Early in the morning on May 9, 1992, a mixture of methane gas and coal dust exploded in the Westray coal mine in Plymouth, Nova Scotia. Twenty-six men were killed. Later that day, Nova Scotia journalist John DeMont got a call from his editor at Maclean’s assigning him to the story. As DeMont learned about what happened at Westray, he had an epiphany of sorts: “… somehow and somewhere in those grim days after the disaster I had a vision of the black residue that coal has left everywhere in this province.”
It is this residue that DeMont sets out to illuminate in his ambitious new book Coal Black Heart, by taking us through the story of coal from its geological, social, and political beginnings to its impact on present day Nova Scotia. Woven into this vast undertaking is the story of DeMont’s family, who were drawn to Cape Breton from the “farmlands of Scotland and England’s industrial heartland” by the promise of coal in the new country. “So the story of coal is my story too,” writes DeMont, “which means the best way to understand my family’s storyline is to understand the history of that soft, sooty black mineral in this province.”
The book is full of historical detail, and some of the time DeMont succeeds in bringing it to life through his own explorations and imaginings, and apt comparisons with the present. Writing about twelve-year olds who worked in the English mines in 1836, DeMont compares their average height, four foot four, with that of his own (average) twelve-year-old son: over five foot two. It is a telling comparison. At other times, DeMont’s chatty interjections are jarring. About a street in Sydney where his family once lived, he writes: “In 2007 at least it’s leafier, the overall vibe a bit more settled.” Similarly, and no less incongruous with the tone of the book, is his description of a Scottish clergyman: “Mister Fun he was not.”
DeMont has done his research (there are over 30 pages of notes detailing his sources). We learn about geologist Sir Charles Lyell’s trip to Nova Scotia to see the fossil-rich cliffs of Joggins, the rise of coal baron Henry Whitney who came from Boston to run the Cape Breton mines, and even the lyrics of coal-mining songs. But it is the facts, in the end, that overwhelm the story. There are too many characters and the story goes in too many different directions to form a cohesive whole. DeMont’s family tale, which could have given the book a strong narrative thread, is not compelling enough to hold these disparate pieces together. It is a shame. As evidenced by the many tantalizing bits and pieces that DeMont gives us, there is no shortage of fascinating characters behind the story of coal in Nova Scotia, and any number of them could have been our guide through this period of Canadian history. A history that—DeMont reminds us at the end of the book—is not yet over.
Maria Schamis Turner is the editor of carte blanche (www.carte-blanche.org).
