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DAVIS
DAY CONTINUED
On
June 11, 1925, drunken company police charged down Plummer Avenue
on horseback, beating all who stood in their path. They rode
through the schoolyards, knocking down innocent children while
joking that the miners were at home hiding under their beds.
It was the last straw.
At 10 am in New Waterford, the UMWA was organizing an army of
angry miners. They were determined to restore electricity and
water to their homes and families; they marched on the Waterford
Lake power plant and were met by a wall of armed company thugs
on horseback. Before the miners could state their demands, the
riders charged the front line firing wildly into the crowd.
Gilbert Watson was shot in the stomach – he carried the
bullet until the day he died in 1958. Michael O’Handley
was shot and trampled by horses. William Davis, an active member
of the UMWA was fatally shot through heart by a British Empire
Steel Company thug.
The miners’ reaction was swift and decisive. They swarmed
the power plant, overpowered the company police and marched
them off to the town jail. For several nights afterward, the
coal towns were under a state of siege by the miners. They raided
the company stores to feed their starving families and then
burned the stores to the ground to eliminate the last symbol
of corporate greed and servitude in the Cape Breton coalfields.
The company stores never re-opened after the coal wars of 1925.
The miners promised that no man would ever again work the black
seam on Davis Day. They kept that promise ever since. In coal
mining communities, many storeowners close shop in respect for
deceased coal miners and local schools close to commemorate
Davis Day.
The history of mine workers is filled with memories of class
struggle and of brotherhood. It is summed up in the words of
former District 26 President Stephen J. Drake – “There
is no finer person on this planet than the working man who carries
his lunch can deep into the bowels of the earth. Far beneath
the ocean he works the black seam an endless ribbon of steel
his only link to fresh air and blue skies. The steel rails symbolize
a miners’ life, half buried underground, half reaching
toward his final reward. William Davis epitomized a miners’
life – it was filled with simple pleasures, family, friends
and sunshine. He will always be one of us, he will never be
forgotten.”
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