| Reviews / Comptes Rendus | Labour/Le Travail, 51

Reviews / Comptes Rendus

Charlie Angus and Louie Palu, Mirrors of Stone: Fragments from the Porcupine Frontier (Toronto: Between the Lines Press, 2001).

NEAR THE END of Mirrors of Stone, a history of the Porcupine mining area, Charlie Angus writes, "Memories ... are not faithful recordings. Rather they are constructions." (117) This comment is revealing: Mirrors is a "construct," at once fascinating yet predictable, revealing yet obvious, enlightening yet exasperating, suited to the general audience yet relevant to the academic.	1
Angus set out to record a history of the Porcupine wherein "the darker clouds of an immigrant and class-oriented frontier [had not] ... been air-brushed from memory." (3) The physical setting is less than precise — the focus varies from Timmins to other mining towns and even entire townships. The historical coverage is equally hit-and-miss. Inspired by family experience in the region, and memories triggered by remembered and continuing visits to local cemeteries, Angus takes us through a meandering survey of some 90 years of Porcupine history. Some major events such as the 1912 fire, mine disasters, and the quite recent Kidd Creek boom are examined fairly well. But do not look here for a steady chronology of events; topics seem idiosyncratically chosen with highly variable coverage. The minor also meshes with the major, and the (relatively well known) death of hockey star Bill Barilko gets more coverage than do some decades. Perhaps that reflects family history. Angus writes that his father was a good friend and schoolmate of Barilko. (98) Minutia and family lore in so slim a volume (about 100 pages of text) are often presented with flair; still, one might hope for some more broad analysis.	2
Yet there is merit in Angus's personal perspective, his exploration of memories. He is clearly fascinated with where he grew up and later returned to live as writer and musician. These personal perspectives give the book a passion often missing in "grounded academic history." Angus has worked hard, as is evident in the text, if less so in rather limited and casual citations. His findings are presented in colourful prose that will entice the casual reader. His considerable reliance on the memories of both men and women (the latter are far more than an afterthought here) should interest more serious students of history. So too the use of notes in the book's generous margins (often quotations from the Porcupine Advance) that serve as an interesting if uneven source of information. Oral and newspaper history is complemented by the testimony of the dead: evocative photographs of gravestones by Louie Palu, with a quality of dark charcoal sketches, provide powerful miniature biographies that pull the reader along as Angus tells his tales.	3
These images are grim reminders that death was a constant companion in the rough-and-tumble life and workscapes of the Porcupine. But one is struck by the reality that headstone after headstone reveals a short lifespan, while Angus relied on those who had lived long if not always prosperous lives. The writing also takes a relentlessly one-sided perspective. There is no doubt that the various mining firms of the Porcupine drove their workers hard, pushed for profits hard, and made piles of money. But the image here is so relentlessly negative, so convinced of the evils of capitalism that Mirrors loses some of its impact. The evils of the employer, the exploitation of men, women, and families, and the consequences are a major part of Porcupine's history. But Angus is so angered, so filled with righteous indignation, that his retelling of the brutal workplaces, hard-driving bosses, and hideous silica dust becomes predictable rather than provocative, annoying rather than eyebrow-raising. One grows suspicious, too, of the accuracy of some generalizations. Angus writes of miners struggling to get by on 60 dollars a week in the early 1950s. (86) Does he realize that this rate of pay was well above the national average? And when workers confronted workers, for instance in the struggles between Mine Mill and the United Steelworkers, coverage is brief and, for once, rather cautious. (111–113) Perhaps criticizing workers was not something Angus wished to do? One need not be coldly analytical; but a balanced assessment is a requirement of good history.	4
Even when dealing with "good times," Angus sometimes struggles. Tales of Henry Kelnick performing at the Pav[illion] and as the yet unknown and just barely Stomping Tom Connors at the Maple Leaf Hotel add life to the book. But in describing the bar or the hockey game, stereotypes arise: "miners need a period of depressurization following their labours." (97) All of them? None are happy with their work? None just go home and get on with other things? Similarly, in grimmer tales of confrontation within the local society (over control of co- operatives, in assaults against Italian-Canadians during World War II, or a passing reference to "DPs") Angus favours colour and generalization over detail and accuracy. Citations are frequently sparse even as descriptions are vivid; ethnic groups are depicted in rather stereotypical ways. Finnish immigrants come across in rather simplistic ways. The radical, leftist Finn can be found here, but little of the complexity now known to scholars of the Finnish immigrant experience. The Jewish experience, too, seems naively simplified, with suggestions of success but hardly a word of the anti-Semitism that surely was present. Angus could not, of course, have covered every aspect in detail; nor could one expect him to be expert on all aspects of the multifaceted Porcupine populations. But one suspects he prefers the straightforward and thus vivid stereotypes to historic complexities that provide a more accurate but often blander tale.	5
Bland this book is not — from graphic discussion of men plunging to their deaths in a mine cage to the "short unhappy [and murderous] life of Natasia Baldiuck," (22) to the ultimate price paid by some men who "high-graded"gold, there is rarely an everyday moment here. Indeed, the ordinary folk of Timmins and area are hard to find; instead the colourful, the boisterous, the dangerous, the entrepreneur, the hapless get centre stage. Surely, even in mining areas life is often more mundane, more ordinary.	6
But Angus knows what he wants to accomplish. His goal is not a long-winded, academic compilation of massive amounts of data, carefully cited through hundreds of endnotes. He wants to capture the vitality, the live-for-the-moment, the at-once-present optimism, and depressing reality of life in a single-resource, company-dominated region. Louie Palu's photographs nicely parallel this effort as headstones tell of immigrants and Canadians from far afield drawn to the Porcupine by its promise but crushed by its realities.	7
In the end, then, Angus and Palu show the value of remembering. These stories, told in word and photograph, incomplete and sometimes almost imagined, are worth the telling. Reading Mirrors in Stone, and staring at the dark images, leaves little doubt that there are more stories to tell; a more accurate version awaits. Angus closes by addressing his fear that history has lost its way, lost its "power to haunt, challenge, or inspire." (132) This book, thin and flawed, is testimony that history can still haunt and inspire. A book worth reading and looking at for anyone interested in the North, in mining, in the capitalist-worker relationship and more.	8
Peter V. Krats University of Western Ontario

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