The Insatiable Maw

by Mick Lowe

  Reginald McSorley-Winston extended his hand to Kemper. ”Chas! So good of you to come! It’s been far too long! Welcome back to the Albany!” He was heartily pumping the newcomer’s hand. “Come, come”, he gestured toward yet another grand entrance several paces distant, at the back of the clubroom, empty at this hour save for a few silver-haired grandees puffing contentedly on their cigars and quaffing brandy as they perused the morning’s Globe.

  The two men, attired in dark suits and black shoes shined to the brightest reflective sheen, strode toward the innermost sanctum, where they were greeted by a waiter in a starched and spotless white coat. He bent low at their approach and murmured “Mr. Minister” to McSorley-Winston and simply “Sir” to McSorley-Winston’s guest, whom he did not know, as he reached out to open yet another set of double doors. The pair were then ushered in to the heart of the Albany Club, an imposing, high-ceilinged room lit principally by the natural light that streamed down through the stained glass skylights that formed the ceiling two storeys overhead.

  As they took their seats McSorley-Winston was at last able to scrutinize his guest, who clearly was not from around here. He wore his snow-white hair just a tad longer than the usual Bay Streeter, and there was in his speech yet a tincture of the American Deep South, which had been his boyhood home. As the senior vice president of Inco’s Ontario operations Kemper was an important enough player that the Natural Resources Minister had had his staff investigate Kemper’s background and brief him prior to their lunch. Born and raised in Kentucky’s Blue Grass Country, Kemper had attended Vanderbilt University in Nashville, where he’d excelled as an undergraduate. He moved on to Duke Law School, where he graduated at the top of his class, a finish that merited the close attention of recruiters from the top New York City law firms. Kemper had landed a position with the ne plus ultra of the Wall Street firms, Sullivan & Cromwell. There he had rubbed shoulders briefly—for he was a much younger man—with the likes of the Dulles brothers, John Foster and Allan. Senior partners who had parlayed their day jobs representing America’s most powerful corporations into positions of great personal wealth and power, the Dulles brothers discreetly advised Kemper to buy shares, as they had, in the nickel company that was at the heart of the American military-industrial complex, but whose primary asset lay outside the States, in Sudbury, Ontario, and squarely within the purview of McSorley-Winston’s Ministry.

  To the Ontario politician the American tycoon’s barely discernible accent, with its softened vowels, lent his voice a certain languid, almost purring quality which, to McSorley-Winston’s ear, was not unpleasant, not unpleasant at all.

  McSorley-Winston cleared his voice, and came right to the point. “So, Chas, I was hoping we might discuss the situation with your smelter up there in Sudbury.”

  Kemper frowned slightly before breaking into a warm smile. “And what ‘situation’ would that be?”

  “Well, you know, the recent newspaper reports of rather, ah- deplorable working conditions and that sort of thing.”

  Kemper responded with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Oh come now, Reg, surely we can’t allow ourselves to become too exercised by the sensationalized whining of a handful of union militants! You know yourself how the papers like to blow these kinds of matters up out of all proportion.”

  McSorley-Winston hesitated. “Ye-es, undoubtedly true. But the problem here, you see, is the Old Man reads those very papers every morning, and our mandate is nearing its end.”

  Both men knew the Minister was referring to the Premier of the province, a wily veteran of Ontario’s ever-changing political landscape. An affably benign figure in public, behind closed doors he ruled his Tory caucus, and its Cabinet, with an iron fist, as McSorley-Winston knew all too well.

  “Ah yes, I understand. But we had rather hoped that our contributions to the party’s war chest might provide a certain, a certain je ne sais quoi, don’t you see. . .”

  “Yes,” the government man nodded agreeably “you have certainly been more than generous, but times change, you see, Chas, and it seems there’s some new—and very strong—feelings running through the public now concerning pollution and the dumping of toxic chemicals into the environment. Then there’s this new book written by that woman down there in your country. . .”

  “Oh come now, Reg!” the Inco man expostulated good-naturedly. “Don’t tell me you’re going to let a few kooky beatniks and do-gooder intellectual eggheads determine public policy here in your beautiful province of Ontario!”

