EDITORIAL PAGE — The Yellowknife strike revisited

The labor dispute that divided the community of Yellowknife, N.W.T., and ended in the 1992 murder of nine miners at the Giant gold mine, is the subject of several books, either published or in progress.

Among the former is The Yellowknife Strike: CASAW vs. Royal Oak, whose author, Craig Richardson, a former miner at Giant, maintains that the public never understood the issues behind the strike, nor the importance of mining in this country. Moreover, he says government possessed even less understanding than the public.

As a starting point, Richardson points out that the Giant mine is a collection of rich deposits that had been mined for decades by successive companies. Local miners say most of these companies used the “rape-and-pillage” method and that over the years, with each company grabbing whatever ore was most accessible, the mine became a maze of holes, mined-out areas, active headings and reserves, “all mixed hopelessly together.” The author acknowledges that major companies were not interested in Giant and that the previous owner, Pamour, went broke trying to turn the operation around. Royal Oak came into this setting from the outside (i.e., the real world), assuming it would find a grateful town and a workforce in need of job security. The union, meanwhile, had done well under Pamour and believed that progress came from a militant stand, and that this was also the best way to hold on to past gains.

According to Richardson, both camps were dead wrong.

The union members came up against a management as intractable as they themselves were, and the company encountered a workforce that, while not hostile, was definitely independent and not easily managed. And, Richardson adds, it also found a union “that one would have to see to believe.” Contributing to the atmosphere of tension was the Yellowknife economy, which was narrowly focused on gold, government and a small service sector. The town had escaped the recession that was then seizing the rest of the country. Few realized that Giant was at a crossroads, and it was unlikely another company like Pamour might come in, dump a load of cash and graciously disappear. Having set the stage for what was to became one of the most tragic labor disputes in recent times, Richardson goes on to recount events leading up to the strike vote, culminating in his decision to “cross the line” and join other union members and replacement workers in the mine.

Richardson’s book is a personal account which, despite being somewhat short on detail and long on opinion, is genuinely compelling. He has harsh words for the union leaders and even harsher words for the media, referring to “leftist-type reporters who flew into town and crawled out with loads of unionist stupidity to print across Canada.” And while Richardson professes to admire Margaret (Peggy) Witte, he does not fail to observe that she, and Royal Oak in general, demonstrated an unerring instinct for finding what would most aggravate their listeners and then saying it. “What they say might be true, perhaps it is a strength in the business world, [but] I believe it did harm in their public relations. The company never seemed to grasp that they weren’t always talking to their shareholders.”

As Richardson sees it, everyone involved in the Yellowknife tragedy lost something, the biggest losers being those who crossed the line. Nine dead makes this conclusive. But there is still a nagging speculation in his mind that it did not have to be this way. And therein lies the tragedy.