YARMOUTH, N.S. — For Linda Gregory, workplace deaths and injuries have hit close to home. She lost an uncle at sea. A cousin was a trucker when he died.
And she possibly could have lost her father as well. When she was younger, and before the technology on vessels that exists now, he was aboard a boat that was lost at sea for three days.
“Today is a day that we should always keep in our minds,” Gregory, the Municipality of Digby’s deputy warden, said at an April 28 ceremony in Yarmouth recognizing the national Day of Mourning.
While workplaces have claimed lives and injured people for a long time, Gregory said what has changed “is that we are looking at it as a society and saying this is not acceptable. Workers need to come home.”
“It affects us all and don’t ever think that everyone is safe. You need to practise good safety. You need to watch the other person, not just you,” she said. “And embrace the inspectors when they come and say thank you to them when they show you what’s wrong.”
In 2018, 14 Nova Scotians died from acute traumatic injuries on the job. There were also 26 fatalities classified as chronic – which included 12 related to occupational diseases and 14 caused by health-related issues, such as heart attacks. The industries with the highest acute fatality numbers were construction with three deaths and fishing, which saw six people drown or lost at sea.
The Lost to the Sea memorial served as the backdrop to the Yarmouth ceremony – a sobering and poignant reminder of how dangerous work on the water is.
(A video portraying the loss in the fishing sector was preparing to coincide with this year's Day of Mourning.)
“But it’s not only those who go out to sea,” said West Nova MP Colin Fraser. “It’s also those who work every day that sometimes are placed in dangerous situations. We have to do better as a society to put in place sensible regulations to ensure that we are doing everything we can to make workplaces safe. Everybody deserves to come home at night after a hard day’s work. And every family deserves to have their loved one return.”
Fraser noted there has been progress over the years to make workplaces safer, but he said there is a lot more to do and it will take all levels of government “working together with labour, working together with industry, to ensure that we have the safest possible workplace environments.”
As local residents Kelly Bellamon and Marina Nixon sang Amazing Grace, those in attendance laid wreaths and yellow carnations.
Earlier in the ceremony, which was organized by the South West Labour Group, Reverend Tory Byrne offered prayers.
“We honour those who did not come home…We honour all those who were injured because of the work they did or the place they did it in,” she said. “We remember with sorrow and grief, all those who were their family, their friends, their colleagues, the communities in which they worked and played and lived. Because one death is never a death in isolation.”
“Help us to gather together, helping one another in our sorrow, but also in our determination to help make safety, and workplace safety in particular, something we need to work on to change for the better,” she added. “Bless everyone as they go to work every day and let us always give thanks for those who come home safely.”
Rachel Barbour is working to ensure everyone has that chance to come home. She works with the Nova Scotia Federation of Labour’s Worker Counsellor Program, which provides assistance, advocacy and education to Nova Scotians who are navigating the workers’ compensation and occupational health and safety systems.
“I would like today not just to be about mourning,” she about the reason for the gathering. “I would like it to be a celebration of life for the 40 workers in this province who didn’t go home in the past year. For the 1,000 workers across this country who died this year because of work and for the tens of thousands who have died over the years.”
She would also like it to be a day of action. She handed out the Department of Labour’s Occupational Health and Safety 24-hour reporting line – 1-800-9LABOUR (1-800-952-2687). Barbour calls this number a lot when she sees things on a worksite are happening that shouldn’t be. She encouraged others to do the same.
“I don’t want to see anybody getting hurt and I would not be able to live with myself if I woke up the next day and found out something had happened,” she said, saying employers have the authority in the workplace, but workers have the power and the rights.
“Forty people died last year because of work,” she said. “All I think about are the 40 people walking around today who are going to die this year, and I’d really rather that not happen.”