by Mick Lowe
All previously attempted measures to this end had proved unavailing, the briefers had told him. The purely hands-off “wait and see” method, waiting for Christmas and mounting privation to take their toll, with disconsolate wives and mothers urging their husbands and sons to end the madness, had failed.
Even working with local clergy to bring the strike to an end through something called “a prayer meeting”—local ministers, especially Roman Catholic priests, had been staunch, dependable Agency allies in the past, both here and around the world—but this stratagem, too had failed, when the city’s mayor had crossed everyone up by unexpectedly speaking out on behalf of the strikers during his “prayer.”
The twenty-minute car trip in from the airport gave him time to reflect, and slowly, bit by bit, memories of his first mission to this Godforsaken place came streaming back.
It had been a sophisticated, complex black op back then, involving the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the local Archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church, the AFL-CIO, the United Steelworkers of America, and even the State Department, so unlike the solo commando assignment he was on now. The objective on his first trip to this frozen wasteland had been to destroy a Communist-led union that might interdict the flow of vital nickel to the U.S. war machine, and in this their efforts had been spectacularly successful—the union had indeed been smashed mere months after his departure. Yet now here he was again, even though the workers had elected to join a supposedly “safer” union. Didn’t these crackers get it? Didn’t they know when they were beat?
So here he was again, but alone this time, and free to improvise. He wasn’t quite sure at first what he was looking for, only that he’d know—and seize on—the opportunity when he found it.
Nelson and Gilpin listened to the news on Nelson’s tinny little office radio in dumfounded silence, Nelson, galvanized, pacing the floor of his cramped office excitedly as the veteran newsman leaned impassively against the wall, arms folded over his chest. The mayor’s outspoken “prayer” had caused a sensation.
“Jesus, Foley, I never knew MacKenzie had it in him or that he supported us …”
Gilpin grunted sardonically. “He’ playing the long game, is all, Jordy. The man can count.”
The union president paused in his pacing to look Gilpin in the eyes, “Meaning?”
Gilpin shrugged. “Meaning he has greater ambitions beyond the mayor’s chair, beyond the city limits, and he knows where the votes are.”
The union president swallowed hard, and nodded as he digested Gilpin’s words. He’d come to value Gilpin’s opinions greatly. The newspaperman was a man of the world, very bright, and the rare individual the battle-hardened Nelson had learned he could trust implicitly. A good writer was always an invaluable weapon in the war, nearly as important as a good lawyer. Except that with most lawyers there was always talk of billable hours, and with Gilpin there was none of that—he had volunteered, at no small financial cost to himself.
The two men, one young but aging fast, the other much older, soon exhausted the topic of the Sudbury mayor’s future, and they moved on to the next issue that loomed large over their community but over which they had absolutely, infuriatingly, no control—the outcome of labour negotiations in a town a thousand miles to the north and west of Sudbury. Their fate might well hang in the balance there, and they both knew it.
16
Thompson Settles, and Jordan Nelson
Makes a Rare Misstep
There’s an old riddle among mining men: “Where’s the best place to find a new mine?”
“Right next to an old one.”
But by the nineteen fifties this ancient adage had pretty much been played out in the Sudbury Basin, site of one of the greatest ore bodies ever discovered, and would-be mine finders had taken their search much further afield. The International Nickel Company especially, with its vast cash reserves and its customers’ insatiable hunger for its principal product, led the search far and wide, to hitherto unexplored regions of the vast Canadian land mass, and in the 1950s the company’s persistence paid off with the discovery of a promising mineral strike in far northern Manitoba. In fact, a whole cluster of sulphide ore bodies were soon proved up by crews of hardy diamond drillers flown into the empty bush not too far south of Churchill, a port town on the shores of Hudson Bay famous for its polar bears. The massive snow white bruins were a familiar sight in Churchill, especially in the fall, when they would take up temporary residence on the outskirts of town, waiting for the Bay ice to freeze solid enough to support their weight, which could range up to a ton. Other than its polar bears, Churchill was remarkable for one other thing—it was the northern terminus for a rail line that linked it to Winnipeg and the transcontinental main line of the Canadian Pacific Railroad. The grand Western Canadian dream was that Churchill should serve as a northern gateway to the world for prairie grain, and sundry other western exports requiring bulk shipment to world markets. But the dream foundered on one bitter, unalterable Canadian reality: Churchill was not, could never be, a year-round port, and the federal government in far-away Ottawa was reluctant to invest millions in icebreakers and infrastructure to develop its own Arctic. Churchill languished, the promise of its visionary dream unfulfilled.
Though nowhere near the elephantine scale of the company’s ore reserves in Sudbury, Inco executives quickly determined the viability of sinking a handful of shafts, and within this cluster a year-round live-in camp soon developed in this unlikely location a twelve-hour drive north of Winnipeg. Fuelled by the rapid growth and expansion of the mines, the boomtown became permanent, and it was given the name of a senior Inco executive—Thompson.
