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A sombre and respectful crowd gathered early at the Welland Canal Fallen Workers Memorial in St. Catharines, Ont. April 28 as the Niagara Regional Labour Council held the first of its 10 ceremonies to mark Canada’s annual Day of Mourning.

“The call to mourn the dead and fight for the living could not be more urgent on this National Day of Mourning,” said Lou Ann Binning, labour council president, in her address. “The National Day of Mourning today is where we reflect on the lives of workers taken from us. Every workplace fatality is preventable. We know that.”

The memorial recognizes the 137 construction worker deaths suffered during construction of the canal between 1914 to 1932. Mourners assembled for the 7:30 a.m. ceremony included union safety reps, health and safety stakeholders, labour council board members, politicians and family members of workers who had been killed on the job.

The names and ages of each of the 137 are inscribed on the memorial’s steel panes. The youngest was 15; one of the last to die, Michael Onyschuk, was killed seven days before the canal opened, one hour into his first day on the job, when a tree that was being cleared toppled over onto him, fracturing his spine and causing a broken leg and internal injuries. He died in hospital just as his wife arrived.

Mourner Wayne Galandi, field representative with the Workers Health and Safety Centre, said a century ago workplace deaths like Onyschuk’s were considered merely a risk of the job.

“Everybody thought that was part of the job,” said Galandi. “People have gotten injured or killed on the job, that was just part of building the structure, building the canal.”

Labour council board member Ron Walker agreed: “It always has been looked at as the cost of doing business. Until workers stand up and say, ‘No more.’”

St. Catharines Mayor Mat Siscoe noted each worker who dies on the job represents a family that is disrupted forever. In 2021, there were 1,081 documented workplace fatalities across Canada.

“Our community is represented in all of those statistics, local residents who tragically lost their lives at their place of employment and those who have suffered injuries in the workplace or illness related to their occupation,” said Siscoe.

“Those lives were lost constructing what we consider an engineering marvel that still stands and contributes millions of dollars every day to our economy. We can never forget the sacrifice that was made.”

Millwright Dan Steel said his members of Local 1007 would be discussing the importance of the Day of Mourning at the start of their workday, comparing the lax attitudes of a century ago to the more rigorous health and safety culture of today. It was his first time attending a Day of Mourning ceremony.

“Our primary focus is getting our workers home at the end of the day, the same way they arrived,” he said. “We have the luxury in today’s industry to be much safer than it was 100 years ago. And every day our workers are going to work and they’re doing a great job and hearing all the health and safety policies and the contractors standing behind that.

“It’s a very good era to be a construction worker.”

Galandi said the fight for the living must be fought every day.

“Fight for the living, mourn for the dead,” he repeated. “So, in fighting for the living, it’s training, responsibility, enforcement by the Ministry of Labour.

“When all parties are aware of it, normally, they will do the right thing. But we still have some, maybe, not so good employers out there. That’s where we try to get the message across to do the right thing.”

The next ceremony on the labour council tour was at a site north along the Welland Canal, where a small memorial commemorates the death of four painters who were undertaking repairs to the Garden City Skyway bridge. On June 8, 1993 the four were killed when the scaffolding on which they and seven others were standing came loose and they plummeted 130 feet.

The series of ceremonies was to conclude at 5:15 p.m. at a monument on Sir Isaac Brock Way in St. Catharines.