The Raids

by Mick Lowe

  Back inside the Mine Mill Hall, meanwhile, events were unfolding much as Big Bill had recommended earlier. From the first floor below came the unmistakable sounds of beer bottles being hurled, with a dull popping sound and the occasional shattering of glass, against the hard steps leading up to the foyer from the street entrance, accompanied. eventually by the sweet, yeasty smell of beer wafting up from below.

  But that was not the only smell rising from the bowels of the building. Soon there came a rich, savoury smell that quickly had noses twitching throughout the second floor offices where the Mine Mill loyalists had taken up makeshift residence.

  “I asked Sammy to cook up a batch of his Irish stew,” Spike explained. Everyone knew he was referring to old Sam Dwyer, the pensioner who ran the lunch counter in the basement of the Hall. The lunch counter served up cheeseburgers, hot dogs, fries and other short-order fare just outside the entrance to the tap room. Just the smell of Sammy’s cooking lifted the spirits of the troops two floors above immensely, and before long word arrived that the stew was ready.

  A general exodus began, and the occupiers were soon tromping down the stairs toward the smell of Sammy’s hearty beef stew. As they did so, many of them glimpsed for the first time Tommy Rafftery and his boys sitting in the foyer, fire hoses at the ready. In one way it was a reassuring sight to see Rafftery and his toughs standing guard as their first line of defence. But in another way it was unnerving, too: there were few illusions about the near lethal beatings Rafftery and his pugs had administered in defence of the Mine Mill cause, and, as they trooped past on their way down to the floor below, it occurred to many of them, as it did to Jake himself, that if their besiegers ever did succeed in storming the Hall, very little quarter could be expected in the final, desperate clash. It was a sombre group that settled in over steaming bowls of Sam Dwyer’s Irish stew. It now seemed highly likely that their impromptu action, which had begun with such joyous bravado, would end in bloodshed, even death.

  30

  The Siege of the Mine Mill Hall

  It was a revived and grimly determined group that returned back up to the office floor once their repast was finished. They settled in to await whatever might happen next. Their ranks had grown slightly; Jake’s uncles were among the reinforcements who had slipped in through the side door just as dusk fell, and before the barricading had been completed. The police had also been called, though there were few illusions that Sudbury’s finest would intervene on the side of the Mine Millers. They had, in fact, arrived at the scene, sirens blaring and cherry tops flashing, but instead of acting to clear Hoople’s ever growing band, which was now spilling out onto Regent Street, they had simply set up shop at the corner of Regent and Elm, their cruisers drawn to a stop akimbo in the dead centre of one of the city’s busiest intersections, where they established a roadblock, rerouting traffic around the congestion in front of the Mine Mill Hall on Regent Street.

  Inside the Hall, someone had turned on one of the secretary’s radios. As he idly tuned through the stations, a male voice became audible through the static. “This is Hartley Hubbs, CKSO Radio News, coming to you live from the front of the Mine Mill Union Hall …”

  “Hey, will ya get a load a’ this!” interjected an occupier. “Listen up, everybody, we’re on the news!”

  The signal boomed in loud and clear—as it should have, the CKSO studios and transmitter tower were atop the Regent Street hill, mere blocks away—but the message was garbled, especially when Hubbs turned to Réjean Préfontaine, a randomly selected protester to explain, in his own words, why he was there. The place was full of Commies, there’d been an election, and they’d lost—no, not our side, the Commie side—and just why it was they were now inside the building while the winning side was left standing outside looking in he really wasn’t sure, but … His voice trailed off, and Hubbs thanked him briskly.

  “Préfontaine!” an occupier spat out the name like a bad taste. “Anybody here know this knucklehead?”

  Nobody did.

  “Say, I bet he ain’t even a member!” concluded an occupier who was stretched out uncomfortably on a sleeping bag on the hard floor. In this he was correct—Préfontaine had been lately recruited in the bowels of the Borgia only moments before, and Hoople, who had crowded up close to the radio reporter so he could hear every word, was impressed with Préfontaine’s overall grasp of the subject, all things considered. The arrival of the radio man and the police cars up the street with their red lights throbbing ceaselessly—the strobing colour lent the scene a sense of lurid intensity—all of it ratcheted up the mood in his milling, expectant throng, much to Hoople’s satisfaction.

