The Lights on the Tipple Are Going Out

Others also fought for the survival of local livelihoods. Langford credits Thomas Uphill, the mayor and, later, long-serving labour MLA for Fernie, with attempting to improve the lives of thousands of his constituents as mines closed and promises of economic revival proved stillborn. Uphill was often the lone voice in the provincial legislature with his “pointed anti-capitalist speeches” about the harm caused by closures. 

Langford’s prose spares us having to go down a mine to learn what it means to face unsafe, and sometimes deadly, working conditions. Coupled with the threats to health and safety, such as black lung disease, miners lived with the constant possibility of losing their jobs and their pensions. 

With The Lights on the Tipple Are Going Out, Langford uses his personal knowledge of the British Columbia municipalities of Fernie and Sparwood, as well as the since-disappeared villages of Michel and Natal, to provide a detailed community history-cum-economic study. In doing so, he reveals places full of working-class pride and union solidarity, while painting a bleak picture of the disintegration of both. The book also delves into the rich labour history of the region, epitomized by the 1932 Crowsnest Pass coal strike. Helpful sidebars on specific labour leaders describe hard-fought battles fuelled by a spirit of resistance to employer abuses and legislative recalcitrance.

The book also reports on the activism of women. Their protests about the pollution of their neighbourhoods, Langford notes, turned “a movement of ‘activist mothers’” into “a community movement for environmental justice.” 

In his conclusion, Langford proposes an ambitious plan to save coal communities from total disintegration. To work, he argues, it will require collaborating with First Nations to move from profit-driven industrial projects to cooperative communities focussed on preserving nature. 

Coal was once the energy king that drove all other industries. Today it has increasingly given way to greener sources of power. As a result, Langford’s proposal must address a critical issue: how to fairly retrain miners to overcome their history and avoid being bypassed by the clean energy revolution. 

In the balance stands the legacy of Robert Lilley.