by Mick Lowe
Stubborn pride, certainly, that came, Foley reckoned, from reading their own press clippings, always a fatal mistake. But here, now, in this little shitbox of an office with its cheap imitation wood-paneled walls Gilpin saw a different kind of leader emerging as Nelson grappled with Foley’s words. Long moments of silence ticked by as Nelson contemplated Gilpin’s advice. Finally, the union man emitted a weary, exasperated sigh. “Okay, brother, where do we start?” Gilpin had often enough heard Nelson use the familial diminutive when addressing Haywire and others around the Union Hall, but it was the first time he had ever addressed the newsman in such a way. He felt surprised at the pleasure he felt from the warm, almost intimate tone from Nelson.
Gilpin reached for the sheaf of pink phone messages.
He found what he was looking for almost at random during an otherwise routine drive from central Sudbury out to Levack along Highway 144, just north and west of the city outskirts.
His plan had been to visit the picket lines in Levack, an exercise he’d been conducting since his arrival in the city a few weeks earlier. He’d dropped by all the lines, casually, unobtrusively, just to hear what the guys were saying, searching, always for the slightest opening, the merest chink in the union armour.
That he was able to conduct such an operation at all was owed in no small part to the remarkable change in his appearance since his last sojourn here some fifteen years earlier. Gone was the buzz cut hair and military bearing that bespoke an individual with a strong military background. In its place was a shaggy, bearded appearance that rendered him nondescript on a 1979 Sudbury picket line.
He owed this change in appearance to his last assignment, that was not Agency at all—at least ostensibly—but was to a newly created, crack combat unit of the U.S. Navy known by an acronym that described its varied theatres of operation—Sea, Earth, Air, Land—or Navy SEAL, for short. It was an assignment that suited him down to the ground—functioning as part of an elite combat squad so dark it often verged perilously close to being beyond the bounds of normal military discipline. They were a band of killers, rigorously trained and superbly equipped, trained especially to hunt, and kill, in a pack.
And nowhere did the relaxation of normal military discipline apply more than in the area of personal grooming. In what could have been seen as a backhanded compliment to the generation they collectively detested, they cultivated long hair, beards and moustaches, all of which made it easier to fit in when working undercover assignments to infiltrate the plethora of youthful underground revolutionary organizations that had sprung up during the nineteen sixties and seventies—outfits like the SDS, Students for a Democratic Society, AIM, the American Indian Movement, and the Black Panther Party. Strictly speaking such domestic surveillance was the proper and exclusive bailiwick of the FBI, but it was a free for all back then, with federal agencies competing shamelessly for turf, as he’d learned when, during one of his infrequent returns to Langley, he’d been thoroughly debriefed about his experiences training and serving as a Navy SEAL. Only then did he realize his secondment was intended as a deep penetration of the elite new killer squad. The Agency’s appetite for intelligence, even on branches of its own government, was, it seemed, insatiable. How had Angleton put it? The crusty, crafty old James Jesus Angleton, long-time head of counterintelligence, had once famously quipped that, “Penetration begins at home.”
And speaking of penetration, that was one of the many bennies that came from working the beat beat. Man, those hippie chicks loved to put out. Not like those cock-tease cheerleaders in high school who’d driven all the players on the football—himself included—to distraction. No, the young women who flocked to the Movement were experienced, not shy, and, best of all, on the pill, so you never had to worry about knocking one of them up.
Such dalliances, combined with the necessity of being psychologically and physically prepared to deploy anywhere in the world on twenty four hours’ notice, running deep and dark for months at a time, if necessary, took a heavy toll on SEAL marriages, which failed ninety per cent of the time, with wives not knowing where their husbands were, left alone to head the family, always fearful their children’s father might return home in a box.
But still, for the adrenaline junkies they all were, there truly was, in the words of the army recruiting video, “no life like it.” The bonds of brotherhood, the sense of being part of an elite team with a license to kill, was the ultimate kick. He preferred not to dwell on the earliest tell-tale signs—already becoming apparent—that many of his fellow commandos were damaged goods, deeply troubled for life by all that they had done and seen.