By the late seventies, Thompson, Manitoba had grown into a small city and was well on its way to becoming the third largest metropolitan area in the province, the principal regional hub of northern Manitoba. The Mine Mill union sent organizers in early, when the place was still a camp, and it soon won a certification vote—but who among the rank-and-file of the new local union had the expertise to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement with an adversary as rich and savvy as Inco? No one did, and the National executive of Mine Mill soon decided to parachute in seasoned veteran negotiators from Local 598 in Sudbury to lead the bargaining on behalf of the newly unionized workers in Thompson. The Thompson Local elected its own bargaining committee to attend the talks in Winnipeg, but, as one of the Sudbury men would tell an interviewer many years later, here things met a snag. The Sudbury veterans were all business, as befitted the seasoned leaders of the country’s largest union local, but the Thompson bargaining team was less so. Consigned to life in what was still a mud-rutted, isolated mining camp only recently elevated from bunkhouse living under canvas, the Thompson leadership regarded its sojourn in the big city as an irresistible invitation to indulge in some much-needed R and R, often arriving at the bargaining sessions badly inebriated, if, in fact, they managed to arrive at all. Their Sudbury counterparts, an upright, sober, industrious—but homesick—lot, soon tired of the Thompson gang’s shenanigans, opting to settle for the first decent contract offer that came their way, so anxious were they to return home. They gave absolutely no thought to the possible future importance of synchronizing the new Thompson contract’s expiry dates with those of the pre-existing Sudbury contracts.
Years passed, and boomtown Thompson evolved into a well-established, prosperous modern community carved out of the northern Manitoba wilderness; the streets were paved and lit, bunkhouses gave way to suburban-style back-splits and side-splits. A short spur line was even built to connect Thompson to the Winnipeg-Churchill railway. The short line stemmed from a lost railway junction just south of Churchill called Gillem. The place—which was really no place, at all—must, however have had its own, unstaffed, remotely controlled Environment Canada monitoring station, as nationally-televised weather presenters would, on rare occasions, dutifully relay news of “current conditions in Gillem, Man
itoba,” clearly unaware that there was no there there. The Thompson spur, besides providing passenger access to the mining centre, also allowed for a means to ship concentrate from the mills Inco had built at the centre of its clustered mines to the outside world. It was true that the steel rails undulated crazily over the endlessly heaving permafrost of northern Manitoba and that strict load and speed restrictions applied to the locos pulling long strings of concentrate-laden gondolas out of Thompson, but, tenuous as it was, that logistical link allowed at least a trickle of nickel to reach world markets. It was nowhere near the steady stream of throughput that flowed daily from the company’s now strike-bound Sudbury operations, but that thin stream of nickel had assumed inordinate importance to Gilpin and Nelson as they switched off the radio newscasts concerning Clayton MacKenzie’s “prayer.”
MacKenzie’s calculated outburst had provided an impromptu shot in the arm to the strikers’ cause, but now another threat loomed: would their brother Steelworkers in Thompson join them on the picket lines, or would the members of Local 6166 there settle and continue to bolster the company’s bottom line by continuing to contribute, however minutely, to the company’s nickel stockpiles?
Once in a lifetime, if you’re very, very lucky there may come an electrifying moment like this: suddenly, with very little warning, events will conspire to put you on an island in a crisis where, without thinking, you know, you just know, how to lead in that crisis, where four decades of life experience have equipped you, and you alone, to act to control the damage—and the danger—stemming from that crisis. Just such a moment was about to occur in the life of Foley Gilpin.
The shocking news that Thompson had settled burst over the city like a bombshell, and subsequent events moved so swiftly that Gilpin was caught off guard, and at some distance from the centre of the action.
The first fallout began, naturally enough, in the office of Jordan Nelson, in his second floor office in the Steelworker’s Hall. It was a logical call to make, once the news came over the wires, for Sudbury newsmen to seek the union leader’s reaction.
Though taken aback by developments in Manitoba and deeply dismayed that fellow Steelworkers had elected not to strengthen his own strike, Nelson maintained an outwardly calm reaction. As bitterly cold as it was in Sudbury, it was much colder still in Thompson, so much further to the north. Who could blame a group of workers for avoiding an outdoor picket line in such circumstances?
Besides, Nelson told a radio reporter, the matter had been decided by a free and democratic vote among Inco employees in Thompson, and he was not about to second-guess them.
Had the reporter heard what was in the agreement?
The offer was but a stand-still, three-year agreement, with only the most nominal improvements to contract language, benefits and wages. Did Nelson think the Thompson tentative agreement might serve as the template for a settlement in Sudbury?
Here Nelson paused briefly to reflect, thinking how even such a minimal offer back in the fall could have averted the entire Sudbury strike. He mumbled some kind of affirmation.
The reporter, surprised at this response, struggled successfully to conceal his own reaction, thanked the union president for his time, swiftly wrapped up the interview, and rang off. He had his scoop, which went to air within the hour.
Nelson convened an emergency meeting of his War Council to discuss developments in light of the Thompson settlement that afternoon.
A few of his most trusted advisors had already had the presence of mind to visit the picket lines to gauge rank-and-file reaction to Nelson’s public statements, and the union president could tell from the worried looks on the faces around him that they were in trouble.
