The Antigonish Review
Issue 121
Sheldon Currie
J.B. McLachlan: A Biography, by David Frank, James Lorimer &
Company, Toronto, 1999, 592 pp.
The Long Stretch by Linden Maclntyre, Stoddart, 1999, pp 252.
This magnificent biography should be read by the many people who will
never read it: journalists whose rhetoric reveal their belief that miners
are no more than underground ditchdiggers. And those clergy who seem to
think that allegiance to their enterprise should take precedence in a
coal miner's mind over the welfare of his family. And politicians for
whom the safety and economic security of the citizens they serve
comes second after their allegiance to corporate bankers. And bureaucrats
of the judiciary who create laws and have no idea that they create them
in their own image for the purpose of offering security and riches to,
well, themselves.
Alas, history is like money: those most in need are the least likely
to find more than enough to stave off starvation. But unlike financial
poverty, unfortunately, intellectual poverty is more likely to damage
the pauper's clients than the pauper. In 1885 Emile Zola's novel Germinal,
the first, best, and grandfather of all coal mining novels, outlined the
plight of coal mining families at the mercy of denseheaded politicians
and "industrialists," as they like to call themselves. Zola made graphically
clear the consequences ofprofiteering stupidity. If Zola had lived to
be 100, he might easily have rewritten his novel, setting it in Glace
Bay during the first three decades of the 20th century, changing only
the language and the names of the characters. Of course those who didn't
read Germinal learned nothing from it. And had he written it in
1940, or even 1990, I don't imagine it would have altered the brief, devastating
history of the Westray conspiracy to produce money and votes.
David Frank's biography of J.B. McLachlan is as clear and as devastating
as Zola's fictional history of a coal town and no doubt quite as futile
in its attempt to wam the future. As W.H. Auden said in his tribute to
W.B Yeats, "Poetry makes nothing happen: it survives in the valley of
its saying." But at least this biography, which is a clear and concise
history of industrial Cape Breton, will serve to send the sinners to the
Hades of history and secure for them a permanent location in Nova Scotia's
Hall of Shame.
During strikes in the coalfields of Cape Breton and Nova Scotia an unwritten
rule dictated that the miners would provide basic maintenance so the mines
would not flood and when the strike was over, the mines would be ready
for production. A correlative rule dictated that miners and their families
would not be denied credit at the company stores and would not be turned
out of their company houses, that is, left homeless and starving. The
problem was that the company and the provincial and federal governments
held the first rule to be sacred, but the correlative to be flexible.
In spite of accusations against McLachlan that he was a communist, a bolshevist,
that he was godless, and a host of other buzzword accusations, his real
crime was that he considered both sides of the correlation to be sacred:
if you are going to starve our children, we are not going to protect your
mine.
In the lines of contemporary Poet Dawn Fraser, McLachlan's position was
not only practical, reasonable and effective, but heroic. "Then Roy the
Wolf began to weep/His tears fell fast, his groans were deep--/' I don't
care what you do to me/But, oh, protect my property!/ All this was music
sweet to Jim/ McLachlan only laughed at him/ Says he, "It's no affair
of mine/ Go ahead and save your mine/ You never saved a worker's child.
Not everyone shared the poet's view. Roy Wolvin, known as Roy the Wolf,
the subject of Fraser's lines referred to J.B. as "the concentrated cause"
of labour unrest in the coal industry. James Burdock, Prime Minister MacKenzie
King's minister of Labor, denounced McLachlan and all his miners as "un-British,
un-Canadian and cowardly."Father A.M.Thompson warned his parishioners
that trade unionism was acceptable only under the leadership of "people
of sound mind"-"not irresponsibles whose sole purpose was to further the
cause of Bolshevism, socialism and to keep the country in continual turmoil."
(p276) John L. Lewis, President of the United Mine Workers of America,
appeared to be more depressed than impressed with Mc Lachlan's activity.
In a letter to the District 26 president Livingstone he wrote: "The United
Mine Workers is not a political institution Neither can it be used to
sustain officers of perverted business morals or individuals suffering
from mental aberration such as yourself and the aggregation of papier-mache
revolutionists who are associated with you." (p.313) So much for support
from the fearless leader.
Frank's biography makes pretty evident what any disinterested or fair
minded person knew throughout J.B.'s career as a labour leader. He was
a man of consistently high moral principles, and practiced the cardinal
virtues he inherited from his parents and learned from his teachers and
his avid reading. He was a man of courage, able to face the dangerous
moment, and of patience for the long haul. He was the Eliot Ness of the
labour movement who could be neither corrupted nor intimidated by power,
money, or by "his betters," the bosses, lawyers, clergymen, politicians
on the right or left, nor by labour leaders whose hidden agendas clashed
with the welfare of Nova Scotia coal miners.
