Body count

I don’t have a September 11 story worth telling. Thank God. Like everyone else in Canada, I arrived at work to see everyone gathered around a TV screen in shock and horror.

Among the things I remember from that morning: uneasiness at working directly beneath the CN Tower (which seemed like a likely target if the airplanes-into-towers thing went local), and the feeling that as a journalist, I should be doing something to cover the biggest story in years. Of course, I was working on a children’s television pilot at the time, and was of no use at all. But feeling scared and useless were by no means unique.

(For a much better story, read the captivating account that my J-school colleague Karen Mah wrote about living beside the World Trade Center.)

I wasn’t going to blog at all today - there will no doubt be many better things to read. But as I was parking my bike on this crisp September morning, I remembered another story of lives cut short that is worth telling.

On the southeast border of the CBC’s Front Street offices is an unusual memorial called 100 Workers.

It’s a long stone wall featuring the names of 100 Ontario workers who died in workplace accidents over the past 100 years. Actually, there are only 99 names - the final plaque is left blank, awaiting one of the nearly 1,000 workers who are killed on the job in Canada every year.

The installation spans the parkette between CBC and the Workplace Safety & Insurance Board offices located in Simcoe Place next door. But that connection isn’t obvious. Most people who see 100 Workers are tourists, passing by on their way to a Jays game, a ride up the CN Tower or a Hippo bus tour of the harbour.

Given that frame of mind, the passers-by are usually caught off guard by small bronze plaques that read “pinned between tractor, scoop and ram”, “engulfed in flames in a chemical explosion” and “bullet wound in chest.”

I lock up my bike a few feet behind this monument each day, so I get to overhear snippets of tourists’ conversations as they saunter along and read the names. The first reaction is always the same - a sort of snickering “holy crap, lookit this one!”, followed by an attempt to find a method of dying more gruesome than the others. But after about a third of the wall, the snickering stops and the message sinks in. Not everyone sees the blank final plaque, but those that do are quieted for a few paces.

100 Workers is much more than a body count. There’s a story behind each plaque, and each name. For example:

“Engulfed in flames” is Sean Kells.

He was 19 years old, killed on his third day of a job he didn’t know was dangerous. When the 100 Workers monument was unveiled, Robin Kells was furious that his brother’s entire life was reduced to a single line about his death. But he came around.

I have a small connection to another plaque, and I keep waiting for an opportunity to explain it to some meandering tourist who reads it out loud, as they often do.

“Bullet wound in chest” is Edmund Tong.

Tong was a Toronto police detective who was murdered when he pulled over a car containing two bank robbers. Those robbers - Steve Suchan and Leonard Jackson - were members of the notorious Boyd Gang of the 1950s, and the subject of one of the first items I did for the CBC Digital Archives.

The Boyd Gang is often remembered fondly for their daredevil ways - they busted out of the Don Jail twice, the first time using a hacksaw blade hidden in Jackson’s artificial leg. Their second jailbreak became the subject of CBC-TVs first news report.

Captivating stuff - but every time I see the plaque, I am reminded that they were also cop killers. And yet, even cop killers have families, and their deaths are mourned.

Suchan’s mother was a cleaning lady at a law firm. One night she begged famed lawyer J.J. Robinette to defend her son. He lost the case, and Suchan was sentenced to death. So was Jackson, who had merely been along for the ride. The two men were hanged simultaneously, with their backs together. Robinette was so upset that he left criminal law to become legal counsel.

I screened another archival clip (which was too laden with copyright issues to use) featuring an interview with Jackson’s son, who watched his father hang. The guards forced Jackson to remove his artificial foot, and his son had to watch his dad hop awkwardly on one foot towards a gallows that he had to share with the real murderer.

That image bothers me. I can’t see Jackson’s death bringing the world any more satisfaction than Tong’s, or Kells’, or the 3,000 people who died on September 11th, 2001, or the 1,000+ American soldiers or the tens of thousands of Iraqis killed since. Every single one was preventable, and every single one is missed by someone. They died because they showed up for work, or they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

How many blank plaques do we need, exactly?

Posted by: Paul Gorbould | 09-11-2006 | 05:09 PM
Posted in: Rants