  “Well, I”—Kemper cut him off to voice an afterthought prefaced by a slice of his hand through the air. “To say nothing of a small rump of union ingrates, including one disgruntled soon-to-be-former employee. . .”

  “Soon to be? You mean—“ McSorley-Winston arched an eyebrow.

  Kemper nodded. “The ringleader of this little cabal. He belongs to one of these outlaw motorcycle gangs, I’m told. Criminal record longer than the Albany’s wine list, Reg.” Kemper chuckled with the air of a man who hadn’t a care in the world.

  “I see,” nodded McSorley-Winston. “And you hired this paragon of virtue exactly why, precisely?”

  Kemper shrugged. “We required his skills at the time. But now I’m told there’s been—or there’s about to be—a flagrant act of insubordination, so. . .” Kemper punctuated his sentence with another slashing gesture of his hand through the air, only this time it was across his own throat.

  The conversation was interrupted twice—first by the waiter who took their lunch orders, then by the sommelier who turned to McSorley-Winston to order the accompanying wine from the Albany’s justly celebrated wine cellars.

  After a moment’s deliberation the Ontario Minister selected a medium-bodied dry red, something that would pair perfectly with the food order, which was for the Albany’s legendary noon-hour spécialité de la maison, the succulent baron of Angus beef, served au jus, Yorkshire pudding and horseradish. Both men ordered their roast beef medium rare, as they both liked to see a little blood on their plate.

  Car telephones were expensive and cumbersome things in the 1960s, but Chas Kemper, like all of the top Inco brass, had one in his limo which he reached for even as the big car pulled away from the front of the Albany.

  With the push of a button he was instantly connected to the company’s senior man in Copper Cliff. The carefree mien he had displayed so convincingly in the club just now was gone.

  James Rutherford, President of Inco’s Ontario Division, groaned inwardly when the button on his desk telephone reserved exclusively for incoming calls from corporate headquarters began to flash—such calls were never good news, but he picked up. “Yes?”

  The silky southern voice which had, just moments before, seemed so pleasant to the Ontario Minister of Natural Resources, had now turned to cold steel. The whip of the lash.

  “Good afternoon, James,” Kemper began pleasantly enough. “I do believe we have a bit of a problem down here, and I goddamned well want to know what you-all’re gonna do about it!”

  James Rutherford felt the lasagna he’d just enjoyed at lunch over at the Italian Club curdle in the pit of his stomach as he listened in silence to Kemper’s recitation of his own lunch with McSorley-Winston.

  “Yes, Chas, I understand. It’ll be taken care of, I promise you that.” Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, but Rutherford hated being chewed out by his superiors as if he were some low echelon junior supervisor fresh out of engineering school.

  Without daring to seem impolite, Rutherford wrapped up the call as quickly as he could. He seethed as he hung up the phone. Here he was, President of Ontario Division, the entire Sudbury operation that was the very fundament of Inco’s pre-eminence in the global mineral trade—to say nothing of the most powerful military machine the world had ever seen—being dressed down like a sweeper on the shop floor. Still, he knew he had a problem, but he also knew just the man to help him fix it. He buzzed his secretary. “Get me Mike O’Hanlon in Plant Security. I wa
nt to see him right away.”

  It happened without warning, at the end of an otherwise forgettable shift. Jake, along with Haywire and Randy McIvor, was just changing into his street clothes when the goons charged into the dry.

  There were three of them—Inco security guards in full uniform—and they went after Haywire first, body slamming him into the lockers with a terrific metallic crashing sound as dozens of steel locker doors rattled in their frames.

  “Hey! What the fuck!?” Haywire, still naked from the waist up, instinctively clenched his fists as he struggled to regain his balance, his back against the lockers. As soon as he could, Haywire threw a punch—a haymaker right that struck only air—and his attackers, who surrounded him now in a tight circle, stepped back in unison.

  “Yeah, that’s right, tough guy,” one of them sneered. “Ya want some of this? C’mon then! Ooooh, big tough scary biker! Guess you’re not so big and scary here though, eh?”

