by Mick Lowe
If so, he was the leading edge of a demographic wave that was about to swamp the city, above ground and below. And, as the decade wore on, what first appeared as a fissure would soon widen into a crack, and then become a gap. They arrived in wave after wave of mass hirings that accompanied the boom that presaged the Vietnam War. In every mine, on every level, their presence was unmistakeable—“the young guys”— bringing their own music, mores and culture that were destined to revolutionize both the union, and the broader social context.
They were a scruffy lot, but smart and better educated (Grade 12 had become the new educational gold standard for Inco recruiters.)
“The old guys” of Bob Jesperson’s generation were dubious about this new breed—dubious about their ability to withstand the rigours of life underground, dubious about their ability to do the work—and it was true that in every batch of new hires there was always one or two who would arrive on the level, take a quick, wide-eyed look around, quietly grab his lunch box and take the cage back to surface, never to be seen again.
But the vast majority, lured by the promise of rich bonus earnings, sucked it up and partnered up with the old guys who would teach them the rudiments and show them how to finish a shift in one piece. Young guys like David Patterson, Keith Lovely, Kenny Mersel, Harvey Wyers and Ron Dupuis—this many were at Frood Mine alone—were destined to transform not only the union, but the community writ large.
The company, meanwhile, observed the proliferating factionalism—especially the Mine Mill-Steel divide—with quiet satisfaction. Officially the company pronounced itself neutral in the bitter Steelworker raids on Mine Mill, a stance Jake and Gilpin had seen firsthand to be a sham. Always in public the company pronounced itself above the fray, abruptly terminating negotiations over a new contract: it was up to their workers to elect which union would speak on their behalf, at which time the company would return to the table.
And, in a very real sense, this was true. The Steel raiders were working towards just such a vote in their untiring efforts to sign up new members right under the noses of Spike Sworski and the Mine Mill leadership.
The Steelworkers would need to sign up a clear majority of the workforce to successfully apply to force a government-supervised vote as to which union should represent the Sudbury workforce. And nor would a simple fifty-percent-plus-one suffice. There were bound to be scores of challenges from the Mine Mill side, many of which would be upheld. It was a daunting task, to sign up eight thousand or so workers to new Steelworkers’ membership on the job in the face of such open Mine Mill hostility, but the effort gained traction, garnering new adherents with each passing day. The steady stream of anti-Mine Mill, anti-Communist invective from pulpit, newspaper and radio loudspeaker took a toll, and the Steelworkers controlled the timetable. They could apply for a government-supervised vote when they were confident they had a healthy margin of newly signed membership cards in hand, and not one moment before. In the meantime the number of signed cards and the identities of their key organizers remained a closely guarded secret.
Jake drifted back into the Mine Mill Hall in November. He found the upstairs offices, the sanctum sanctorum of the leadership, a changed place. The smell of stale cigarette smoke was now all-pervasive, and the place fairly vibrated with tension. It also seemed shabbier than he’d remembered, lived in. Jake immediately sought out Gilpin.
He found his old confidante in a bare office, pounding away on his typewriter.
“Hey Foley! How goes the battle? Surprised you’re still here.”
Gilpin greeted him with a wan smile and a shrug. “I quit the paper. Decided this was where I belong. I’ll sink or swim with my brothers and sisters of the Mine Mill.”
“Very noble of you, Foley. And how’s all that working out for ya?”
Gilpin gestured at the palpable tension that surrounded his cubicle.
“Oh, as you see. Good days and bad. And nobility had very little to do with it, by the way. I decided it was time to stop just writing about the CIA, and time to start doing something.”
“Sure looks like you’re still writing …”
Gilpin grunted. “Yeah, but now it’s for the union, against the CIA. No more pretending to be objective.”
“So you’re still convinced they’re behind this mess?”
Gilpin nodded. “Sorry to hear about your father-in-law.”
“Father-in-law to be. Maybe.” Jake corrected.