17
Tipping Points
Foley Gilpin had never, particularly, been a devotee of Karl Marx, but when he discovered that at least one Econ course was a prerequisite for his journalism degree back at Northwestern he’d opted for a course called “Introduction to Marxist Economic Theory,” overall a rather dreary affair, but one particular tenet of Marx’s theory had intrigued him: Marx’s notion that capitalism’s undoing would ultimately stem from the contradiction between the relations of production, where plants and factories were in private hands and the mode of production which was highly socialized, with thousands of workingmen unwittingly organized by the bosses to labour in coordinated fashion, across a multitude of skills and disparate workplaces, to produce a single, value-added product.
The workers would, Marx predicted, learn from this on-the-job organization, and begin to band together in other ways, fighting for higher wages and better working conditions. Soon such demands would bloom into contention about overall control of the means of production, and calls for all-out revolution would be heard.
And it must have seemed the first seeds of Marx’s predictions were coming true in his lifetime when, in the 1850s, the workers in English industrial concerns were beginning to organize themselves into unions along craft lines. The first calls for collective bargaining and higher wages were heard, even backed occasionally by work stoppages, infuriating the owning class, which called in, often as not, the police. Scabs were also commonplace, recruited from the ranks of the unemployed, a perennial underclass Marx described as “the reserve army of labour.”
To Gilpin, it seemed that the imposing edifice at the corner of College Street and Frood Road was now ordered as an illustration of Marx’s point on labour and the mode of production in modern industry. Just as Marx had prophesized, the bosses had unwittingly taught the workers how to organize. And it was all happening with astonishing speed before Gilpin’s incredulous eyes. The strikers seemed to know instinctively what needed to be done, and how to band together, almost without thinking, without even speaking, to accomplish the task at hand. They were a practical, resourceful people, after all, backed by the vast resources of the million-plus North American members of the United Steelworkers of America, and, thanks to the International Nickel Company they were now well and truly organized.
Strikers’ families were finding it difficult to put food on the table? Organize a food bank. Mothers worried about dressing their children warmly enough to withstand the potentially lethal playground cold of that terrible winter? Here the Wives’ support group rallied to the cause, and a clothing depot was established, to collect and distribute warm winter clothing. Like schools of fish, Gilpin watched as thousands of strikers and their wives swirled about, coalesced around an urgent task, and then swam on. And in this constant churn there developed an incessant appetite for situational leaders. And here again the raw, heretofore untapped resources of the Sudbury rank-and-file appeared almost inexhaustible. The lowly grade-two dropout sweeper from the smelter shop floor—a functional illiterate in both official languages—suddenly discovered a natural bent for running a food bank, and for the first time in his life people began to look up to him. Dozens, even hundreds, of people were suddenly discovering their true calling in life for the first time, and it had nothing to do with producing nickel. But so electrifi
ed, so enamoured were they by this sudden onrush of new responsibility that they arrived at the Hall earlier, and stayed later, each day. They never missed a shift. It was heady, even addictive, stuff. And in this way new names, whole new reputations, soon began to bubble up from the first floor of the Hall, to the second floor, where the Local 6500 leadership was ensconced, and even all the way up to the topmost, third floor, where the International Union Staff Representatives, men plucked from the local union leadership ranks by Pittsburgh for full-time jobs with the union, were quartered.
It was a time of swirling, galvanic energy, as future new leaders were thrown up from the heretofore nondescript rank-and-file membership. All in the blink of an eye, and in this way the future of the big old Local was renewed and, even in this most parlous of times, secured.
And nor was this phenomenon limited to the city limits of Sudbury. By this time in the strike the Road Trips Committee envisioned by Jordan Nelson seven months and a lifetime earlier was up and running, dispatching bands of strikers to make speeches and drum up support all over Canada. These Sudbury rank-and-filers were astonished to discover that, wherever they went, they were lionized by trade unionists everywhere. John Lennon was right: a working class hero was something to be. The Sudbury strike had morphed into a national cause célèbre.
