“Silicosis is an incurable lung disease that can lead to disability and death. Silicosis is the result of the body’s response to the presence of silica particles in the lung. Silica particles are very small in size and can reach deep into the lungs (into the alveoli), where they are removed by white blood cells. Free crystalline silica causes the white blood cells to break open, which forms scar-like patches on the surface of the alveolus. When a large number of these “scars” form, the alveolar surfaces become less elastic. Over time, this damage reduces the transfer of gases, which can lead to shortness of breath.” — Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety website
As an increasing number of uranium miners in Elliot Lake were diagnosed with silicosis, lung cancer, and other respiratory illnesses during the early 1970s, workers, union officials, and politicians called for improvements to health and safety processes. Frustration over government inaction boiled over into a two-week wildcat strike at Denison Mines 50 years ago, triggering a series of events that led to protections for all workers in Ontario.
Elliot Lake was a Cold War boom town; its mines supplied the United States with most of its uranium-oxide needs. By 1959, it boasted more than a dozen mines and 25,000 residents. At its peak, the town produced nearly 75 per cent of Canada’s uranium supply. With this growth came questionable health and safety standards, which mining companies set aside inadequate funding for. When the United Steelworkers (USW) demanded more information on the hazards surrounding uranium mining (which ranged from dust inhalation to radiation exposure), the mining companies refused. By 1960, the USW had organized health and safety committees at each mine.
By the mid-1960s, a global decline in demand for uranium left two companies operating in Elliot Lake: Denison Mines and Rio Algom. When some miners began falling ill with lung ailments, both companies blamed the employees, citing reasons ranging from inexperience to bad personal habits, like cigarette smoking. Affected workers received little help from provincial-government bodies such as the Workmen’s Compensation Board (WCB), and few disability claims received proper processing.
Elliot Lake mine map, 1962. (Geological Survey of Canada)
The mining companies refused all demands to provide medical data, and the miners grew angrier. Their rage increased after a Ministry of Health study, presented at an international symposium in Bordeaux, France, in early 1974, revealed high rates of silicosis and other lung diseases among uranium miners due to dust exposure.
When Denison Mines refused to hold meetings to discuss health issues and ignored demands for a 15 cent/hour cost-of-living increase, the miners acted. On April 18, 1974, they closed off the access road to the mine from Highway 108, launching a wildcat strike. Among their demands was a list of 54 health and safety items they wanted addressed.
One of the miners’ supporters was Ontario NDP leader Stephen Lewis. Discussing the strike in the legislature on April 22, he noted that, whenever testing of health standards was undertaken, it was poorly executed. He also noted that, during the first three months of that year, 107 workers had received pensions due to contracting silicosis. The only answers he received from cabinet ministers were that studies and reports were in the works.
Photo of a uranium mine. (Windsor Star, February 22, 1975)
A few days later, 20 miners travelled to Toronto to plead their case to Denison management and Minister of Natural Resources Leo Bernier. During a protest at Queen’s Park, the miners waved placards with slogans that read “We demand nationalization of Denison Mines for the protection of the workers” and “Enough hot air, we want fresh air.” Inside the legislature, Bernier indicated that, while staff were investigating the miners’ concerns, “some of the investigations must await the reopening of the mine.”
Another attempt to contact a major public official flopped. On April 27, a group of 50 miners demonstrated outside a Holiday Inn in Sudbury where Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was addressing a Liberal party conference. The picketers remained outside the hotel for three hours hoping that Trudeau would talk to them; as one miner told the Toronto Star, “he’s that kind of a guy.” He wasn’t that day — the PM was escorted through the picket line to his limo.
The strike ended a few days later after the miners approved a deal that included the pay supplement and promises to hold talks on health and safety issues. After the strike, the mining companies implemented a few measures, such as allowing workers to change their facemask filters daily instead of weekly. The government commissioned an air-quality survey, but some miners questioned how it was carried out, noting that companies suddenly implemented methods of reducing dust and that testing was not conducted properly in some areas of the mine sites. It also emerged that a WCB official who oversaw chest diseases had tried unsuccessfully for three years to convince the mining companies to help their employees. As the province didn’t appear willing to act, the union created its own code for safe mining practices and attempted to negotiate better safety provisions through its collective agreements.
Elliot Lake's Legacy: The Miners' Fight for Safety
The NDP regularly raised miners’ concerns in the provincial legislature; Lewis often provided devastating accounts of working conditions and fatal illnesses, and he accused the companies of “criminal negligence” for failing to protect workers. Sudbury NDP MPP Eli Martel alleged that inspectors failed to report hazards and laid few charges due to the close relationship between the mining companies and the provincial government. Bernier kept promising immediate action.
