April 28th is the International Day of Mourning, where we pause each year to remember workers killed on the job or as a result of occupational disease — numbering 1,000 annually based on workers’ compensation statistics from accepted claims. We vow each year to mourn for the dead and fight for the living. For the many worker deaths from occupational disease that go officially unrecognized, however, mourning the dead is a complicated and often unachievable task for the families left behind.
It was Dec. 21, 1967 and Andrew Tabaka had already spent 11 years underground at Kerr Addison Mine in Virginiatown, Ontario when he wrote this letter to his Member of Parliament, Arnold Peters. The month prior, Tabaka had left the mines due to a heart condition and after a doctor’s warning that he “could not expect to live more than a year” if he continued mining.
Half a century later, his children still wonder whether their father had silicosis and if the heart condition that took his life was related to the dusty working conditions and exposures that he faced as a miner. His family will never have those answers. Tabaka’s medical records no longer exist, destroyed according to legislated record retention requirements.
Occupational diseases are detected through research. Research depends on data. Data is gathered through effort.
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