“You shit the bed, boss, I can’t tell ya how bad,” was the opening appraisal of Haywire d’Aquire, who spoke with his usual candour. At least no one could ever accuse Jordan Nelson of surrounding himself with “yes” men, reflected Jake McCool.
Haywire had been at the gates of his former plant, the giant Copper Cliff Smelter.
Molly Carruth nodded somberly, sharing d’Aquire’s gloomy assessment. The same was true at her plant, the Copper Refinery. “What were you thinking, Jordy? No way we’d ever settle for what Thompson got—we’ve been on strike for almost six months—and they weren’t out for even a day. No wonder guys are so pissed off. What the fuck were you thinking?”
Jake watched the colour drain from Nelson’s face as, one by one, his closest friends and confidantes continued to deliver their brutal verdicts. But Haywire still wasn’t finished: “And another thing the guys want to know—shit, we all want to know—is why in the hell Thompson’s contracts and ours aren’t co-terminous? We’re all in the same union, ain’t we?”
Even Nelson himself had no explanation for this, the institutional memory for the role Sudbury Mine Millers had played in negotiating the first Thompson agreement having been lost, along with much else, during the bitter, inter-union battles between the Steelworkers and Mine Mill. They had lost touch with their own past.
And now, even the most militant and committed members of Local 6500 did not know what they did not know, and that was, quite possibly, the greatest loss of all.
A shaken Jordan Nelson returned to his office as soon as the War Council meeting was adjourned. He found a thick sheaf of pink telephone messages waiting on his desktop. Many were from the media. The union president was shuffling idly through the pile when he found a “please call” message from the radio reporter to whom he’d given the disastrous interview earlier in the day. Thinking, perhaps, to repair the damage he instructed his secretary to place the return call.
The reporter was pleasantly surprised to hear from Nelson, and he hastily put up a tape to record the conversation. Their earlier encounter, as both men knew, had created a sensation, with every newsroom in the city scrambling to “match” the story.
“Yeah, about that, I never meant to say the Thompson agreement would be acceptable to our members.”
“But that’s exactly what you did say, Jordan, with all due respect.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Well how do you explain this, then?” The reporter punched a few switches on his control board and rolled a cart machine that contained Nelson’s words of the morning.
The union president listened in silence. “I was taken out of context,” was the best he could muster.
“That’s your final comment on this matter? That’s all you have to say?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Jordan Nelson, President of Local 6500, thank you for your time.” The radioman’s voice was a resonant, confident full baritone that fairly boomed out of the loudspeaker.
“You’re welcome.” Jordan Nelson’s voice, by contrast, sounded weak and thin, almost despondent.
The story broke high, wide and handsome at the top of the next hour. The headline was predictable: “Union President caught trying to lie his way out of embarrassing situation.” The report opened with a brief explanation of the first tape and then segued into Nelson’s feeble attempt to walk it back. It was bone-crushing stuff, and Foley Gilpin followed the story, like thousands of his fellow Sudburians, on his radio throughout the day. He was especially galvanized by the second report, which he found electrifying in its implications. It seemed to him that the entire outcome of the strike might hang in the balance, depending on what Nelson did or not do next. And he alone, Foley Gilpin, knew what must be done to shore up Nelson’s flagging support among the rank-and-file and to salvage at least one surviving shred of his credibility.
Gilpin’s mind raced as he made the short drive to the Steel Hall. He believed Nelson was that rarity among elected leaders—a man of abundant empathy and sincerity who was genuinely loved, even adored, by his electors. The narrative that would survive the strike was already germinating: that Nelson, through his brash, outspoken militancy had caused the strike singlehandedly. But
to Gilpin this would always seem a gross oversimplification. A strike mandate had carried repeatedly among the members of the big Local when the daunting implications of strike action were already clear. The members had chosen Nelson as the man to lead them and Gilpin, for one, hated to see that delicate, almost mystical bond between leadership and the rank-and-file destroyed over the course of a single afternoon.
He arrived dry-mouthed and breathless with excitement outside the union president’s office within minutes. “Is he in? I’ve gotta see him right away,” Gilpin motioned at the closed door to Nelson’s office.
Angel Houle was holding the fort as the President’s secretary in the absence of his regular secretary, a much older woman.
“He’s in, but he’s not having a very good—“
Gilpin bolted for the door before she could even finish her sentence.
“—like I said, go right on in …”
“Jordan, we gotta talk,” Gilpin began the minute he was through the door. The union president sat alone behind his desk. He regarded Gilpin with a silent, dolorous gaze. The newspaperman thought he’d never seen Nelson look so haggard.
“Yeah? About what? It’s too late for—”
Gilpin cut him off. “Nah, it’s not too late. So you fucked up. Everyone does sooner or later. But there is a way out…”
Nelson regarded Gilpin in dubious silence, but he was listening, as Foley steeled himself to deliver the punch line that would not be popular: “Ya gotta tell ’em ya fucked up, man. Tell ’em you’re sorry. They love you out there, Jordan, and you know what? They’ll respect you for being honest and they will forgive you.”
The union man swallowed hard and said nothing, but Gilpin could see that the wheels were turning. Why was it that men of high station found it so hard to publicly acknowledge their own mistakes and to apologize for them?