September 1974 saw a major development: the initiation of a Royal Commission headed by University of Toronto academic/administrator James Ham. Hearings were held in Elliot Lake and across northern Ontario over the first two months of 1975. Commissioners toured the area and visited mining sites, labour unions, and government occupational-health and safety agencies in Sweden and the United Kingdom. A wide range of briefs were received from all sides. Industry responses ranged from continuing to blame cigarette smoking for worker deaths to promising more capital investment in safety measures. At one point, an industry official declared that health and safety conditions had improved so much that miners faced more danger above ground than below.
Photo of an ailing miner who testified to the commission. (Toronto Star, January 15, 1975)
The USW believed that management attitudes wouldn’t change without pressure. It wanted responsibility for mine safety concentrated in one ministry instead of spread across several. It noted that the federal regulator, the Atomic Energy Control Board, was “so lax that when the union demanded a survey of fumes and dust at Denison, the investigators merely checked the calibration of a dust measuring instrument used by the company.” It also opposed corporate challenges to workers’ compensation and disability claims, saying they suggested that the mines maximized profit over human life. Overall, the USW asked for better compensation coverage (especially for disabled miners), more counselling services, an improved claim process, and more research into the hazards of mining.
In mid-1975, the Ministry of Health published a study that then formed the basis of a controversial pamphlet entitled “These Are the Answers to 8 Important Questions the People in Elliot Lake Have Been Asking,” which was mailed to all uranium miners in the area. The mining companies purchased full-page newspaper ads to give their interpretation of the pamphlet, which stated that all miners diagnosed with silicosis had started working before 1960, that silicosis had nothing to do with lung cancer, that there should be better compensation plans, and that workers should stop smoking and use their safety equipment properly. The NDP criticized the pamphlet — Lewis dubbed it “dishonest” and a “piece of tripe.” He felt the government was treating the situation as a political problem instead of a human one. Minister of Health Frank Miller admitted that the pamphlet had been produced in a hurry.
Ad sponsored by Denison Mines and Rio Algom. (Sault Star, June 7, 1975)
On June 10, at a meeting organized in Elliot Lake by a group called Women in Support of Miners, Berner apologized for not being vigilant enough. “I think we have all fallen down somewhere along the road. It’s all right to look at the past with its faults, but we have a future to look to. We have a community here with an industry in this province that’s got to go ahead, that means so much to the economy and to you as individuals, but as we move ahead, we must move ahead under safe working conditions.”
The Report of the Royal Commission on the Health and Safety of Workers in Mines, usually referred to as the Ham Report, was released in August 1976. It criticized governments and companies for their failure to protect workers, highlighting the secrecy surrounding poor health and safety conditions. Ham found that “the risks to health and safety in mining, illustrated by the sad experience in the uranium mines and the perennial list of accidents and injuries, are higher than in most sectors of the industry.”
Cover page of the Ham Report
The report made 117 recommendations, among them demands for greater transparency and a major overhaul of health and safety policies by the province and the AECB. Ham thought it was incomprehensible that there weren’t “statutory regulations which govern the exposure of workers to toxic substances fifty years after a disease like silicosis has been discovered and after the occurrence of, by now, approximately two thousand cases.” Ham later admitted he was annoyed by some of the participants, including mine managers who’d lost sight of the human element of mining, and by the fact that miners weren’t always informed of industry risks.
The report was generally praised by all sides, though the Ontario Mining Association agreed with just over half of the recommendations, claiming the others were technically impossible or too expensive to carry out. Even the Toronto Sun praised it, saying the mining companies had given into greed for too long.
The province acted quickly, centralizing mine safety under the Ministry of Labour and setting up a special cabinet committee to examine Ham’s recommendations. The result was the passage of the Ontario Occupational Health and Safety Act in 1978, which applied to all workplaces in the province. The AECB held out on making improvements, creating more labour strife. In 1982, the USW negotiated stronger safety regulations with the mining companies, and, in 1984, the AECB finally passed regulations that forced uranium mines to comply with provincial legislation.
Uranium mining revived in the late 1970s due to demand from nuclear-power plants, and the boom lasted until the early 1990s. The last mining operations in Elliot Lake closed in 1996, leading the community to begin reinventing itself as a centre for arts, tourism, and affordable housing for seniors. Even then, some executives expressed questionable attitudes about the value of human life. As one mining official remarked in the 1990s, “Senior citizens have faced numerous hardships during their lifetimes — wars, depression, inflation. So what’s a little low-level radioactive waste.”
Sources: Report of the Royal Commission on the Health and Safety of Workers in Mines (Toronto: Ministry of the Attorney General, 1976); the Spring 2012 edition of Labour; the April 11, 1974, April 19, 1974, April 22, 1974, April 25, 1974, April 26, 1974, June 7, 1975, and June 11, 1975, editions of the SaultStar; and the April 23, 1974, April 29, 1974, January 16, 1975, and June 10, 1975, editions of the TorontoStar.
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