COURTESY OF PANL, UNASSOCIATED PHOTOGRAPHS COLLECTION, ITEM A 67-48.
Sir John Hope Simpson, outside Buckingham Palace on June 3, 1925, the day he received his knighthood from King George V. Sir John was commissioner of natural resources in the unelected government of Newfoundland for two years, 1934–36.
COURTESY OF THE HOPE SIMPSON FAMILY.
Walter Seibert (left), an accountant from New Jersey and New York, arrived in St. Lawrence circa 1932, to launch what local people would soon ironically refer to as “Seibert’s fluorspar empire.”
COURTESY OF ST. LAWRENCE MINERS’ MUSEUM.
St. Lawrence merchant Aubrey Farrell (centre) was an early backer of the mining venture but soon grew disenchanted with the business practices of its American promoter, Walter Seibert.
COURTESY OF ST. LAWRENCE MINERS’ MUSEUM.
On April 5, 1932, an angry crowd, estimated to number nearly ten thousand people, marched on the Newfoundland legislature, the Colonial Building, to confront members of the Squires government, which they viewed as corrupt and ineffective. The gathering quickly morphed into a full-blown riot.
COURTESY OF PANL, COLLECTION MG 592, ITEM A 19-22.
Lady Mary Jane (“Quita”) Hope Simpson, with her two daughters, Mary (left) and Greta, in June 1904. The extreme poverty she discovered in Newfoundland while living there between 1932 and 1934 was frequently described in journal entries and letters to her then-married daughters and a son, John (Ian). Her personal correspondence from Newfoundland, and that of her husband, Sir John, has been compiled by historian Peter Neary in White Tie and Decorations (University of Toronto Press, 1996).
COURTESY OF THE HOPE SIMPSON FAMILY.
“St. John’s Urchins,” from a photo album assembled by Albert J. Wallace, from Collingswood, New Jersey, circa 1937. Newfoundland, at the time, had possibly the highest rates of infant mortality and child poverty in the western world.
COURTESY OF ST. LAWRENCE MINERS’ MUSEUM, WALLACE COLLECTION.
Children photographed in St. John’s “from a poor section of the city,” circa 1937, by Albert J. Wallace, an American businessman.
COURTESY OF ST. LAWRENCE MINERS’ MUSEUM, WALLACE COLLECTION.
USS Truxtun. Of 156 men on board when the ship ran aground February 18, 1942, on the south coast of Newfoundland, only 46 survived.
COURTESY OF ST. LAWRENCE MINERS’ MUSEUM.
U.S. Navy supply ship Pollux. Of the 233 men on board February 18, 1942, the day the ship foundered, 140 survived with the help of rescuers from the communities of St. Lawrence and Lawn. COURTESY OF
ST. LAWRENCE MINERS’ MUSEUM.
The remains of the Pollux, photographed shortly after the shipwrecks by a young local woman, Ena Farrell. Her photos are the only known visual record of the tragedy.
PHOTO BY ENA FARRELL EDWARDS. REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION.
Edward Bergeron, aged eighteen, from the USS Truxtun, scaled a steep embankment and made his way over rough terrain and deep snow to Iron Springs mine, where he alerted miners and their managers to the developing disaster in Chamber Cove.
COURTESY OF LISA (SLANEY) LODER.
Pollux survivors William Heldt (left) and Warren Greenfield.
PHOTO BY ENA FARRELL EDWARDS. REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION.
Lanier Phillips, the African American sailor whose life was transformed by the hospitality of the Newfoundlanders.
COURTESY OF THE ARMED FORCES RETIREMENT HOME (AFRH).
Graveside service in St. Lawrence, led by Father Augustine Thorne, parish priest. Ninety of the shipwreck victims were temporarily buried in the local parish cemetery.
PHOTO BY ENA FARRELL EDWARDS. REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION.
Ensign James O. Seamans from Salem, Massachusetts, one of the forty-six survivors from the Truxtun. The efforts of his father, Richard Seamans, a prominent businessman and Republican, led to a $400,000 congressional appropriation for the construction of a hospital in St. Lawrence.
COURTESY OF ARCHIVES AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, QE II LIBRARIES, MUN, 16.06.008, CASSIE BROWN COLLECTION.
Chamber Cove, where 110 sailors from the USS Truxtun lost their lives February 18, 1942, when their ship ran aground on rocks and reefs below the cliffs that encircle the cove. Pinnacle Point, in the middle distance, is nearly 300 feet high.
PHOTO BY THE AUTHOR.
James O. Seamans with Lillian Loder—the St. Lawrence woman who cared for him while he recovered from his brush with death in Chamber Cove—at a 1988 memorial service commemorating the tragedy.
COURTESY OF LISA (SLANEY) LODER.
Dr. Warren Smith (right), a geologist, was the first mine manager at Black Duck and worked without pay for two years before becoming manager at a new start-up mine. Donald Poynter (left), an engineer, became Black Duck’s manager in 1939 and ran the Seibert operations in St. Lawrence for more than twenty years.
