The Kirkland Lake Miners' Memorial is a memorial in Kirkland Lake, Ontario, dedicated to the city's mining labourers.
During the 1930s the town's seven great gold mines (Macassa, Tough-Oaks, Kirkland Lake Gold, Lakeshore, Wright-Hargreaves, Teck-Hughes and Sylvanite) provided one million dollars to the province's economy and employed 4, 640 workers. However, now only a few mines remain, with Mcdermott mine, Hollaway, and Macassa mine is still open and in order to honour all miners, living and dead, the local Miners’ Memorial Foundation constructed the 40-tonne 10 meter tall Miners’ Memorial.
Background of this Grass-roots Project
The Miners' Memorial Foundation was chaired by Steven Yee, a local miner and president of the United Steel Workers – District 6 Union. 2,3 The committee was largely made up of local miners and their mission was to create a monument in order to make sure that there was a place so that the miners who built their town could be remembered. After ten years of hard work the Miners' Memorial project culminated on July 25, 1994, when the Monument was completed and donated to the town of Kirkland Lake during its 75th anniversary celebration. The ceremony was attended by hundreds of local people 3.
With regards to fundraising, this project was largely a 'grass roots' effort that relied upon community bingos and Nevadas. The federal and provincial governments also made important contributions as did a Rita MacNeil benefit. Even the artists who designed the monument, Rob Moir and Sally Lawrence, were local. Further, once all of the components of the Monument were created, they were assembled by miners who volunteered their spare time to see their project completed.
The Monument: Physical Structure
Overall Appearance
This "40-tonne 10-meter-high black granite abstraction of a head frame" 2 is a monument in every sense of the word. Its black granite stone and bronzed figures speak to the timelessness of the miner, while the lawn and picnic tables in the park surrounding it facilitate the meeting of the past and present. This speaks to the manner in which the monument encourages remembrance and reconciliation with the past in order to provide a basis upon which the community's future can be forged.
Physical Components of the Monument
Every physical component of the Monument is local. Even the rock was taken from the nearby French River. All of the machinery and equipment was donated by miners or the mines. 2 The mucker, the ladder and even the batteries on the miner's belts are authentic. Further, even the bolts that are used to hold the Monument together are stone bolts taken from a mine. 3 It was important that everything was local and authentic because the Miners’ Monument Foundation wanted the Monument to show as accurately as possible what it was like to work underground and to make the monument as ‘human’ and ‘warm’ as possible. 2The monument was not supposed to be a cold monolith embodying only the danger of underground work, and it is instead a memorial infused with the miners’ experiences.
The Figures
The emphasis upon facilitating a ‘warm’ and ‘human’ message in the Monument is why the bronzed miner figures were made in the likeness of real miners. This also serves to remind us that even though the miners did hard underground work, they were still human beings. 2,3 The position and actions of the figures also carry with them significant messages. For example, the figure climbing the ladder speaks to the need for the community to continue to move forward, and to climb the proverbial ladder of Health and Safety. It is thus simultaneously a celebration of how far Health and Safety has come, a reminder of the need to continue to improve Health and Safety and a remembrance for those who died in the mines.1
Cultural Framing
Part of the significance of this Monument stems from how it is framed by the 'cultural landscape’ surrounding it. Historians Sherry Lee Linkton and John Russo explain that "one way of thinking about a landscape is to view it as a representation, a text that can be read, much like a novel or a painting"5 and when this type of analysis is applied to the landscape around the Monument it demonstrates how the cultural landscape adds to its meaning in three important ways. 5