In April 2025 I was delighted to open an email from James Slaven, a historian and activist with Climate Justice Ottawa, asking if I could contribute a story to a labour and climate teach-in to be held in Ottawa. The story did not have to specifically address climate, but was meant to highlight, in James’ words, “interconnected histories of the labour and environmental movements, past and present.” I decided to offer a story about the struggle of organized labour against arsenic pollution in Yellowknife, a remarkable instance of local environmental activism featuring an alliance between the United Steelworkers of America and the Indigenous activists during the zenith of the anti-pollution and occupational health struggles of the 1970s.
After a weather delay, the teach-in finally took place on May 28th in McNabb Park in downtown Ottawa. Climate justice had created a fantastic poster featuring the story, and some field work photographs I had taken in Yellowknife. Broadly speaking, I was happy to contribute to an event that highlighted the connections between the labour and environmental movements, a core focus of the Mining Danger Project. Although I loved the “low-fi” nature of the poster, and wished I could have attended to participate in the discussion, I have reproduced the poster text below for online readers.
Workers and the Environment in Yellowknife’s Mining Industry
Right-wing politicians and some business leaders have a standard line about jobs and the environment. Any form of environmental regulation, they argue, will shackle business with red tape, hold up development, and cost jobs.
Yet workers have very often rejected the false dichotomy between employment versus the environment. Beginning in the early twentieth century, labour-inspired occupational health campaigns routinely spilled over into local, regional, and national struggles against pollution and other environmental impacts from industry.
One example from my own research is the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) campaign against arsenic pollution in Yellowknife during the 1970s. The two main gold mines at Yellowknife – Giant and Con – roasted arsenopyrite ore as part of their processing operations, releasing highly toxic arsenic trioxide dust into the surrounding environment. The problem became acute when the Giant Mine roaster came online in 1949 because a very high percentage of the mine’s ore body contained arsenic, increasing the total daily amount of arsenic trioxide emissions to over 12,000 pounds per day. Arsenic pollution had dramatic impacts on nearby Yellowknives Dene communities, contaminating their water supply (often melted snow in the winter), garden produce and berries. In 1951 the local Indian Agent reported high numbers of arsenic-related illnesses in the community, and at least one child died tragically of arsenic poisoning.
Throughout the 1950s, the mines installed pollution control equipment to mitigate air and water pollution. At Giant, this meant large amounts of arsenic was collected in an electrostatic precipitator and a baghouse, facilities where workers were exposed to large amounts of arsenic trioxide dust. While the USWA negotiated danger pay premiums for work in arsenic “hot spots,” leakage resulted in rashes and sometimes hospital treatment for exposed workers.
The issue reached national attention in 1975 when an episode of CBC’s radio program As it Happens (produced by labour and occupational health activist Lloyd Tataryn), highlighted the ongoing exposure of the Yellowknives Dene communities to arsenic trioxide. The USWA seized the moment and worked with the National Indian Brotherhood to conduct hair sample studies of mine workers and Dene children, with results showing significant exposure among these specific groups. Although the Yellowknife “arsenic scare” faded at the end of the 1970s in the wake of an independent report came to the controversial conclusion that the broader population of Yellowknife was not at risk, the largely forgotten campaign against arsenic pollution in Yellowknife featured a labour movement allied with local Indigenous communities and environmental groups such as Ecology North, an intersectional alliance of civil society in defense of environmental quality. As prominent USWA environmental activist Paul Falkowski noted in an address to the National Indian Brotherhood in 1977, the alliance carried broader significance because “there are many more Yellowknifes,” and “the labour movement and the Indian movement have repeatedly been confronted with insensitive industries and foot-dragging governments when calling for environmental health reforms.” For the USWA and many other unions, pollution, ill-health, and a degraded environment is never the price a community should pay for jobs and economic development.
Feature Image: Poster on Labour Activism and the Environment in Yellowknife featuring text by John Sandlos, at the May Day teach-in organized by Climate Justice Climatique, Ottawa, 28 May 2025.
