There is no modern survey of the history of coal mining in Nova Scotia. There are, however, a few studies dealing with specific aspects of the industry and a number of older works that are long out of print and very rare. In addition, some more general approaches to the history of the industry and the region have some useful material. The standard treatment of the history of the Maritimes in the pre-Confederation period, W.S. MacNutt's The Atlantic Provinces: The Emergence of Colonial Society, 1712-1857 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, c 1965), provides a perspective for the analysis of the coal industry that few others do.
Two recent works deal with aspects of the industry. The Pictonian Colliers by James M. Cameron (Halifax: The Nova Scotia Museum, 1974) assesses the emergence of the industry in Pictou County, using a topical perspective. Paul MacEwan's Miners and Steelworkers: Labour in Cape Breton (Toronto: Samuel Stevens Hakkert & Co., 1976) examines the development of the labour movement in Cape Breton in the twentieth century and attempts to integrate the structural growth of the unions in the social, political and economic life of the communities involved. Neither work offers a full treatment of their various subjects, but both are useful starting points.
There are a number of articles in scholarly journals which deal with the industry from a twentieth-century perspective. David Frank's The Cape Breton Coal Industry and the Rise and Fall of the British Empire Steel Corporation , Acadiensis, volume 7, no. 1 (Autumn 1977), pp. 3-34, argues that the crisis within the industry in the 1920s was a reflection of the weakness of the capitalist structure of ownership and a logical concomitant of external control over the regional economy. Donald MacGillivary has written Military Aid to the Civil Power: The Cape Breton Experience in the 1920s , Acadiensis, volume 3, no. 2 (Spring 1974), pp. 45-64 describing the role of the federal and provincial governments in the suppression of radical labour activity in the area. Another article by David Frank, Class Conflict in the Coal Industry: Cape Breton 1922 , pp. 161-184, in Gregory S. Kealey and Peter Warrian, eds., Essays in Canadian Working Class History (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, c 1976), describes the extended strike that set off the labour strife of the 1920s.
The early origins of the industry and its expansion in the nineteenth century have not been dealt with by modern scholarship. When he retired, Richard Brown, the first manager of the G.M.A. in Cape Breton, wrote an account of early developments under his leadership, The Coal Fields and Coal Trade of the Island of Cape Breton (London, 1871 and Stellarton, Maritime Mining Record Office, 1899). J. Martell's Early Coal-Mining in Nova Scotia, Dalhousie Review, volume 25, no. 2 (July 1945), pp. 156-172, is a useful sketch of the early developments, but it does not go beyond the 1850s. General treatments of the nineteenth-century economy of the Maritimes are unaccountably silent on the coal mining industry. S.A. Saunders has written widely on the economy of the region, but paid little attention to the nineteenth-century developments within the coal mining sector. Studies in the Economy of the Maritime Provinces (Toronto: MacMillan Co. of Canada), is the best collection of his work for that period and Economic History of the Maritime Provinces (Ottawa: 1939), prepared for the Royal Commission on Dominion Provincial Relations, surveys the post-Confederation period.
Available from regional offices of the National Film Board of Canada, the following film is a useful adjunct to the titles listed above and will complement research for classroom activities. It was produced for the National Museum of Man.
12,000 Men (34 minutes, 27 seconds, colour 106C 0178 569). This film documents the situation on Nova Scotia's Cape Breton island in the 1920s, explaining how the extraction and exploitation of one of the largest coal deposits in Canada led the miners there into an epic struggle for survival.
Also produced by the National Film Board of Canada is the sound filmstrip Industrial Cape Breton in the 1920s (20 minutes, 50 seconds, 205C 018 029). It attempts through extensive use of interviews to give an impression of the day-to-day life of the people of Cape Breton during the long and arduous labour struggles of the 1920s. It is part of the series, The Atlantic People's History.
1993 Update
COAL MINING IN NOVA SCOTIA TO 1925
D.A. Muise
The history of coal mining remains the focus of much of the research on the history of the transformation of Nova Scotia in the twentieth century. Coal mining as a way of life continues to define the interest and activities of communities, subject to the continuing vagaries of markets and capitalists. The recent disaster at the Westray mine in Pictou county, in May 1992, testifies to the fragility of life lived on the margins of safety and profit in a capitalist society.
In addition to the brief selection of new print sources listed below, readers are directed to a new video co-production of the National Film Board and the Beaton Institute of the University College of Cape Breton. Making Steel is a three-part series on the technology, history and culture of steelmaking as it relates to the Sydney steel plant, which is tied to the island's coalfields.
Of the many articles and books available on the political and other struggles surrounding the industry, the following are recommended.
Donovan, Ken, ed. Cape Breton at 200: Historical Essays in Honour of the Island's Bicentennial, 1785-1985. Essays by David Frank and Hugh Millward. Sydney, 1985.
Donovan, Ken, ed. The Island: New Perspectives on Cape Breton History, 1713-1990. Essays by David Frank, Ron Crawley and Joan Bishop. Fredericton, 1990.
Earl, Michael, ed. Workers and the State in Twentieth Century Nova Scotia. Fredericton, 1989.
Hoegg Ryan, Ruth. Coal in Our Blood: 200 Years of Coal Mining in Nova Scotia's Pictou County. Halifax, 1992.
Hornsby, Stephen J. Nineteenth Century Cape Breton: A Historical Geography. MontrΘal and Kingston, 1992.
Manley, John. "Preaching the Red Stuff: J.B. McLachlan, Communism, and the Cape Breton Miners, 1922-1935." Labour/Le Travail 30 (Fall 1992).
McKay, Ian. "The Realm of Uncertainty: The Experience of Work in the Cumberland Coal Mines, 1873-1927." Acadiensis 16, no.1 (Autumn 1986).
O'Donnell, John C. "And Now the Fields Are Green": A Collection of Coal Mining Songs in Canada. Sydney, 1992.
Sandberg, Anders. "Dependent Development, Labour and the Trenton Steel Works, Nova Scotia, c. 1900-1943." Labour/Le Travail 27 (Spring 1991).
See also the bibliography and notes for The Transformation of Work in the Maritimes: 1867-1925.
