The end of April each year brings thoughts of many things, not the least of which are growth and renewal. It is with this in mind that the obligation we hold as a mining community lingers on our collective commitment to safety within the industry that fuels our economy. With this commitment comes an understanding that all of us must do our part to ensure those who go to work in the mines each morning return home to their loved ones at night.
In April of each year, the 28th to be exact, we recognize all that has been done on that front and that which still needs to be done to make our commitment a reality.
April 28 is the National Day of Mourning. It is the day on which, each year, we renew our commitment and take stock of our growth within it.
The Day of Mourning came into being after a resolution was adopted at the 1984 Canadian Labour Congress Convention declaring it so, in order to honour Canadian workers who have been killed, injured or disabled on the job, as well as those who suffer from occupational diseases.
The date of April 28 was chosen because on that day in 1914 Ontario proclaimed the first comprehensive Workers Compensation Act in Canada.
As labour organizations around the world got on board, they each adopted April 28 as a Day of Mourning. Eventually, more than 100 countries around the globe recognized April 28; however, most refer to the occasion as Workers Memorial Day.
The day is acknowledged by the International Labour Organization, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, and the American Federation of Labour.
In our own country, during the early 1990s, the Canadian labour movement lobbied for legislation to identify April 28 as a National Day of Mourning. Our MP at the time, Rod Murphy, put forward a private member’s bill in Parliament, which established April 28 every year as the National Day of Mourning to remember those that have been injured or killed in the workplace.
Their collective efforts were rewarded in February 1991, when the Federal Parliament passed Bill C-223, the Workers Mourning Day Act.
Each year on April 28, workers, families of workers, employers and community members gather to mark the day and honour those who were lost in the struggle to bring safety to people who toil for a living.
In Snow Lake, people gather at the Miners’ Memorial on Memorial Drive; they take part in a short ceremony to acknowledge the losses and gains during the preceding year, after which many lay wreaths in remembrance of individual and fallen workers as a group.
To acknowledge the day, a number of prominent people in the area were asked for their views on what April 28 means to them.
Snow Lake’s Mayor Kim Stephen said, “In our community a good percentage of our citizens work in a very dangerous environment daily. With closely watched safety practices in place, fewer work-related incidents happen. I’m thankful that the government recognized that too many employees were losing their lives due to work-related causes.”
Robert Winton, Hudbay’s vice-president, Manitoba Business Unit said, “For me the Day of Mourning is a reminder of the consequences to not ensuring the workplace is safe and employees and management are not engaged in removing risk or looking out for one another.”
Tom Davie, president of the area’s largest union, United Steelworkers (USW) Local 7106 said, “The Day of Mourning for me is about remembering family and friends that we have lost in our workplaces, and remembering we still have a long struggle ahead of us.”
And lastly, Phyllis Verbeek, a strong and vibrant Snow Lake woman who has lost two husbands in the workplace, looks upon herself as a living example of a family forever changed by a workplace accident.
“I believe that employers, and governments and all the other powers that be can and should suggest, implement and regulate all the health and safety guidelines, rules and laws that make workplaces safe secure and healthy places to spend working hours; however, I also believe that the most important safety device of all is everyday common sense. If every worker, from the CEO to the unskilled new hire, demonstrated a sense of the God-given self-preservation that is built into all living creatures the accident/illness rate would show satisfactory declines in compensation claims and more happy, healthy workers and families.”
Observances were held on Thursday at Thompson’s USW Local 6166 Union Hall, in Flin Flon at the USW Local 7106 monument, and at the Snow Lake Miners’ Memorial.
My Take on Snow Lake is published Fridays.
