Disaster

A maintenance worker for Peterborough Public Transit Commission writes in remembrance of her father, John Logan, who succumbed to cancer in 2038.

Dad insisted on walking. Even though the lawyers said it would look better if he was in his wheelchair, having to be pushed to the stand by his caregiver. He refused. He still had pride, he said. That the jury would have to be clueless not to see the deterioration of his health with or without the chair. The lawyers relented. So when they called him to the stand, the room watched a thin, weary old man move each leg less than an inch at a time, scraping his wooden cane against the floor as he slowly but surely, dragged himself into the witness box. His voice was low and surprisingly steady when he took the oath. Despite the situation, I smiled. All our practice with the cane had paid off.

Dad had cancer. It started in his lungs and spread, without us knowing, to different organs. Bones and bowels, probably other places by now. His was worse than mine, my own at last in remission after over a year of treatments in the city. I tried to get him to come with me. I offered my apartment, my bed. I told him I would take the couch and he could have his own space. We could recover together. He refused. He said it was to do with the house, the town, not wanting to leave behind this place that made him. There was a whole speech he gave every time I brought up the subject. I think, deep down, he did not want to be away from Mom and my brother. Even for a few months. He couldn’t stand the thought of being anywhere long term without them. 

The defense lawyer was tall. His pants fit strangely high on his ankles. I could hear my mom’s voice in my head. “Those pants are floods!” she would say, shocked that my brother had outgrown yet another pair during his latest growth spurt. I could imagine her face now, staring at the lawyer with pursed lips. Only this man did not have puberty for an excuse. Mom would be horrified to know ill-fitting pants were in now, even in professional attire. His clothing made me respect the guy less than I already did, something I didn’t think was possible. 

I knew Dad was nervous, but it wasn’t obvious. Despite the disease eating away at most of his body, he was operating off a well-fed ego after his successful (albeit laboured) walk to the stand. 

Our lawyers encouraged us to refer to what happened as “The Disaster.” This terminology made it sound devastating, and more concise. Terminology was key here. The disaster wasn’t loud. It wasn’t a spectacle. There were no photos to gawk at, visual cues to spark outrage that would elicit a small change after getting the south’s attention and briefly horrifying them. It was a slow, insidious, destruction. Very few people were aware of it until the damage was impossible to reverse. “The Disaster” rolled off the tongue easier than “lethal poisoning as a result of long-term exposure to toxic chemicals introduced to the area thanks to a government initiative proposed under the guise of green mining for critical minerals.” 

I vaguely remember the town hall meeting. Dad came home later than normal with a small pamphlet, beautifully designed with different shades of green. “Green Mining” was sprawled across the front in serif. The same pamphlet was now secured in our lawyers’ files, waiting to be brought out after the defendant’s spiel. 

The people who came to talk to my dad and other miners said there was a demand for specific materials to be made locally. Supply chains were in tatters thanks to unstable governments in Africa that were “constantly on the edge of civil war”, while the Canadian government equally feared critical mineral supplies dominated by potentially unfriendly powers like China and Russia. According to the suits, our place in the mineral rich North – like many neighbouring communities in the nearby Ring of Fire proper - was an incredible opportunity. They wanted Cobalt to be the center of it all, to carry on the town’s historic tradition of being an influence on the mining world. I rifled through the pamphlet my dad brought home out of curiosity as he and my mom talked. 

Apparently, it wouldn’t be all that different from what they were already doing, just introducing a few new systems and some new tech to the already established mines. A “Made in Ontario” critical mineral guaranteed access to a raw material that would power the windmills in the South. We would also be responsible for the creation of the lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles throughout North America. “Opportunity for massive economic growth, specific to local Northern economies” and “aligned with climate policies” were some of the boastful catchphrases in the pamphlet, phrases that are now seared into my mind given the dozens of times I’ve reread the thing since we all got sick. 

It started out fine. The work was more or less the same for the first five years. I moved out to the city, and nothing was amiss. When I came home for Christmas seven years into the project, Dad seemed tired, barely able to keep his eyes open during breakfast. Mom was complaining about stomach pain. She assumed it was due to coffee in the morning and had switched to green tea. Back in the city, I was scrolling lazily on my phone when an article from Cobalt Today popped up, something about an alarming number of dead fish washing up on the beach on New Year’s Day. Specialists were investigating. 

