Post by IAMCAPER on Sept 9, 2004 23:24:47 GMT -4
I hope you've enjoyed our 3 part re-run of the 1999 Toronto Sun article, The Price of Coal. Here is our 3rd and final installment of this article:
Part 3 - Standing By Their Men
"I'm just a plain average person who grew up in a Company house and is worried about the families, not who's going to make the money." That's Edna Budden, chairman of the United Families, who is doing something not considered chic in this modern world -- she's standing by her man.
Her man, Van Budden, is a miner. And she makes no bones about what she wants for him and the other miners who now exist in the limbo of the work world.
"I want dignity for the men, now that the government has left DEVCO. I want the government to treat them humanly.
"Although we're miners' wives, we're concerned about everybody on the Island."
FAIR PACKAGE
She says she's accepted the government's decision -- although she was "devastated" at first. "Some people are still in denial -- still some people don't believe it's happening."
Besides making a pitch to save the coal industry in Cape Breton in some form or another, she and her United Families are petitioning Ottawa for a fairer package for miners.
She and co-chair Beverly Brown think they have been successful in getting Ottawa's ear. "We wanted them to know that 1,200 families will be affected and that 1,200 families will be left without a secure income and medical coverage." (Cape Breton has the highest cancer rate in Canada.)
"We can no longer be complacent," Budden said. "We need an end to this and we need to know where we're going."
Budden, who lost her uncle, John Angus MacNeil, in Glace Bay's No. 26 colliery explosion of 1979 where 12 miners were killed, said: "I don't believe the coal industry will end ... we just have to break the pattern of what has gone on over the years."
Part 3 - Standing By Their Men
"I'm just a plain average person who grew up in a Company house and is worried about the families, not who's going to make the money." That's Edna Budden, chairman of the United Families, who is doing something not considered chic in this modern world -- she's standing by her man.
Her man, Van Budden, is a miner. And she makes no bones about what she wants for him and the other miners who now exist in the limbo of the work world.
"I want dignity for the men, now that the government has left DEVCO. I want the government to treat them humanly.
"Although we're miners' wives, we're concerned about everybody on the Island."
FAIR PACKAGE
She says she's accepted the government's decision -- although she was "devastated" at first. "Some people are still in denial -- still some people don't believe it's happening."
Besides making a pitch to save the coal industry in Cape Breton in some form or another, she and her United Families are petitioning Ottawa for a fairer package for miners.
She and co-chair Beverly Brown think they have been successful in getting Ottawa's ear. "We wanted them to know that 1,200 families will be affected and that 1,200 families will be left without a secure income and medical coverage." (Cape Breton has the highest cancer rate in Canada.)
"We can no longer be complacent," Budden said. "We need an end to this and we need to know where we're going."
Budden, who lost her uncle, John Angus MacNeil, in Glace Bay's No. 26 colliery explosion of 1979 where 12 miners were killed, said: "I don't believe the coal industry will end ... we just have to break the pattern of what has gone on over the years."