Wintersong. The Nickel Range Trilogy • Volume 3 Read online

  Mick Lowe

  Wintersong

  The Nickel Range Trilogy • Volume 3

  Baraka Books

  Montréal

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  © Mick Lowe

  ISBN 978-1-77186-106-9 pbk; 978-1-77186-116-8 epub; 978-1-77186-117-5 pdf; 978-1-77186- 118-2 mobi/pocket

  Book Design and Cover by Folio infographie

  All illustrations including cover: Oryst Sawchuk

  Editing and proofreading: Barbara Rudnicka, Robin Philpot

  Legal Deposit, 2nd quarter 2017

  Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec

  Library and Archives Canada

  Published by Baraka Books of Montreal

  6977, rue Lacroix

  Montréal, Québec H4E 2V4

  Telephone: 514 808-8504

  [email protected]

  www.barakabooks.com

  We acknowledge the support from the Société de développement des entreprises culturelles (SODEC) and the Government of Quebec tax credit for book publishing administered by SODEC.

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  Contents

  PART ONE Fall

  1 “Out ’til the Grass is Green!”

  2 Disarmed, Still Dangerous

  3 Council of War

  4 “Every Miner Had a Mother”

  5 Off the Chain

  6 Southern Swing

  7 Mission to Bay Street

  8 Molly Keeps the Peace

  9 Below the Water Line

  10 The Kindness of Strangers (1)

  11 The Kindness of Strangers (2)

  12 The Wives Hold a Christmas Party

  PART TWO Winter

  13 Lunch Bag Let Down— and a Surprise Announcement

  14 The Mayor Drops a Bomb

  15 Spook’s Return

  16 Thompson Settles, and Jordan Nelson Makes a Rare Misstep

  17 Tipping Points

  PART THREE

  18 The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight and Heartening News from the Financial Page

  PART FOUR Late Spring

  19 Spring Comes to the Lines

  20 Return of the Boreal

  21 The Wives, Embattled

  22 The Mad Bomber

  23 Pit Stop

  24 Parsing a CBA

  25 Doctor’s Appointment

  26 Selling the CBA

  27 The Wives, Divided

  28 Security Detail

  29 One Tough Meeting

  3o The Wives Take a Stand

  31 The Wives Speak Out

  32 Interlude

  33 Southwind on the Move

  34 History Is Made at the Steel Hall

  35 Thirty and Out

  36 261

  More from Baraka Books

  To the women—and men—of ’78-9

  “Revolution is the workers’ festival.”

  —V.I. Lenin

  PART ONE

  Fall

  1

  “Out ’til the Grass is Green!”

  Sudbury, Ontario, Canada

  September 15, 1978

  Like all good movies, this one begins with a song.

  It was everywhere that fall and late summer, rattling out of the tinny speakers of cheap transistor radios in truck-stop kitchens, booming out of two-ton Wurlitzer jukebox woofers in every honky-tonk bar north of the French, always sung with a Nashville twang as coarse and unadorned as a rasp file: “Take this job and shove it! I ain’t workin’ here no more!”

  It was seen by all of them as their song, telling the story of their lives, their theme song. And they would, in their thousands, have flipped the company the bird as they strode through the plant gates that end-of-shift, except both hands were full, as they lugged their belongings and dirty laundry from cleaned-out lockers.

  Nearly twelve thousand hard rock miners and nickel smelter and refinery workers left the plants with swagger that night: “Take this job and shove it!” They were pulling the pin, “Stickin’ it to the Man.” Greeting their departing comrades, they brimmed with a bravado their wives might not have shared, thinking of their children with no Christmas, and cash running low over the long winter months ahead: “Out ’til the grass is green, brother!”

  Fuckin’ A! “Out ’til the grass is green!”

  They were like lemmings, piling off a high cliff, about to plunge to their own mass graves, all the papers and politicians said so, even the political leaders of their own, social democratic party, the party of the workers. Hell, even some of their own union leaders said it. “Do Not Strike: Union Leader” was the skyline headline blazoned page one above the flag in the province’s largest circulation daily newspaper.

  And they all knew it was true: they were taking on a ruthless and enormously rich opponent, one they had strengthened by letting their own stupidity and cupidity crowd out common sense by creating a huge stockpile, more than three million pounds of finished nickel—enough to last the company a year without an ounce of additional production—in their eagerness to make money through overtime work and the bonus system.

  But there was also a strategic component to their mindset, a nuance largely overlooked by the news media of the day: despite turning a handy profit the previous year, the company had laid off several thousand of their co-workers, made effective just the previous February. Odds were, still more layoffs were on the way. But maybe, just maybe, a bold counter measure, a counter-intuitive move like a seemingly suicidal strike, might forestall further layoffs. All would sacrifice to save the lowest-seniority-and-youngest few. An injury to one . . .

