100th Davis Day held in Cape Breton on anniversary of coal miner’s death

Hundreds of people gathered in Cape Breton for Davis Day on Wednesday.

Davis Day is commemorated every year in Nova Scotia on June 11 to remember a deadly riot that proved to be pivotal for workers’ rights in Canada.

One hundred years to the day after the death of Cape Breton coal miner William Davis, hundreds of people gathered at Davis Square in New Waterford, N.S., Wednesday to mark the centennial.

A large contingent of Davis’s descendants were in attendance, including a great-grandson who bears his name.

“My dad was William Davis, I’m William Davis, my son is William Davis, my grandson is William Davis,” said Bill Davis, who came from Connecticut for his first Davis Day since the 80th anniversary in 2005.

“I think he’d be very proud of all the family that was here today, and the last few days, how we’ve come together as a family to celebrate him and remember him,” said Davis’s granddaughter Norma MacDonald.

William Davis, a 37-year-old father of nine, was shot and killed by coal company police during a workers’ protest.

Davis Day has been marked each June in coal mining communities across Nova Scotia ever since – to not only honour the miner’s memory but to raise awareness about safety on the job and workers’ rights.

In 1985, on the sixtieth Davis Day, ATV News reporter Greg Boone – who attended Wednesday’s centennial commemoration – spoke with William Davis’ son Bobby Davis at the coal miner’s grave in Union Grove Cemetery.

The Bobby Davis said he was thirteen years old at the time his father was shot.

“(A man) just told me ‘Come on with us,’ and when he got us home he told us all that there was an accident and father was killed,” Bobby Davis told Boone.

On Wednesday, those who worked in the coal mines spoke about how Davis and others who fought for miners’ rights helped lead to more equitable wages and safer working conditions.

“There was some major accidents and yes people lost their lives but there were other incidents where some were saved on account of the safety measures they took in the mines,” said John MacLeod, a retired coal miner and current member of the Men of the Deeps.

Though coal mining in the Maritimes isn’t the industry it once was, Nova Scotia NDP leader Claudia Chender said some of the lessons from that fateful day 100 years ago still apply.

“We heard about the Westray Law at the federal level and the need for that law to actually be used, so I think we remember all of that on a day like today,” Chender said.

Click here for a photo gallery of a ceremony for the 100th anniversary of Davis Day at the Davis Square in New Waterford, N.S.

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