As both union leader and newspaper editor McLachlan kept firmly in mind
the two great needs of the coal miners he represented: money enough for
their families to live healthy lives, and a safe environment to work in-the
two great needs, of course, that the company did not want to satisfy.
And it is sad to say that in his quest to satisfy these basic needs, J.B.
got no help from church or state and damn little from the United Mine
Workers of America. In 1929 he wrote in the Nova Scotia Miner,
that District 26 of the UMW "had become a'dues collecting machine' for
John L. Lewis, and a 'wage-cutting tool' for the company." (P445)
Indeed it would have been hard to find an institution whose representatives
did not conspire against him, the newspapers, the courts, the politicians,
the churches, and in spite of his superior intelligence, his iron integrity,
his genius for tactics and strategy, they finally landed him in prison
on a charge of "sedition." The charge turned out to be as flimsy as an
old miner's lung; McLachlan was in Dorchester no more than a week when
preparations were already in the works for his release, in spite of the
great danger he posed for the entire nation. Me Lachlan himself said it
all:
Sedition is when you protest against the
wrongs inflicted on working men; when you
protest against the resources of the
province being put in the control of men
like Roy Wolvin; when wage rates are forced
on you without your consent. If you say that
strongly enough, you are liable to get into
jail for sedition.
As a prisoner in Dorchester he spent his time as a book-keeper and a
shoemaker, and in his spare time, reading from books they allowed him
to borrow from the prison library (nothing seditious, of course) and from
his own copy of Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, one of his favourite
books, a brand new copy of which his daughter Jean gave him to celebrate
his departure for prison. Jean acquired the new copy by saving up Surprise
Soap wrappers and sending them off to the company so she could replace
the worn out copy of the book he kept in the house on Steele's Hill.
Among the J.B. Mc Lachlan prison stories, one claims he voluntarily stayed
in prison an extra day to finish making a pair of shoes for a fellow prisoner.
If the story is true it tells us something about the man. If apocryphal
it tells us something about what real people thought of him. Another story
records an encounter with an inmate in the recreation yard. When the prisoner
asked him what he was in for, J.B. answered:
"Sedition."
"Is that something to do with women?"
[the prisoner] whispered.
"Sometimes.,' said Jim.
"How many times did you do it?"
"Dozens," said Jim.
Outrage poured from every corner of the country, mostly from labour organization
and individuals. Where was the press? Where were the politicians? Where
were the "industrialists" in the face of this transparent miscarriage
of justice? Well, here is where they were:
The Toronto Globe rejected a letter to the editor with these revealing
words: "We do not care to print your letter which makes a hero of McLachlan."
The president of BESCO, Roy Wolvin wrote to Prime Minister Mac Kenzie
King with his views: "I certainly do not want any man in prison who does
not belong there but our courts in refusing his appeal must have acted
wisely. I have had much experience with this man's activities and I consider
him a dangerously clever 'Red' with him away for a few years, possibly,
his teachings will be forgotten."
Cape Breton Liberal MP George W. Kyte wrote to the Prime Minister. "If
he is liberated now, without having served any portion of his sentence,
it will be accepted by his friends as an admission on the part of the
government that his trial was unfair and his conviction illegal." McLachlan
had run against Kyte in the 1921 election. J. S. Woodsworth MP for Winnipeg
had made a speech in Glace Bay comparing McLachlan to Joseph Howe and
suggesting that if J.B. were to be freed the chances are good that he
might soon become the MP for Glace Bay. We don't know if MP Kyte was in
the Savoy Theatre to hear Woodsworth's speech so we will assume that his
motives for keeping J.B. in jail were pure and probably patriotic.
But he was liberated, because the charge was so outrageous, and the outrage
from the country so insistent, and the "piety" of his enemies so festered
with self-interest and polluted with political and financial agendas that
fear of exposure and embarrassment forced the issue. He was released on
the hypocritical grounds that, as the Toronto Globe feared, his continued
confinement might turn him into a hero, a martyr and thus hurt the cause
of the "possessed," and aid the nefarious agenda of the "dispossessed."
