By: Craig Williams, President, Board of Directors, Canal Society of New York State
Canada’s southern neighbor can learn much from the just-published Triumph and Tragedy – The Welland Ship Canal. For those New Yorkers passionate about canal history, the book is an outstanding reference with one significant caveat as explained below. The many facets of the Welland’s two hundred year history, the technology and the people who made it possible, are all thoroughly documented. For those who benefit from the built environment created by countless workers, the book offers a model of recognition and appreciation of those sacrifices. It honors a promise made in 1932 to commemorate those who were killed during the three decades of construction of the fourth generation of the Welland Canal. Yet, the inspiration for the book clearly predates that promise, found in the labor and dedication of the workers themselves. It is a lasting, accessible and comprehensive memorial to those 138 lost workers.
(source: The Welland Ship Canal 1913-1932 by Major P.J. Cowan, page 6, Fig. 4)
Triumph and Tragedy follows a Canadian tradition that especially values the rights and contributions of workers. Yes, the United States also has its Labor Day as does Canada. Canada went further with its marking of April 28th as the National Day of Mourning dedicated to remembering those who have lost their lives, or suffered injury or illness on the job or due to a work-related tragedy. Sadly, a cursory recognition often gets overwhelmed by the magnitude of industrial accidents. About the same time that work began on the fourth Welland, the Hillcrest, Alberta coal mining disaster of 1914 took the lives of 189 workers on that single day. The deaths and injuries that stretched over decades likewise get clouded by other events of the day. Triumph and Tragedy succeeds in putting a face and family with each of loss.
The book accomplishes this recognition by providing layered context to the lives lost. A general history of the still-continuing evolution of the Welland Canal sets the stage for a more detailed look at the technology, equipment, structures and services that built the fourth Welland Canal. More than half the book is then dedicated to the stories and portraits of the 138 people killed, arranged chronologically. Few reading the book will actually know any one of those 138 individuals. Yet, each of us actually knows everyone of them. They are the people we see everyday who make society work. Lately, we have started grouping them under the rubric of “essential workers” as they truly are. In the past, their lives at home and at work were often deemed mundane and rarely recorded by those who left the written records. Only at tragic times do we gain entry into their personal lives. In doing so, we learn much about what it took to built these massive infrastructure projects and what the true cost was. By far the majority were recent immigrants, barely having had the chance to become a part of their new greater community. Addressed by this published memorial, they are rightly now part of our collective community and memory. Not only do we see the faces and the names on each page, those same faces look back upon our own perceptions of what it takes to make a society.
Partly overlapping with the construction of the Fourth Welland was the very similar work to build New York State’s Barge Canal system (1903-1918). New York has never formally recognized the lives lost in its building in the honorable way presented by Triumph and Tragedy. And, many lives were lost. We could and should follow our Canadian neighbors to define such a list. As with the Welland, the research will not be easy. Over ten times longer than the Welland, the Barge Canal crosses many communities, each with their own recollections and repositories. The construction of the Barge Canal did not have many of the geographically unified services provided during the Welland’s construction whose records would assist with such an accounting.
We know of some deaths due to the prominence of the individual such as when James Casey, one of the primary contractors for Erie Barge Canal Lock 17, was fatally injured on September 14, 1910 when a skip of stone fell on him. Occasionally, the manuscript records of the State’s Engineer and Surveyor have the attached blue-colored forms required at the time to report a construction death or injury to the State’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. So on January 7, 1912 Remiga Casolanguida, twenty-five years old and likely a recent immigrant, was killed near Rochester when a frozen dump car unexpectedly bounced back on him, crushing him. Whether a master set of such forms is extant in some forgotten State file cabinet is unknown. Summaries of these reports were published annually by the State’s Labor Department. Though they itemize the several dozen canal-related deaths for each year and document the cause, they fail to provide a name or specific place. The litany of these recorded deaths leaves a much darker hue on the engineering marvel of the Barge Canal. Then there are instances where we suspect fatalities happened but confirming evidence remains even more elusive. With remarkably little commentary, the Lockport newspaper carried the announcement in December 1910 that the contractor for the famous Lockport Locks was “importing” 25 African-Americans to do the extremely dangerous tunnel excavation for the new hydraulic raceway. One hopes they came due to skilled experience in such work and not that their lives mattered less.
Grading Earth at Port Weller pier using a Jordan Spreader, 1915, (source: St. Catharines Museum, Madelein Muntz Collection, 2006.73.624)
Has it all been worth this human cost? At my first glance at Triumph and Tragedy, I looked for an accounting in dollars and cents of the success of today’s Welland Canal, how many tons of Saskatchewan wheat transited or how many cargoes of iron ore? The caveat mentioned at the start of this review is that the book does not have such a financial look-back, the Welland’s cost/benefit ratio in cold hard numbers. Indeed, such an accounting has no place in such a memorial as it would imply an impossible scale to weigh the cost of the human lives lost during construction. That cost can never be adequately repaid. It must always be outstanding as a reminder of the sacrifices borne to make society work.
How to get this book:
TRIUMPH & TRAGEDY: The Welland Ship Canal is published by the St. Catharines Museum and Welland Canals Centre. It retails for $39.95, plus tax and Shipping (where applicable). The limited-edition publication is available at the Museum’s Gift Shop located at 1932 Welland Canals Parkway, St. Catharines, ON or by calling 905 984-8880; or via email at museum@stcatharines.ca.