It wasn’t long after they discovered the arsenic and cyanide in the water, all connected to tailings from mining. The same substances found in the urine and blood of dozens of people hospitalized for debilitating stomach pain and budding tumours in various parts of their bodies. My brother went first. Heart failure, which was unexpected given his age. About a week before him a toddler died as well. These two tangential tragedies are what sparked the outrage. Before, the deaths were all pushed as “old age” and “natural causes,” but the children of miners, both of whom lived off the well water in the area, having sudden, fatal heart failure, was an undeniable problem. Mom was gone six months later. 

This was the story Dad recounted on the stand. No matter how many times the defense tried to turn the conversation away from the reality of their deaths, Dad kept reinforcing it, stoic and solemn. The defense lawyer finished, overcoming  a few objections from our side, and without breaking my father. At this point, I didn’t think anything would. I knew he had cried over my brother and Mom but never in front of me. Only when he assumed I was asleep and unable to hear the muffled sobs in his pillow. 

Our lawyers had run over everything with me and my dad ahead of time. They encouraged us not to hold back. To mention the money that the company originally offered and the reasons why he took it. Mom’s treatments and my brother’s funeral bills. That it didn’t occur to him that it was hush money about the water contamination, about the lack of regulation in the smelting and refining process. Mention that you’re working class, the lawyer said, that you didn’t graduate high school and you didn’t know any better. Play up your ignorance, your Canadian heart of gold. The hard work you have done, the way you are the backbone of this nation. These affirmations floated around us. All these things were true in a way. Inspirational facts meant to win our case, inspirational facts that killed my mother, brother and will likely kill my father.

The jury was in discussion for hours. Dad and I both needed to be home. The room full of strangers was a massive threat to his non-existent immune systems now. We sat on the couch together and waited for the call to come back. After nearly a month of this, of hearing the same stories from our neighbours and friends who were navigating their own tragedies as well as ours, we were exhausted. Dad’s caregiver made us both a grilled cheese and tomato soup. Dad took a few bites until he had to lay down again, the morning of interrogation had taken what little energy he had. We didn’t end up going back. Dad fell asleep and I waited for the call to come through that we won. A massive public inquiry would begin shortly and we would be rewarded a significant amount of money for the suffering we had endured. I nodded along on the phone while our lawyers relayed this information to me, staring blankly ahead at the shelf where the urns sat. 

Reporters came by a few days later to talk to me and Dad. I had read some of their articles before, about the catastrophe now synonymous with our town. The government had thrown money and resources at us to divert from the well water. The mines were shut down with pensions and compensation given to all the workers who were still alive. When the doorbell rang a second time, I opened the door. A sharply dressed duo stood patiently, a cloud of sympathy darkening their faces when they saw me. 

I regurgitated the same information I had for the last few years. About grief, shock, and anger. They nodded with everything I said (most of them did that, their way of demonstrating solidarity with such I regurgitated the same information I had for the last few years. About grief, shock, and anger. They nodded with everything I said (most of them did that, their way of demonstrating solidarity with such a tragic figure). The article they were writing was focusing on the positive elements of The Disaster. How companies have been using the guise of ethics and “green” to commit heinous crimes. They mentioned Ontario’s Critical Minerals Strategy, that document of pretty, promising numbers once touted around like a new Bible, complete with Old Testament destruction. Parliament was drafting new bills as we spoke, with stricter laws, stricter inspections, and protocols to ensure nothing like this was to ever happen again. 

One of the reporters, a bright-eyed woman, let me know that she had attended a protest last week against what they had done here. About the environmental destruction that had taken place under our noses. She said there were over ten thousand people in Queen’s Park, swarming the outside. The Premier even came, going so far as to light a candle for the lives lost. I thanked her because I didn’t know what else to say.

When they left, I wandered into the room where Dad was. The TV was on some documentary about an animal that had long since been extinct. The narrator’s captivating voice told the audience about the impact this extinction had had. The ways the world rallied around the mass death of such a beloved creature. A photo of it flashed on the screen. The last one, sitting in a big, beautiful enclosure while the world waited to mourn, waited to act. Dad was asleep, his breathing long and shallow. I sat at the foot of his bed and cried.

Cole Logan