  So maybe they were like men waiting for the trap door to swing. Fuck it! They were young, many of them, and they were cocky. “Take this job and shove it! I ain’t workin’ here no more!”

  “Out ’til the grass is green, brother!” the old guys swore, fists upraised.

  “Out ’til the grass is green!” the young guys nodded with knowing smiles.

  2

  Disarmed, Still Dangerous

  Jake McCool ran his hands through his dark, tousled, slightly curly hair. He was tired now, there was no doubt about it. The buzz he’d received from the spliff he’d shared with his wife Jo Ann hours ago, and which had supercharged the adrenalized emotions they both felt at the prospect of an imminent strike by thousands of Jake’s co-workers at Inco Limited, the largest nickel-producing company in the world, had long since worn off. These were dangerous times, and they both knew it. The dope rush had sharpened that edge, but it had ebbed during the long overnight hours.

  As he cradled the phone, Jake exhaled a long low sigh, equal parts relief and weariness. He’d just spoken with the last picket captain on his list—Tommy Flanagan, out at the Number One Gate of the smelter in Copper Cliff. Flanagan, a longtime shop steward at the enormous smelter complex, reported that a picket line was up—had been since midnight, when the old contract expired. The line was well manned by forty or so union stalwarts spoiling for a fight.

  “Some of ’em are pretty well oiled, Jake, been drinkin’ all night,” Flanagan had confided with a hint of amusement in his voice.

  “Yeah, well, just keep ‘em dangerous but disarmed, Tommy,” Jake replied. Both men laughed at this reference
to the ’66 wildcat, when someone on the smelter line had fired several rounds with a high-powered hunting rifle at the helicopter ferrying management personnel in and out of the strike-bound smelter complex. A direct hit would have been disastrous, except that the liquored-up striker who’d pulled the trigger couldn’t hit even one of the three choppers he’d seen through his sights. But the muzzle flashes had alarmed the pilot, a Korean War vet, who radioed them in immediately, a report which promptly led to the mobilization of hundreds of provincial police who were immediately dispatched to Sudbury to quell any threat of civil unrest from the fourteen thousand or so pissed-off nickel workers who had suddenly staged a massive, spontaneous—and illegal—walk-out at Inco’s sprawling operations across the Sudbury Basin.

  Both Jake and Flanagan had laughed at the light-hearted reference to the wildcat of ’66, but both were acutely aware they were sitting on a powder keg—the roiling, incessant resentment of a hard-boiled rank-and-file towards an employer that had bested them in bargaining and strike situations time after time, resulting in successive post-strike returns to work with a residue of sullen resentment and simmering rage that had only accumulated over the decades. The legal strike over which they were presiding and which was now a scant six hours old was about all that, both men knew. Across the Basin knots of angry men were now gathered around oil-drum fires fed by the greasy, highly combustible creosote of torn-up railway ties. They were wild men now, wild and hungry for payback, freed from the fetters of the workaday world and the discipline of the workplace. Booze was common, and occasionally an empty beer or liquor bottle would be launched, whizzing high through the night air, towards company property, usually smashing harmlessly into the empty parking lot accompanied by the distant, soul-satisfying sound of breaking glass. Even that small gesture, a precursor, perhaps, of greater mayhem to come, was greeted with a rousing, ragged cheer.

  The first gray light of dawn was just seeping in under the drawn blinds of Jake’s Steel Hall office as he hung up the phone.

  So. That was that. The largest integrated nickel mining-milling-refining operation the world had ever seen was now well and truly idled, every mine and plant entrance blockaded by Jake’s fellow union members, each picket line led by union activists Jake knew and trusted, three hand-picked captains to rotate through the three eight-hour shifts. Like the surface plants they now had a chokehold on, the picket lines would be a continuous operation, manned night and day for the foreseeable future.

  Jake rose wearily from his desk and walked the few paces to his office door.

  “Done deal, Ang,” he announced to Angel Houle, his secretary, whose desk was just outside his office door. “All lines are up. Just got off the phone with Tommy Flanagan out at the smelter. We’ve got the whole shebang tied up tighter’n a tick.”

  Houle’s brown eyes widened. She was the youngest secretary on the floor, a new hire, and Jake liked her for her energy, her enthusiasm, and, most of all for her great good humour, which bubbled up through her demeanour like a tireless, never-ending artesian spring.

  “No rest for the wicked, though, boss,” she responded, glancing at her wristwatch. “Jordan’s called a meeting for nine o’clock sharp.”

  Jake nodded mutely. Not for the last time in the coming months, Angel was giving him orders, telling him where to go and when to be there.

  Three hours. Just enough time for a pick-me-up at his favourite coffee shop.

  3

  Council of War

  Jake hopped in his car, and pointed it north, through the Flour Mill district, toward Lasalle Boulevard. The route took him through downtown, where the streets would normally be jammed at this time of day, with day shift workers hurrying to their jobs at the smelter and refineries west of town. But today, with the strike on, traffic was noticeably lighter. Jake’s destination was a newly opened coffee shop at the corner of Lasalle and Montrose.