The strike also achieved notoriety through news media reports that it had, just days earlier, become “the longest strike, in person/days lost” in the annals of Canadian labour. To some, this was a dubious distinction, while to others it was worn as a badge of honour. The record was broken due to the tremendous multiplier of the sheer numbers of striking workers—there had been longer strikes in Canada, in absolute terms, but none involving so many strikers.
On his return from the lines at Levack, he slowed down to do a closer visual of the place he’d spotted on the way out.
He’d learned little from the trip, except that it was nearly the end of March, and the picketers were aware the date meant the end of another business quarter. All were keen to see the Company’s Q1 financials, which should reveal what impact the strike was having on the bottom line.
The end of March in this Godforsaken place. What a joke. The days were getting noticeably longer, it was true, but it was still frickin’ cold with a dampness that went right through you. And it was gray everywhere, the leaden sky bleeding into the dirty snow that lay over everything. The high snow banks that lined every roadway were gray too, gray and ragged with the winter’s accumulated road grit and the toxic emissions from a million passing tailpipes. By now enough road salt had been spread over all the streets and roadways that the stuff congealed into a thin white film that clung to every wheel well, tire and rocker panel, silently turning every metal surface it touched to rusty dust. The stuff was visible on his boots, and the cuff of every pant leg. No matter how often he showered, he felt more salt-encrusted than Barnacle Bill the Sailor.
He slowed as much as he dared, and took in every detail of his target. Ideally, he’d have liked to walk around it for a closer look, but that was far too risky, in broad daylight, adjacent to a busy two-lane highway. No, clearly this would be a nighttime operation, requiring proper attire and the liberal application of faceblack.
What he was able to make out in his quickie recce was an eight-foot-high chain link fence topped with barbed wire around the perimeter, high voltage lines running in from the north, the usual metal-cased stepdown transformer topped by standard brown ceramic insulators that shielded the output lines that ran to the south, over the highway and towards the city, providing high voltage alternating current for lights and all manner of essential services to properties in the city that lie just to the south. He’d no idea just what and who would be affected by what he was about to do, and he didn’t particularly give a fuck.
He would be back.
A striker’s life. You rose early, because that’s when day shift started, and it was by now deeply engrained in your metabolism. Check to see your picket schedule, a complex affair that compassed the normal, workaday three-shift schedule. The schedule was posted in that most public of places, just as his work schedule would have been: the refrigerator door, affixed with a fridge magnet, the closest thing the family had to a bulletin board.
Besides picket duty, there was the myriad of other sundry union meetings necessitated by the strike. As he watched the coffee brew, still sleepy-eyed and stuporous from sleep, he mentally ran down the checklist: not Voucher Day, check. None of the committees he’d volunteered for were meeting this day, check. Just another day on strike, what was it? Number 175. He sighs, looks out the kitchen window in the forlorn hope he’ll see some first early sign, even the merest lightening of the sky over the subdivision, an earnest desire that day is, at last, approaching. Still nothing. He sighs again, contemplates the blankness of the day ahead. He feels numb, like some dumb animal consigned—cursed even—to moving in an endless circle, moving, head down, by placing one foot in front of another. The union has coined a hopeful mantra for life on this wheel: One day Longer, One Day Stronger. But he isn’t buying it. He isn’t feeling any stronger. It is one more day in this terrible war of attrition, and it is getting personal. There may be nothing personal for the faceless suits who have started this war. To them it’s all about the numbers they’re forever tapping into those fancy newfangled pocket calculators they’re always whipping out of their briefcases. And they’re still getting paid. But to him and the faceless thousands of others like him out there on the lines, this thing has long since gotten personal. Six and a half months now without a paycheque? What the fuck was that? The Company, certain that sheer, always-dependable human greed will have taken hold by now, is beginning to wonder if it has calculated this thing correctly. How could any of its employees last this long without a paycheque? Surely they would be starved out, bled white, by now, and it’s true every family, his included, has long since expended every penny in every bank account. They all are, by any reckoning, dead flat bust.