“What happened to him?”
“Hit by a bus crossing the street.”
“And how is such a thing even possible? Those buses are huge, and painted that god-awful orange …”
Jake looked down, trying to suppress a laugh. It was true. All the buses in the city’s transit fleet, like all city-owned vehicles, were painted an ugly, garish orange. When he looked up again, he could see that Gilpin was struggling to suppress his own mirth. “Well, he was very near-sighted,” Jake offered, and suddenly both of them were roaring with laughter.
“So you don’t think it was just an accident?” Jake asked Gilpin after he’d caught his breath.
“I think the man knew too much. He was in the middle of way too much shit. In over his head.”
“Or maybe he just took one for the team.”
“Meaning?”
“Well, think about it, Foley. We see him when we bust in that day, but he also sees me. So maybe he worries I’ll tell Jo Ann. And how’s that gonna play out? That he’s in cahoots with the guy who’s just killed my brother—is my girlfriend gonna have to choose between her boyfriend and her own father? And maybe he’s not sure who she is gonna choose, so …”
“So he falls on his sword, looks for the final exit. And takes it.”
“And what about you, Foley? You still convinced the CIA is behind all this?”
“ Oh Lord yes, more so now than ever. Have you heard the latest?”
“Try me.”
“You know about this new university that’s starting up over the other side of Lake Ramsey?”
“Of course.” Everyone in town had heard about the new institution, the city’s first seat of university-level post-secondary learning, founded by a sizeable donation from International Nickel. At the moment it was little more than a muddy construction site and a cluster of loosely federated, self-declared colleges, each with an affiliation to one religious denomination or another.
“Well,” Gilpin continued with a frown, “there’s something fishy going on over there.”
“Oh yeah? In what way?”
“It’s at the Jesuit’s college, the University of Sudbury. There’s a new priest out there who’s just dropped in outta nowhere, teaching this special night course aimed at Mine Mill members, and their wives. All about how the union’s run by Communists, and how we’re a threat to the entire Free World …”
“Sounds like the usual red-baiting bullshit to me,” Jake shrugged.
“Oh, it is. But this guy’s good. As if it’s not enough we got the priests in their pulpits preaching sermons against us every Sunday, and that Tory rag the Sudbury Star takin’ shots every chance they get, now Inco donates five million bucks to start up a new university and right away this new priest just happens to land in here—some guy no one’s ever heard of—and the Jesuits have a cockpit to help mastermind the raids …” Gilpin shook his head in exasperation. “Well, Jake, I’m on deadline …”
Jake hastily excused himself, and went off in search of Spike Sworski.
He found the union president in his office. The door was open, but Jake tapped lightly on the door frame before entering. “Hello, Mr. Sworski,” he ventured.
The union president was engrossed in reading a file on his desk. He glanced up over his reading glasses before breaking into a broad smile. “Jake McCool! This is a surprise! Come in, come in!”
“How’s the knee?”
“Oh, it’s fine.” Jake said with a shrug. “I’ve been back at work for almost a month now. How’re you holding up, Mr. Sworski
?”
“Winning some and losing some, it seems. What are you hearing out there on the job?”
“Well, I’m at Frood right now—support’s pretty solid, sir.”
Sworski nodded. “God bless the Frood Miners … Would that we had ten more mines like it …”
“But we don’t?”
“On a good day, maybe five.”
Jake whistled. “Only five out of ten? Is it really that close?”
Sworski wagged his head from side to side, pursing his lips. “Maybe. Who knows? The only thing we know for sure is that Steel is continuing to sign more cards, and coming at us from every direction.”
“Any idea when the vote’ll be?”
Sworski turned his hands palms up. “That, too, is out of our hands.”
Jake studied the union leader closely. Sworski was still well dressed, dapper as ever, but there was an air about him—melancholic, brooding, almost fatalistic—that Jake had never noticed before.