  The crowd, which had at first numbered only a few dozen, had now swollen to a few hundred, due mainly to Hoople’s earlier recruiting efforts in the Borgia. But now, he sensed, the radio exposure was speeding things up, and he was delighted when Hubbs promised to return every hour, on the hour, to update his story.

  Inside the Hall the occupiers continued to settle in for what promised to be a long and uncomfortable night. Their sense of isolation was now complete—the police could be expected to do no more than direct traffic, and now radios across the district were blaring out the news that their enemies had them trapped inside the Mine Mill Hall.

  None of this was surprising, of course. The Sudbury cops, many of whom had begun their careers as company police officers, had never been friendly to organized labour. The same was true of the city’s news media, so why expect anything different now? No, they were well and truly on their own, as they had been, in fact, since the Union was first organized. The hostility of the company was a given. Much of the locally owned small business community shared this antipathy, even though, in the view of Spike Sworski and many other union leaders, this position represented a misguided sense of self-interest. The Union’s strength in bargaining, after all, had produced wage increases that resulted in ever-higher disposable incomes—money spent in the community and in the shops of the store owners who insisted on identifying their own interests with the company, rather than the Union, which bore them no ill will. As the early evening of the long night wore on, the occupiers of the Mine Mill Hall hunkered down, and an uneasy calm descended—it was still them against the world: so what else was new?

  For his part, Big Bill McCool fought to stay awake, even as those encamped on the floor around him fell into noisome, restless slumber. McCool kept an anxious eye on his watch; the hours seemed to drag past.

  Only Henry Hoople found time, that amazingly elastic, elusive quantum, passing more slowly. Outside on the sidewalk in the hours before midnight the dedicated anti-Mine Mill militant was beginning to wonder, for the first time, if he had bitten off more than he could chew. There was no mistaking the growing restiveness of his troops, who were becoming more sober—and less patient—by the minute. “Say Henry, where’s all this free booze we was promised?” demanded Shakey Akerley, who was beginning to bear a more pronounced resemblance to his nickname with each passing moment, as the DTs set in. Christ! When was the last time he’d gone this long without a drink? Or at least, this long in the evening? It must’ve been Christmas Eve when, to the chagrin of Akerley and his fellow drinkers, the publicans of the Borgia had closed their establishments early, rousting their indignant patrons with a last call at two in the afternoon, leaving them to face the bleak rigours of withdrawal in the even bleaker surroundings of solitary skid row hotel rooms. And on Christmas Eve, when Christmas cheer with his own mates was what a man needed most! Was there no sense of Christian charity left in this world?

  Hoople could only shrug helplessly in response to Akerley’s query, which was, Hoople realized, as much plea as question. But what was he to do? The Hall’s defenders had cagily barricaded themselves in, in such a way that Hoople and his rabble dared not tackle them head on. How much longer could he hold this mob together when, to a man, they longed so powerfully to drift back down the hill to their old familiar haunts, where they would once again
be surrounded by their old bosom buddies of the bottle?

  Inside the Hall Bill McCool decided at last it was time to wake his son. Carefully picking his way through the sleeping mass of his fellow occupiers, he approached Jake, stopping to tap him gently on the shoulder with the toe of his shoe. He didn’t dare say anything, for fear he might wake the other sleepers. But his young lad only groaned softly, and remained sound asleep. Big Bill envied his youthful ability to sleep so deeply, despite such adverse circumstances. He tapped Jake’s shoulder again, harder this time. “Jake!” he whispered. “C’mon son! It’s our turn to stand watch!”

  This time the younger McCool was stirred to wakefulness. Roused out of a warm and pleasant dream about Jo Ann Winters; even though they’d split up months ago, Jake still dreamt of her with fondness. But then, suddenly she was gone, and here he was on the floor of the Mine Mill Hall, being roused from sleep by his father. “Yeah, okay, okay, I’m coming, dad. Keep your shirt on!” Jake whispered as loudly as he dared.