  Jake, though as startled as the rest of them, narrowed his eyes at the taunts. They were baiting Haywire, who was even then gathering himself for an all out counterattack. “No! Wait!” Jake yelled suddenly, jumping in between Haywire and the security guards.

  “It’s a trap, a set-up! Don’t do it, Haywire! They want you to poke them, don’t you see?”

  But Jake was too late. Haywire had already rabbit punched the loudmouthed security guard, belting him right in the lip.

  The beefy guard’s head snapped back, and he backpedalled, but he maintained his balance, though he was startled at the swiftness of the blow. Instinctively he put his hand to his lip. It came away bloody.

  “That’s it, d’Aguire, you asshole!” he screamed, enraged at the sight of his own blood. “You’re done! That’s assault with intent! You all seen it! This man assaulted me! That’s a Step Five, for sure! Stand aside from that locker!”

  D’Aguire, with a quizzical look at Jake, did as he was told. The wide-bodied guard practically tore the door off Haywire’s locker. Its contents came out flying in a flurry of overalls, workboots, plastic shopping bags. “Here it is! I got it!” the big man crowed, and he emerged from the locker triumphantly holding—a Drager!

  After flipping the device to one of his partners the big man rounded once again on Haywire. “Guess you ain’t such a big man right now, huh d’Aguire?”

  Even with his back turned Jake could feel Haywire tensing, about to launch another blow. Jake sidled back and forth to thwart Haywire. He was face to face now with the bully boy guard himself, and it was all he could do to suppress the overwhelming urge to lash out at Haywire’s tormenter himself. But he knew better. Ever since his mine accident his scrapping days were over. Even if he escaped serious injury in the fight, Jake knew Jo Ann would kill him when he got home.

  The other rent-a-cops tossed Jake and Randall’s lockers, seized their Dragers and retreated from the dry, but not before Haywire and the lippy guard had exchanged a few choice words.

  “You know you’re finished d’Aguire! The minute you hit me that was instant Step Five. You’re gonna have plenty a’ time to polish up that fancy bike of yours.”

  Haywire by now was sitting on the wooden bench in front of his locker, distractedly flexing his right arm, the fist of which had just clipped the beefy security guard. “Ah, Rumford, you’re such a fuckin’ goof. Why don’t you fuck right off?”

  “There!” the security guard was practically bouncing up and down suddenly, pointing at Haywire. “See that? He was touching his club crest at the same time he was calling me names! He’s threatening me, uttering threats! You all saw it!”

  It was true Haywire had a reproduction of the Wheelers club patch tattooed on his right bicep, but the gesture had, in Jake’s eyes, been totally absent-minded and innocent.

  The security guards, finally, began to back out of the dry, each of them clutching a Drager.

  But before their shift was over Jake, Haywire and McIvor came to understand that the attack in their dry was part of a much larger plan. Locker searches had become standard throughout the smelter complex, and lunch boxes were also searched as men left the property.

  In the short term, at least the Company’s pushback was successful, with hundreds of Drager meters seized.

  The union’s initiative to monitor workplace conditions inside the smelter was now crippled. Even worse, their leader was finished. “Haywire” d’Aguire was, as Charles Kemper had predicted, fired from his job for striking, and threatening, a Company security guard on Company property.

  The union moved to grieve the dismissal immediately, but the damage was done. It could take years for Haywire’s grievance to wend its way through the preliminary stages of the grievance process before finally winding up in arbitration. In the meantime there was no way around it: they had lost their leader.

  11

  Constituency Work

  Like most Ontario MPPs, Harry Wardell took advantage of any adjournment in the legislature to return to his home riding to catch up on constituency work—tasks, many of them mundane, but still quite necessary—that could not be fully accomplished from Toronto.

  On this occasion he was pleasantly surprised to find reporters from the local Sudbury news media anxious, almost eager, to speak with him. This was a marked departure from the norm, when he often felt he could wander around the downtown intersection of Durham and Elm Streets buck naked and still not draw flies when it came to local news coverage.