COURTESY OF ST. LAWRENCE MINERS’ MUSEUM.
Cornelius Kelleher, an Irish-born American mining engineer, managed Seibert’s operations in St. Lawrence from 1935 to 1938, during which time relations with the workforce deteriorated badly. Lizzie Giovannini, here with her daughter Blanche, ran a renowned St. Lawrence boarding house where Kelleher lived during his stay.
COURTESY OF ST. LAWRENCE MINERS’ MUSEUM.
Claude Howse (left), a Newfoundland-born geologist, would eventually become a senior mining official in the colony and, he later learned, an unwitting participant in the Manhattan Project that produced the world’s first atomic bomb.
COURTESY OF ST. LAWRENCE MINERS’ MUSEUM.
The author, Iron Springs mine site, 1945. In 1942 his father, Dan MacIntyre, newly married, moved to St. Lawrence, where he served as underground captain for three years, returning subsequently on various mining jobs until the mid-1960s.
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR.
Dan MacIntyre with local midwife Mrs. Mary Beck, at St. Lawrence, circa 1945. Mrs. Beck delivered Dan’s second child, a daughter.
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR.
The author at the Tilt Cove mine site, Newfoundland, 1962.
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR.
The 1951 St. Lawrence soccer team. Four of the men in the back row would die of cancer: Jack Fitzpatrick (second from right), Alonzo Walsh (third from right), his brother Jack Walsh (third from left) and Bob Kelly (second from left). St. Lawrence frequently represented Newfoundland at national soccer tournaments.
COURTESY OF ST. LAWRENCE MINERS’ MUSEUM.
Miners held occasional competitions to demonstrate basic mining skills, like drilling. Here, manager Donald Poynter, in hat and overcoat, clocks driller Sylvester Slaney.
COURTESY OF ST. LAWRENCE MINERS’ MUSEUM.
Testing for radiation in 1957, in the Director mine, on the 550-foot level.
COURTESY OF ST. LAWRENCE MINERS’ MUSEUM.
The St. Lawrence mines were notoriously wet. Miner Jack Keating wades through water as he carries a case of dynamite from storage on the 250-foot level of the Director mine. The water was subsequently found to be the source of radiation in this and other mines in the area.
COURTESY OF ST. LAWRENCE MINERS’ MUSEUM.
Miners ending shift in the Director mine. Bob Edwards (second from left) died in a massive rockfall there on September 15, 1967, along with two other miners.
COURTESY OF ST. LAWRENCE MINERS’ MUSEUM.
Early miners in St. Lawrence, in an undated photograph. Left to right: Michael Slaney, Rennie Slaney, Theo Etchegary, Levi Molloy. Three would, in time, die from work-related illness: Michael Slaney and Levi Molloy of cancer; Rennie Slaney of a heart attack, probably precipitated by silicosis. Theo Etchegary worked at the corporation mine for years, but never underground.
COURTESY OF ST. LAWRENCE MINERS’ MUSEUM.
Roche Turpin in Toronto, circa 1963, en route to British Columbia, where he was interviewed for a new mining job. He was turned down after a medical examination. He died of lung cancer two years later, aged forty-eight.
COURT
ESY OF ELLEN TURPIN.
Roche and Priscilla Turpin’s family, in 1967, two years after Roche’s death, photographed by Bob Brooks for the Toronto Star Weekly. Left to right: Hugh (carrying a fishing pole), Cyril, Adrian, Lucille, Priscilla, Ellen and Arden.
COURTESY OF ELLEN TURPIN.
About the Author
LINDEN MACINTYRE was born near St. Lawrence, Newfoundland, and raised in Port Hastings, Cape Breton. He was the host of Canada’s premier investigative television show, the fifth estate, for nearly twenty-five years. His work on that program garnered an International Emmy, and he has also won ten Gemini Awards. His bestselling first novel, The Long Stretch, was nominated for a CBA Libris Award, and his memoir, Causeway: A Passage from Innocence, won the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction and the Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award. His novel The Bishop’s Man was a #1 national bestseller and the winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize, among other awards. His other novels include Why Men Lie, Punishment and The Only Café. MacIntyre lives in Toronto with his wife, CBC radio host and author Carol Off. They spend their summers in a Cape Breton village by the sea.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at harpercollins.ca.
Also by Linden MacIntyre
FICTION
The Only Café
Punishment
Why Men Lie
The Bishop’s Man
The Long Stretch
NON-FICTION
Causeway: A Passage from Innocence
Who Killed Ty Conn? (with Theresa Burke)
Copyright
The Wake
Copyright © 2019 by Linden MacIntyre.
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Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
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COVER ILLUSTRATION: CHRIS CLOR/GETTY IMAGES
FIRST EDITION
EPub Edition August 2019 EPub ISBN: 978-1-4434-5204-5
Version 07242019
Print ISBN: 978-1-4434-5202-1
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