  He pulled himself out of his sleeping bag and, still half asleep, followed his father down the stairs to the first floor, where they found Rafftery and his confederates fighting off sleep themselves. A certain disturbance could be heard from outside the Hall, along with the crunching of footsteps on top of the canopy at one entrance.

  “What’s going on out there?” Big Bill asked Rafftery.

  “Big crowd, gettin’ bigger, and all worked up,” Rafftery explained, relinquishing his chair and fire hose to Bill McCool. “But I doubt they’ve got the sand to make a rush straight at us. Still, ya never know, so look sharp down here, boys … Thanks a lot for doin’ this, brother.”

  Jake relieved the tired Mine Miller at the other door, while outside, to Henry Hoople’s everlasting wonderment and gratitude, a sudden murmur rippled through the crowd; something was happening! It started with the flash of headlights on the edge of the crowd, in itself unusual, since the police had blocked off Regent Street hours ago. For some reason they had decided to let this vehicle through.

  Hoople pushed his way through the crowd to the car. Its front passenger door opened and out stepped union president Bobby McAdoo. Hoople flushed with amazement and pleasure as he stepped forward to greet the newcomer, who was just finishing his cigar.

  “Bobby! Am I ever glad to see you!” gushed Hoople, pumping McAdoo’s hand.

  “Henry,” the union president replied evenly as he surveyed the scene. “Now what we got goin’ on here, Henry?”

  “Mine Mill son-of-a-bitches pulled a fast one on us, Bob. Went in and took over the Hall—but we got ’em surrounded!”

  “I can see that. You’re holding the old fort, eh, Henry? Good for you! But who are all these people?” McAdoo, a successful union politician with a remarkable memory for names and faces, had been scanning the crowd for familiar ones. With the singular exception of Shakey Akerley, he couldn’t find anyone he knew.

  Hoople shrugged, and lowered his voice. “Buncha guys from the Borgia. Rubbies mainly. Promised ’em booze to get ’em up here, but the fuckin’ Commies have themselves so well barricaded inside we don’t dare rush the place. Our troops are getting restless, Bob. Why don’t you say somethin’ to ’em, maybe tune ’em up, get their minds on other things?”

  McAdoo, still sizing up the crowd over Hoople’s head, chewed his stogie meditatively before responding.

  “Yeah, sure thing, Henry. I can do that. Help me get up there?” McAdoo gestured at the flat canopy that covered the entrance to one of the Hall’s front doors.

  Hoople motioned at the driver to pull his car forward, nudging his way through the throng. When the hood was even with the front edge of the canopy, Hoople signalled a stop.

  “Here ya go, Bob,” Hoople offered a hand to McAdoo to help him clamber up on the vehicle’s slippery front bumper. From there McAdoo scaled the hood and windshield before climbing on to the roof itself. Next it was an easy step on to the canopy. As Hoople knew, the newly elected union president was a riveting speaker, with a powerful voice that boomed out over the crowd and at once commanded its attention.

  “Brothers and sisters!” yelled McAdoo, even though those milling about at his feet were, in fact, neither, in either the literal or figurative senses of the words.

  “Brothers and sisters!” he repeated, motioning for calm, and, to Hoople’s amazement, the entreaty appeared to work—the mob did seem to simmer down, almost despite itself. The effect was heightened as the car’s driver backed up slowly before throwing on his high beams, illuminating McAdoo in the glare of the headlights.

  It took McAdoo a moment to gauge his audience before he began to rake them over with that perverse genius common to demagogues everywhere: once he had the range, his aim for the tender spots left by a lifetime of neglect, privation and bitterness was unerring. Bob McAdoo knew well how to assay the darker planes of human existence.

  “Brothers and sisters! Now I know you’re wondering why it is that honest, God-fearing folks like yourselves are out here pounding the pavement, while a buncha’ godless, atheistic Commie bastards is sleeping inside, under a comfortable roof tonight! And you know what?” Here McAdoo paused a beat for effect, as a murmur of approbation mixed with expectation rippled through the crowd.

  “I wonder the same goddamn thing myself!” The mob roared its approval, urging McAdoo on. The union president began to pace the long, narrow canopy, working himself up as he dug deep, searching for just the right words to hurl at the crowd.

