  But by 1958, there was another problem, a new conundrum to perplex officialdom. Shortly after Dr. Pepper left St. Lawrence, another doctor came to town to run the new US Memorial Hospital. The new doctor, Cyril J. Walsh, wasn’t there for long when he began to notice another anomaly in the health profile of the town: lung cancer.