Jake also noticed something else he hadn’t seen before—a pair of expensive, high-powered binoculars on Spike’s desk.
“Taking up bird watching?” he motioned toward the field glasses.
“Not hardly,” the union leader replied with a sardonic grin. “Figure we’re always being watched—might as well watch back! No, but seriously, I do enjoy watching the sporting events over at Queen’s, the ice skating and such.”
Jake nodded. During the winter months, he knew, the running track at Queen’s Athletic Field was flooded by the City Parks and Rec Department, the oval converted into one of the city’s most popular outdoor skating venues.
“Well, I won’t keep you, sir …” Jake ducked out, and returned directly to Gilpin’s little cubicle, to share his concerns about their mutual friend.
“Hey, what’s up with Spike?”
Gilpin looked up from his typewriter with a frown. “Spike senses he’s going down …”
“Really! Is he?”
“He might be … A lot of rank-and-filers still blame him for what happened in ’58 …”
“Wow! Spike Sworski defeated as president of 598! It hardly seems possible …”
“Oh, it’s possible, kid. Election’s next month. Better get used to the idea, although I don’t like it anymore’n you do …”
“What? But who?”
“Oh, Hoople and that gang, is who. Suspicions are that Steel is behind ’em, but no one knows for sure.”
“Aww, no! But that’d mean the end of the Local!”
“Afraid so. Now you know why he looks so worried. And it’s not just the presidency, either. There’s a whole slate of ’em running—Vice, Treasurer …”
Jake withdrew in stunned silence.
His mind raced on the long drive home to the Valley. First the disastrous defeat of ’58 … Now, maybe the election of a secretly pro-Steel faction to head up the big Local … What did it all mean? And, more to the point, what would happen next?
23
Terra Incognita
Jake was eager to discuss the latest news with Bob once they took a break in their new heading. So far, the work was going as Bob had predicted: at the end of their first pay period their bonus had remained well into the hundred percent range, and they were well below the bottom of the pit—a good thing, as November had arrived and with it Sudbury’s skies had turned a steady, sullen overcast—usually a precursor of the year’s first snowfall.
In fact, if anything, the new stope was a tad on the warmish side. And occasionally the acrid smell of sulphur smoke was evident from the fire burning down below, deep in the bowels of Frood Mine’s high grade Bottom Country.
“Sworski in trouble!” Bob marvelled when Jake told him the news. “Well I must say I’m not surprised.” As an active shop steward, charged with enforcing the collective bargaining agreement on the job at all times, Bob had more than a passing interest in developments at the Union Hall.
“But a slate of Hoople’s cronies? I’m not sure I like the sound of that …”
Bob’s sentiments echoed those of Big Bill, who had feared the worst after Jake shared his news at the dinner table.
“Yeah, well I can tell ya Sworski himself looked pretty worried,” Jake reported.
“Then I’ll work extra hard to pull the vote around here,” Bob vowed as he brought the lunch break to an abrupt end. That was one disadvantage to the new heading—much more drilling was required due to the new, more spacious dimensions, so lunchtime was curtailed.
Another was the height of the back. The roof of the new heading was much higher now, making the back much more difficult to see, and to scale. The only solution was to scrape the muck pile as high as possible, and to use it as a crude staging, standing atop it to inspect the back, and to scale, and to prop up the stoper for drilling holes for the roofbolts.
It was tedious, but they learned to adapt.
And, as promised, the bonus was good.
On the Friday morning of the last day of the second pay period in their new stope, Bob met Jake at the cage. “Listen, I’ve got a meeting,” he told Jake. “Why don’t you go on ahead and tidy up in the stope as best you can?”
Although they worked now as equals, there was little doubt that the older, more experienced miner was, in fact, the leader of the team.
“Sure,” Jake answered without hesitation.
The two men separated and soon Jake was on his own in the stope. It felt eerie—and strangely quiet—without Bob, but Jake busied himself as best he could, scaling the back and carefully arranging the tools in preparation for the day’s drilling to begin.
