William Davis

Who was William Davis?

William Davis, was a coal miner from Cape Breton Island. He was born in Gloucestershire, England and died in New Waterford, Nova Scotia.

Davis was a miner and began working for the Dominion Coal Company Limited in 1905 at various collieries along the Sydney Coal Field, eventually graduating to become a pumpman and a roadmaker, lastly at the No. 12 Colliery in New Waterford. He married in 1907 and was raising a family of nine children by 1925 with his wife carrying a tenth child due in September.

The DOMCO mines were subsumed by the British Empire Steel Corporation in 1920, and BESCO management soon began a targeted campaign to break the union, organized as District 26, U.M.W.A.. There were 58 strikes in the Sydney Coal Field between 1920-25 and the latest contract had expired on January 15, 1925. On March 2 BESCO cut off company credit at company stores and U.M.W.A. 26 went on strike 4 days later, with 12,000 miners manning the picket lines, leaving a small workforce to maintain the mines and keep them from flooding.

The miners' resolve was strong, despite the economic hardship which saw families come to the brink of starvation by June. On June 4, BESCO refused arbitration and U.M.W.A. 26 went to 100 per cent picketing. Several days later, BESCO decided to shut down the town of New Waterford's drinking water supply and electricity. Miners promptly went to the pumping station and power plant at Waterford Lake and violently expelled company workers in order to restart the utilities for their company homes, while cutting them off to company facilities.