J.B. Mc Lachlan never fully recovered from health problems that developed
while he was in Dorchester, but he continued to work for his cause until
his death. In his later life he was a man honoured by the people he fought
for. After his death he became a legend and if he had blemishes they have
been purged by the passage of time. And this book, clear, concise, and
beautifully written in a vivid narrative style will elevate J.B. to the
heaven of history from whence he can look down on the mess that was made
in the coalfields of Nova Scotia from Springhill, to Westray, to Inverness,
to Sydney Mines, to Reserve Mines, to Dominion, to New Waterford, to Glace
Bay, and he can console himself if need be with the thought that he did
everything he could to prevent it. As for the future. Well, we all know
the oft repeated dictum about history, quoted, usually, by people who
never read it.
***
There are two answers to the question that seems to haunt Cape Breton
novelists: is it a good thing that our forefathers and mothers came here
from Europe and in one generation abandoned their language and related
cultural appendages for the sake of (take your pick) survival, security,
success, riches? The two answers are yes and no. Not yes or no, but yes
and no. Behavior of the group suggests yes. Talk suggests either in speech
or in song suggests no. But those who favour yes seem unable to put away
no. Those who favour no hedge their nostalgic half-choice by their almost
every act. Deep down we know the answer: the past is a nice place to visit,
be it our personal past or the ancestral past. We made the decision long
ago, before we even knew we did, individually and collectively. The Scots
are the most hesitant to admit it, but we are all the same, the Irish,
Italians, Acadians, Hungarians, Ukrainians, et al. Our constant behavior
unmasks us: the "Old Country" is like the cottage, a week there is pleasant.
In the summer.
For Cape Bretoners the question is repeated in the stay-at-home, go away
dilemma. Is it a good thing to go away for survival, success, etc? Are
we a tragic collection of economic exiles? The politically correct version
of Cape Breton mythology is that its sons and daughters took that heartbreaking
trip "down the road," to Boston, Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, or even
Halifax, with a heavy heart and a deep resolve to return. True no doubt
for some, but for many the other end of down the road was freedom, and
the broken heart, if any, was left behind to throw rocks at seagulls.
The Long Stretch takes the form of a conversation between two
cousins, John who went away to come back, Sextus who went away to succeed:
"When we were kids, away was the place you went if you had worth, or wanted
to get ahead. He(Sextus) was always bound for away." (p.8) John, until
he settled home for good, was a miner and worked in various parts of the
country, usually with his uncle, after whom he was named, both of them
always coming back with enough money to celebrate, turn around, and take
off again. They lived on the edge of the island before and after the causeway
was built, connecting Cape Breton to Nova Scotia, before and after the
Trans Canada Highway was built connecting Cape Breton to the rest of Canada,
and before and after the pulp mill which created jobs, making it unnecessary
to go away at all.
The Long Stretch is a love story, a war story, a murder mystery
and a record of a culture in transition. It is the story ofthe complex
relationships between three families in a small place beleaguered by large
events and their own ambitions and weaknesses. The story itself is complicated
but written with clarity and verve and precision. Mac Intyre is a master
of the implied extended metaphor, paragraphs that unobtrusively reveal
character and theme in a flash of narrative and at the same time creating
anticipation in the reader so that the story, while fall of substance,
clips along at a brisk pace. He is a master too of the "half said is more
than enough" colloquial speech that goes for conversation in "small place,"
Cape Breton, where everybody knows what you're going to say anyway about
a week and a half before you open your mouth. These short, dramatic dialogues
are remarkably efficient in developing character and plot.
The novel is moving recreation of a people and a place in transition.
It is a place formerly isolated, geographically and culturally, where
people subsisted, survived because they owned the little they had and
could walk to wherever they needed to go. But now a place transformed
by war and industry and blessed by mortgages, car loans, drive-ins, and
drive-thrus, and roads and airports connecting it to everywhere.
The novel offers interesting insights into the life in the mines. If
you ask people who have worked in the mines if they liked it they will
invariably tell you they liked the men they worked with and especially
the talk.
I didn't mind at first. I got a buzz
going underground. The cage ride down.
The cool black privacy below. The
pneumatic roar of the jacklegs and the
sudden silence when the miners finished
the drilling and were loading powder and
fuse. You'd be looking forward to the
end of the shift then. And there'd be
talk, in the quiet. About other mines,
the war, the depression. Stuff I knew
vaguely about from the old man and Angus
at the kitchen table drinking. (p. 198)
The novel itself is full of wonderful talk. It's not a happy story but
it's full of quiet humour, and its characters, although they suffer from
weakness and uncertainty, have their noble moments maintain their search
for virtue, and preserve their instinct for survival and happiness.
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