At last, with the heading ship shape, Jake scooped out a seat on the muck pile and sat down to await Bob’s arrival. It rarely happened that he was alone in the stope, and Jake found himself listening to sounds that were normally drowned out by the roar of the jackleg—the steady drip of water, the hissing of the air line and the muted roar of a jackleg in some distant heading. And then, so faint at first that he wasn’t sure it wasn’t his imagination, Jake thought he heard something strange—wholly unfamiliar in the far off distance. Indistinct though it was, it was steady.
Gradually the sound grew louder. It was definitely real, Jake concluded. Soon the sound had become an identifiable noise—a steady chug-a-chug-a-chug sound. Whatever it was, it was headed this way.
Jake was almost alarmed when he saw something he’d never seen before: his own shadow dancing on the wall of the stope! He jumped to his feet at once, and turned to face whatever it was entering the heading, only to be blinded by the glare of headlights. Shielding his eyes with his hands Jake could just make out a miner’s cap lamp above and behind the headlights.
It was, Jake soon realized, Bob. He was standing on a platform in the middle of this new contraption, intently manipulating a bank of levers in front of him. With no little difficulty Bob guided the machine, which travelled on rubber tires, around the muck pile and into a precise location facing the breast. Once he was satisfied with the location Bob turned off the engine and stepped down from his platform in the middle of his new machine, which looked to Jake like an ungainly agglomeration of hoses, metal and some kind of chassis riding above conventional rubber tires.
“What the—?” Jake exploded.
Bob gestured proudly at the machine. “This here’s the first three-boom jumbo drill in all of Frood Mine! Here, give us a hand …” Bob moved quickly to disconnect the air line from the jackleg and to snap it on to the new machine.
Jake dutifully assisted by helping to drag the heavy air hose across the jagged floor of the stope.
Bob re-ascended his low platform and, with much hissing of pressurized air, began manipulating levers once again. A bank of floodlights illuminated the bizarre scene. Jake watched as the machine began to unfold, revealing, finally, something that was familiar to Jake—three jacklegs attached to articulating metal arms. It was a robot! Bob placed the tips of drill steels carefully, with much trial and error, just so against the breast.
“Here, you’ll be needin’ this.” He handed Jake a hard hat with two strange bumps on the sides. Jake examined the hat, quickly realizing the bumps were ear muffs that swung down over his ears.
With that Bob opened the air to the drills and Jake watched as three jacklegs began to turn simultaneously. The whole spectacle was illuminated in the glare of floodlights which had also unfolded from the machine. It was the most light Jake had ever seen in one place underground. The roar of the three drills must have been deafening, but the ear muffs filtered out most of the racket.
“It’s like a robot!” Jake yelled to Bob, who bobbed his head in agreement.
“Does the work of three men.” Bob wasn’t shouting, and Jake realized the ear muffs muffled the noise of the drills, but not speech.
“Six men,” he frowned. “Two to a drill.”
They finished the shift, their round drilled, with no incident and even less effort. Even Jake, dubious as he was at this experiment, was impressed—they had finished drilling before lunch, which allowed for a leisurely break and left them with only loading their rounds to do in the afternoon. They barely broke a sweat. If they kept this up, Jake reckoned, their bonus earnings would be through the roof. The approaching holidays should be most bountiful in both the McCool and Jesperson households this year.
But everything turned on a dime when they reached the cage.
“Guess you fellas didn’t hear what just happened down in the States—Kennedy got killed!” the tender announced. He was bringing the news, he realized, to some of the very last people on the planet—certainly the continent—to get wind of it.
“What?”
“Where?”
“Down in Dallas.”
“But how—are they sure he’s dead?”
“Oh, they’re sure, all right. Cronkite himself announced it an hour, hour-and-a-half ago. They figure it was some kind of high-powered rifle.”