But what the suits in Manhattan, Mayfair and Bay Street have failed to reckon is the sheer bitter determination and resourcefulness of these Canadian people. Generations of life here On the Rock, with its bitter winters and gritty industrial outlook, the barren, treeless sulphur-blackened rock that has begun to look like home, all of this has, over a century of production, combined to create a new breed, equal parts English and French, part Indian, inured to hardship in a hostile living and working environment. And it is one thing to force them out of the workplace, quite another to get them back into it.
After half a year of this they have devised a host of ways to live without money, chiefly they take care of each other. They have among themselves every industrial skill necessary for survival in the modern industrial age. The men of this place have long since mastered the use of sheer motive force—internal combustion, hydraulics—to move greater weights, arguably, leveraging the muscle of the human body, the power of the human brain, to drill, blast, grind, crush and lift more weight than any other group of men in human history. They are not supermen, but they have, over generations, evolved into a special, unique and generally unsung breed of men. Karl Marx again: “Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation.”
So what would it take to end this? He doesn’t know for sure, but he knows this much: the asking price for a settlement is now way, way higher than it was when they began. The coffee is ready. He reaches for his mug and heaves another sigh, running his hands through hair still matted from sleep. He looks out the window once again. There is still no light to be seen at the end of this tunnel.
The darkness here suits him just fine; it’s when he does his best work. He’s parked his car on a side road adjacent to the highway to avoid any unwanted attention, hiking through the snow the short distance to the small, chain
-link fence enclosed perimeter.
He slips in behind the fence, away from the highway. Unlimbers the heavy-duty wire cutters. Snip snip, drops to all fours, shimmies on his belly, and he is through the fence, under it.
He removes the C4 from his backpack. The stuff always reminds him of the Play-Do he’d played with as a kid, but this is no toy. He kneads the dry gelatinous substance carefully, into the desired shape, which is to say into a roughly circular lump about the size of a quarter. He slaps it into place against the metal transformer casing. It adheres to the smooth dry surface, even though it is vertical. He removes a coil of igniter cord from his pack and unwinds it, sticking one end to the sticky, gelatinous mass of the G4. Still crouching, he moves around to the front of the transformer, carefully paying out the igniter cord so that it remains imbedded in the charge but with just enough gentle tension that it doesn’t touch the snow. He’s on the highway side now, crouched low, breathing slightly heavily from the exertion, his back against the transformer wall, the squat massive bulk of it between him and the charge. He lights the end of the igniter with the BiC lighter he always carries and the cord burns its way, slowly, dependably around the corner of the transformer and out of sight. Here there is a delay as it burns around the other corner to its destination. He braces himself, his muscles rigid with the tension of waiting, and his weight is transferred through his legs and torso so that his back is braced tightly against the metal side of the transformer. He feels the thing lift and shake slightly despite its enormous weight. There is a noise, a kind of muted “Whump!” and a sudden flash of light, but both are absorbed harmlessly by the snowy hill that flanks the highway. Then there is the concussive blast wave that radiates through the air until, at some great distance, it will be dissipated, and absorbed into thin air. All very harmless, and Bob’s your uncle. Just the way they’d drawn it up back in SEAL training. All very harmless, except for the jagged hole, about the size of a quarter, that has been blown through the heavy steel casing of the transformer and through which a thick viscous oil has already begun to drain. It will take a good half hour, he calculates, before the coolant has drained sufficiently to cause the transformer to overheat, melt down, arc over, and short out, plunging a good portion of the city just to the south into sudden darkness, including a hospital emergency room where a pair of trauma surgeons are working feverishly to save the life of a patient whose internal organs they have just exposed by steady, skilful incisions. But all of this will not happen for another thirty minutes, and he reckons it will be morning before city Hydro crews and the police are able to trace the source of the blackout to this transformer station, and by then he will be long gone. During the detonation he has kept his eyes on the traffic—what little there is of it at this hour of darkest night—his hour. He retraces his steps, drops to all fours, and, in preparing to crawl on his belly back through the hole in the fence he receives the first nasty surprise of the whole op. What the fuck is this? The sudden shock of it takes his breath away. There is icy water beneath the snow.