  Despite its odd name—for a defenseman for the Toronto Maple Leafs who’d died recently in an automobile accident—the place had quickly become a favourite of Jake’s. He just flat-out loved their coffee.

  As usual, the place was bustling, even at this early hour. Jake was lucky to find a table. He couldn’t help but hear snatches of the animated conversations that swirled around him. Clearly the strike was the subject of the day, and the place was alive with rumour and speculation. The buzz was so palpable that Jake could almost taste it, along with his first sip of the bitter, scalding hot black coffee that was so highly caffeinated that Jake knew it would give him a coffee jag of sufficient strength to offset his fatigue and carry him through the day ahead.

  The air around Jake was alive with excitement, a keen anticipation over what would come next. It was, Jake reflected, almost a sense of liberation. He wondered how long that would last, once the novelty of the situation had worn off, and the monotony of life on the picket lines, with winter setting in, had become the new norm?

  Still, the buzz was infectious, and it, plus the coffee, propelled Jake, with lifted spirits, back to the Steel Hall.

  The mood was different inside the union hall, where he found Jordan Nelson, somber at the gravity of their situation, already sitting at the head of the boardroom table, waiting impatiently for the others to file in. As usual, the President of Local 6500 was all business. Like Jake. Nelson was barely thirty, a precocious age for a strike leader to be entrusted with such enormous responsibility. But then, Nelson was a special leader, in Jake’s eyes. He’d distinguished himself from the first moment Jake heard him speak nearly ten years earlier, at a special meeting of the stewards’ body, a steamy, closed–door affair convened to allow the big Local’s two hundred or so shop stewards to meet privately with the bargaining committee, which had just returned from Toronto split down the middle over a tentative agreement forged only after a four-month strike which had, along with the Americans’ war in Vietnam, sent world nickel prices soaring. Half the bargaining committee liked the new agreement, and would recommend acceptance to the full membership, which would hold a ratification vote in a few days’ time. But the other half of the bargaining team urged rejection, which meant prolonging the strike into the approaching holiday season. Which way the stewards’ body turned would carry considerable weight with the rank-and-file, and might well decide the ultimate outcome. As a result, the meeting, in the Dieppe Room, a much smaller space than the Vimy Room, which was the Hall’s main auditorium just across the lobby, was packed with parka-clad stewards shuffling in anxiously in their winter, felt-lined boots. A cloud of cigarette smoke and extreme tension, commingled with the smell of wet wool, hung over the gathering, which was supercharged by a persistent rumour that put the militants on the committee under a cloud of suspicion. Word from Toronto had it that a notorious Detroit-based scrap metal dealer had been seen in the hotel, befriending certain members of the bargaining committee. Ostensibly, the scrap metal man had arrived on a fact-finding mission: would the Sudbury strike continue? The recent dramatic run-up in spot nickel prices had made him a very rich man, scrap nickel being so much in demand by a Pentagon desperate to continue yet another aerial bombing campaign in the skies over North Vietnam. But a return to work in Sudbury would result in an immediate surge of newly finished nickel flooding onto the market, and the bottom would drop out of the scrap price. Never a man to leave matters to chance, the darkest of rumours reaching Sudbury had it that the cigar-chomping Detroiter had been seen whispering confidentially to some bargaining committee members on the elevator, even slipping them bills from the wad of cash he carried in his vest pocket, if only they would prolong the strike …

  Jake was certain that most of the other stewards in the room had heard the same rumours he had, and everyone listened in silence as the bargaining team presented the contents of the tentative agreement, until then a closely guarded secret. The proposed contract was good, if not great—significant wage increases over the life of the three-year agreement, cost-of-living
protection against inflation (known as COLA, for short), minor strengthening of contract language—it was clear their strike was beginning to bite. One by one the members of the bargaining committee, arrayed at a table facing the stewards, took turns speaking either for or against the agreement. There was always a heavy element of political posturing at this point, Jake knew. When the bargaining committee faced what was bound to be a raucous membership meeting thronged by a thousand hard rock miners and disgruntled smelter and refinery workers who hadn’t seen a paycheck in four months, there was always an irresistible tendency to grandstand, to adopt a militant pose with an eye cocked toward the next election for the local union leadership in the hope that the president who urged acceptance today would be declared a sell-out weakling tomorrow, and who better to replace him than the tough-talking firebrand who had preached rejection, with the promise of “more!” to a membership which seized on the elections as a kind of post facto referendum on the previous contract? If the new contract was good, then the incumbents who had led negotiations stood a good chance of re-election. But if it was found wanting, the incumbent slate would be voted out by an unforgiving rank-and-file. The stakes rose accordingly as a strike dragged on, and by the day of the stewards’ meeting it was four-months old, one of the longest strikes in recent memory.