  Hoople himself, happy to relinquish his leadership role, melted back through the crowd, which now filled both lanes of Regent Street, until he was on the very edge of the milling throng. He stood on the curb of the sidewalk adjacent to Queen’s Athletic Field, where he was just able to see over the crowd massed before the Hall, which stood mesmerized by the pacing, fulminating McAdoo. To his right Hoople noticed that a police cruiser was silently gliding to a halt at the edge of the crowd, headlights and flashers off.

  McAdoo stopped pacing at the lip of the canopy, ready at last to resume his peroration. He looked down into the thousand or more eager, expectant upturned faces. “So why are we out here? You’re all good people, I know it, and I’m the legitimately elected president of the goddamned union!”

  “There’s just one answer: it’s a Commie power grab, plain and simple! They don’t believe in democracy, not here or in Communist Russia!”

  At this point the police cruiser, which had arrived on the periphery of the crowd so inconspicuously, announced its presence by shining its powerful floodlight on McAdoo. The effect was of a follow-spot bathing a stage performer in a pool of light, greatly enhancing McAdoo’s presence, adding gravitas to his speech. The crowd was now hanging on every word, and Henry Hoople thrilled at the drama of the moment.

  “Hell no, they don’t believe in free and fair elections! I won the last Local Union elections at 598 fair and square, and yet they’re in there and I’m out here with you good people, all because an elite few think they know better than the majority of the membership! And isn’t that always the way?”

  Suddenly Hoople became aware of a flurry of activity at the base of the stainless steel flagpole which stood at the front of the Hall. Almost as suddenly the police spotlight panned away from McAdoo to a knot of protesters bunched around the flagpole. One of them was fumbling with the chain used to hoist the Canadian flag aloft, and in a moment Hoople could see why: a new flag was being raised up the pole, and thanks to the police spotlight, Hoople could see it for what it was—a red flag, adorned only with a yellow hammer-and-sickle! The flag of the Soviet Union was now flying over the Mine Mill Hall! It took a moment for the full significance of this to dawn on the assembled multitude, but they soon let out a whoop of derision as McAdoo gestured up at the red flag illuminated by the police spotlight.

  “Isn’t this always the way? An elite few always think they know what’s best for everyone, and take what they want by force!”

  “But is that how we want to live
in Canada?” The crowd roared back with a single voice: “Noooo! Booooh!” “But here we are, in Sudbury, goddamned Canada, out in front of the only building in the entire Dominion that has the hammer-and-sickle flying over it, instead of our beloved Canadian Union Jack!” McAdoo paused for another beat, and the crowd responded with another roar: “Booooh!” McAdoo had found the range now, and he continued in a cadence calculated to fuel the crowd’s simmering rage.

  McAdoo’s actions reinforced his words, punctuating the hectoring oratory he was using to prod and goad the crowd to action. At times he would even turn his back on them as he paced restlessly up and down the flat canopy that stretched from the front door of the Union Hall out nearly to the sidewalk that lined Regent Street. When that happened the crowd seemed to quieten, become a restless, yet respectful, shuffling mass, waiting as the great man searched to find his next words. And then, when he found them, he whirled to face the multitude, his dark eyes flashing as he strode catlike back toward the crowd.

  From his vantage point across Regent Street Hoople surveyed the unfolding spectacle with wonder: how had this all happened? A few short hours ago he had paused, more or less on an instinctive hunch, to gather a half-dozen or so Steelworker supporters as they left the Hall in the late afternoon, and now this! He was thrilled at what had transpired—at the steadily growing mob of supporters who had swollen the ranks so spontaneously, at the sudden arrival of McAdoo, whose car was permitted to pass through a police cordon, at the appearance of Hubbs, whose hourly news updates were almost serving as paid commercials for the Steelworker cause, at the stealthy arrival of the police cruiser with its floodlight glaring, lighting up the hammer-and-sickle flag, enhancing the drama of the whole scene. Everything had happened as if on cue, organized by some unseen hand. It was, decided Henry Hoople, a devout Roman Catholic, divine intervention, and a further sign that their cause was just. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his trousers and stood tall and proud, enjoying this moment, the drama playing out before him, with an almost religious intensity.