April 28
Day of Mourning for Workers Injured or Killed in the Workplace

Origin of the Day of Mourning

The Day of Mourning has its origin among workers in the northern Ontario mining community of Sudbury in the 1980s. Like workers across the country, all of whom face health and safety issues at their workplaces, they wanted to make the problems known and to find solutions to them. In doing so they rejected the outlook of the monopolies and ruling elites that workers are disposable and thus sought to uphold the dignity of labour by honouring those who have been made ill or died on the job, and to ultimately end workplace injuries and deaths.

In a 2010 article, Dorothy Wigmore, a Winnipeg-based occupational health specialist, writer and educator, recounts:

“Around 1983, the health and safety director of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), Colin Lambert, and his long-time friend and fellow activist, Ray Sentes, came up with the idea of a day to recognize workers killed and injured on the job.

“As a steelworker and miner in Sudbury, Ontario, Lambert was instrumental in having mandatory coroners’ inquests for all miners’ deaths in Ontario. He also lamented the contrast between the lack of recognition for miners and other workers who died because of their work and the large public events for ‘fallen’ police officers and firefighters.

“Lambert ‘floated the idea’ with CUPE’s national health and safety committee, talking about a special day of recognition for workers killed and injured on the job, to be held on May 1 (celebrated as May Day in Europe and elsewhere). The committee endorsed the idea. At its 1984 convention, union delegates supported the proposal. Soon after, some CUPE locals started negotiating events, such as lowered flags and moments of silence.”

The Day of Mourning was first recognized at the provincial level by Ontario in 1984, on April 28, and workers across the country sought to take it to the national level. Wigmore writes:

“In 1984 and 1985, CUPE representatives took the idea to the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) executive and its national health and safety committee. Local unions also sent resolutions to the CLC.

“In February 1986, the CLC announced the first Day of Mourning, coinciding with the first day of its convention that year. Rather than May 1, they chose the date when the Ontario legislature passed the country’s first workers’ compensation law, in 1914. The convention passed a resolution supporting April 28 as a day to ‘mourn for the dead and fight for the living.'”

In 1990, the canary was chosen as the symbol for the Day of Mourning, harkening back to the turn of the 20th century when they were taken down into the mines, as they would show signs of distress due to toxic gases before the miners were seriously affected. “The canary’s an appropriate symbol,” Lambert said. “It shows that today workers are the canaries – they are front-line protection for all of us.”

Workers across the country were involved in the work to see that the Day of Mourning was officially recognized by the federal government. Winston Gereluk, writing for AlbertaLabourHistory.org, notes, “Health and safety activists across Canada maintained pressure on the Canadian government to implement a national day of recognition, with several Alberta-based activists leading the campaign.”

In February 1991, the Canadian government passed a private member’s bill naming April 28 as the “Day of Mourning for Persons Killed or Injured in the Workplace.”

Today, the April 28 Day of Mourning is observed in more than 100 countries. For example, in 1989 in the United States, the American Federation of Labour began to recognize April 28 as Workers’ Memorial Day. Workers’ Memorial Day was adopted by the Scottish Trade Union Congress (TUC) in 1993, the UK TUC in 1999 and the UK Health and Safety Commission in 2000. The International Labour Organization (ILO) and the International TUC declared the International Day of Mourning in 1996. Since 2001, the ILO has called it the World Day for Safety and Health at Work.

(With files from Dorothy Wigmore, BC Federation of Labour, AlbertaLabourHistory.org)

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