  Wardell reckoned, rightly, this was owing to the fact he’d been quoted in Foley Gilpin’s groundbreaking exposé on the Copper Cliff smelter.

  On this day, however, he was taking time out from his busy rounds of the city’s newsrooms to visit his old pal Paul Samson at his little hole-in-the-wall office on the first floor of the Steel Hall.

  To Wardell’s surprise, he found the union man quite upbeat.

  Like every other insider in the closely-knit Sudbury NDP/Steelworkers’ activist community, Wardell knew all about the reverses Samson’s smelter clean-up crusade had suffered with the firing of d’Aguire and the seizure of the union’s Drager measuring tools.

  “It’s a great day, Harry,” Samson insisted as he shook Wardell’s hand.

  The legislator, fresh in from Toronto, had his doubts. “Oh yeah? How so?”

  “Just got off the phone with Pittsburgh, and they’ve authorized me to buy as many new Dragers as we need,” Samson beamed.

  Wardell was impressed, and he paused to ponder the full significance of Samson’s news. Clearly, the United Steelworkers’ International Headquarters in Pittsburgh was still keenly following developments in the big Sudbury Local it had struggled so long and hard to wrest away from the old Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers organization. Like most Sudburians, Wardell well remembered the days of bitter, often bloody, inter-union struggle between Steel and the old Mine Mill. He’d no idea what a Drager meter cost, but the fact that Pittsburgh had just given Samson what was effectively a blank cheque was sensational news indeed. So much for the old Mine Mill allegations that Sudbury’s dues dollars would all flow south to Yankee-land, never to be seen again! And Wardell had to wonder, in passing, if a much smaller organization like the Mine Mill could have afforded the kind of financial backing Samson had just received from the much larger Steelworkers Union.

  The news that greeted Wardell that morning lent credence to the rumour he’d heard in Toronto Steelworker circles that the big Inco local had been designated for an outsized role in Steel’s strategic scheme for the entire Canadian economy; that it was being groomed to break ground for thousands of other industrial workers in Ontario’s heavy industry, the heartland of Canada’s economy. With its sheer heft in numbers and battle-tested troops, Sudbury’s hard rock miners and smelter workers were a natural choice to break through at the bargaining table, and so “the Inco pattern” was on the verge of being born—what the Steelworkers’ “shock troops” won first at Inco would set the target for union members at Canada’s largest steel manufacturers in places like
Hamilton, Ontario and Sault Ste. Marie. All these thoughts and premonitions flashed like sudden shivers through Wardell’s mind as he stepped forward to once again shake hands with Samson to congratulate him on his latest—and most welcome—news.

  “Hey, Paul! That’s great! Any news from the Company?”

  The smile was suddenly wiped from Samson’s face. “No, shit. They’re cutting us no slack on d’Aguire, won’t return my phone calls. But they did send me a letter.”

  “Oh yeah? What’d it say?”

  Samson grimaced. “Oh, nothing much. The usual PR bullshit. Made me wonder if anyone over there even bothered to read my letter.”

  “Sorry to hear that, Paul. What a buncha bastards.” With a sigh Wardell threw his lanky frame down into the guest chair that faced Samson’s desk. “Any ideas what we do next?”

  “Well, this dealing with the Company is getting us nowhere . . . any chance of a meeting with the Ministry?”

  Wardell grunted. “That sonofabitch McSorley-Winston is so far up the Company’s arse that only the soles of his shoes are showing. You know that, Paul. Not sure what good a meeting would do at this point.”

  But after a brief, gloomy silence Wardell glanced over at the union man. “But if you think it might help, sure I can try for a sit-down—did you copy the Ministry on your letter to Inco?”

  Samson nodded in affirmation.

  Wardell called McSorley-Winston shortly after his return to Toronto. As usual he reached only the Minister’s bored-sounding battle axe of a secretary, who made little effort to disguise her personal disdain for Harry. She took Harry’s message and promised that the Minister would return the Sudbury MPP’s call at McSorley-Winston’s earliest convenience.