Into the harsh life of a miner
Naomi Lakritz, Calgary Herald
Published: Sunday, May 31, 2009
John DeMont’s book is so full of his exuberance about the history of coal mining in Nova Scotia that it practically bounces off the table. DeMont’s exuberance comes naturally–he had relatives who worked in the mines, but when the 1992 Westray mine disaster came along, it rekindled his interest in them. “I had never laid eyes on a single miner who worked the Pictou County coal seams. . . . I’d managed to forget that generations of my ancestors had taken the long ride underground to hack out the black stone that has transformed societies and launched empires,” DeMont writes.
It’s a good thing he remembered or Canadians might not have been graced with this wonderful book.
“Lord, it sounded cruel, this world of damp and dust and lethal cave-ins that began with something as simple as a whiff of gas, a few unstable rocks, a spark from two pieces of machinery brushing together . . . a world where a good year meant new shoes for the kids and a bad one a casket in the parlour and a roomful of mourners in the dining room,” DeMont writes. This style of lively, personable prose fairly carries the narrative along, just the way a tram loaded with coal might slip along a track in a Cape Breton mine. DeMont begins with his ancestors’ migration from Britain to Nova Scotia to work in the mines, and entwines their stories with the history of mining, like tendrils growing from the same vine, twisting around each other with their leaves mingling, then moving apart again but always with that one vine in common.
Lord, it was indeed cruel. The gruelling shifts underground, the dangers, the filth, the inevitable fatalities, the sicknesses, the old miners bent over from years of sidling and scuttling about under the mines’ low ceilings, “all those years working in tunnels no wider than a rain barrel,” coughing their guts out from black lung disease. And above, in the bright light of day on the surface, the power grabbing, the money grubbing and the politics of the mine owners.
DeMont’s turns of phrase are delightful: “Here I am, on one of those Emily Carr fall days.” The
mining songs, “passed down from parent to child . . . were like a collective moan.”
Nina Cohen, a Glace Bay woman who ran the miners’ museum, once said: “A coal miner is no ordinary man. His story has a heartbeat. It should not be allowed to die.” DeMont is no ordinary journalist. The heartbeat of Nova Scotia’s mining story is beautifully captured here and thanks to DeMont’s considerable talent, it will never die.
Coal Black Heart: the story of Coal and the lives it ruled, by John deMont (doubleday Canada, $34.95, 335 pages)