One day charlotte heard some news that made her heart beat faster and a surge of hope rise within her. The dynamite plant at Departure Bay was hiring, and they liked young girls to work for them, because their touch was more delicate. Charlotte was sure she could make her touch as delicate as the next girl, or Chinese man, who were also favoured for the same reason.
There were a couple of problems, to be sure. For one, there had been explosions, and folks said it was dangerous work—but so what? Nothing was perfect, and it couldn’t be as dangerous as working in the mine. The other problem was that Departure Bay was a considerable distance from Extension, on the outskirts of Nanaimo. She would have to ride the train to the top of the Departure Bay hill and walk the rest of the way. If only they would hire her, she would figure out a way to get there, even if it meant finding a place to live nearby.
She had never seen the dynamite plant at close quarters, and she was surprised by how many buildings there were. Eight wooden structures of assorted shapes and sizes zigzagged down the hillside to the cliff at the ocean’s edge. The lower six were connected by wooden sidewalks and a narrow-gauge railway track.
Mr. Tweedsmuir was interviewing hopeful candidates in front of the small office building. He wore a dark-grey-and-black-striped wool suit with a double-breasted jacket, a white shirt with a stiff wing collar, a black homburg hat with the brim snapped down in front, and lace-up shoes with shiny toe caps. Mr. Tweedsmuir was just about the most dashing figure of a man that Charlotte had ever seen.
He was half of a matched pair with Mrs. Tweedsmuir. She had been on the stage in England, and she was sure she could make The Mikado into a smash hit in Extension. They might even stage it at the Opera House in Nanaimo, she had said at the last rehearsal.
The dynamite plant had to be a pretty high-class place to work, Charlotte thought, if the manager could dress like that and had a wife who was a star.
Mr. Tweedsmuir smiled at her. “Experience, love?”
Charlotte looked at his shoes. “I beg your pardon?”
“Experience. What manner of work have you done before?”
“Well, sir, I...um...I’ve done housework, minded kids, baking, sewing, and...”
“Yes, yes, quite so. But I’m referring to proper employment. An avocation. Nursing, teaching, clerking, and so forth.”
Charlotte shook her head and stared at his lapel. “No, sir.”
“How old are you, love?”
She slipped her arm behind her back with her fingers crossed. “Sixteen.”
“Education?”
“Yes, sir. I went to school.” She was flooded with disappointment. He wouldn’t hire her. Why should he? He had dozens of people to pick from—people who were smart, nicely dressed, and knew how to talk.
Suddenly her backbone stiffened with determination. She had to convince him she would be a better bet than any of the others. She lifted her chin and looked him in the eye.
“I had to quit in Grade Eight because my father got killed in the mine, but I did just fine in school. Really well, in fact. I took two grades in one year, and I was always head of the class.” She had never bragged about herself before, and it felt strange, but nice, in a way. “And I won a medal for best student, and I could be a nurse soon as I’m old enough...” Oh-oh, she shouldn’t have mentioned age.
“Let me see your hands.”
Charlotte pulled off her gloves, stuffed them in her pocket, and held her hands out, palms down, for his inspection. Her hands were narrow, her fingers long, and her nails short. There were still a few dark patches where all her scrubbing hadn’t succeeded in removing coal-dust stains, but she was glad she had taken time to push back the cuticles and use white pencil under her fingernail tips.
Mr. Tweedsmuir reached for her hands and turned them over, then he looked her up and down. “You’ll do.”
Charlotte swallowed. “I’ll...do?”
“Yes, m’love. You’ll do. Can you start Monday? The wage is one dollar and twenty-five cents a day.”
“Yes, sir.” She stared at her hands, still raised in front of her, as though she had never seen them before, then dropped them and pulled her gloves from her pocket.
He pointed. “See the foreman in that building down there. You can get signed up. But be careful. You can’t go in without coveralls and the proper boots. Give a knock, and he’ll come out and see to it. Good day.” He watched while she pulled on her gloves, then offered his hand to shake.
“That building there,” Charlotte learned later, was the packing and rolling house, but she caught only glimpses of long tables with people in white coveralls standing beside them when the foreman opened the door in response to her knock. He quickly dismissed her and told her they would do the paperwork on Monday morning. At 7:00 a.m. sharp.
Charlotte rode home on the train in a daze.
She had a job! Mr. Tweesdmuir had said she would do. A real job. Miss Charlotte Grace McEwan was now employed by Canadian Explosives Limited. Six days a week, 7:30 to 5:00. And the pay! She could hardly believe it. One dollar and twenty-five cents a day. It wouldn’t even be hard work, not nearly as hard as washing clothes and scrubbing floors. She would be able to have a new dress, and Robbie wouldn’t have to scramble for free coal. They could have chicken on Sundays, and Bea could have as many hair ribbons as she wanted. Next Christmas Danny would get the red wagon he had been longing for.
Charlotte would give some money to her mother every payday, so she could quit worrying.
She might be late going to rehearsals, though. Maybe she should quit. If it took an hour to get each way like it had today, it would be touch and go.
But she had to remember to save some money, Charlotte thought. Just wait until Sophia found out. She would be bound to say something was wrong with it. Just sour grapes. In a year or so they could move to Victoria, or even back to Scotland, although her mother said times were harder there than here.
Her mother! How could she tell her where the job was? Maybe she could say it was at the post office or somewhere like that. The trouble was, somebody else would be sure to tell her mother the truth. But her mother couldn’t stop her, Charlotte said to herself. She was determined to be the best dynamite packer they ever had. She’d just be careful, that was all. Maybe she’d even get to be a shift foreman, but probably not. Charlotte expected they gave those kinds of jobs to the men. She would tell her mother first thing in the morning.
The next day it seemed to take forever to get Beatrice off to school. She had been chosen to be on the drill team and she was excited.
“I get to wear blue bloomers, all puffy and pleated, like this,” she said, flipping her hands around her thighs. “And a middy with a blue stripe on the bottom.” She twirled around, and patted her mother’s knee. “But don’t worry, Mum. We don’t have to pay for them.”
The drill team would be marching in the Miners’ Day Parade, and Beatrice hummed a marching tune and showed them how she could keep time to the music. “Pretend this is my wand,” she said, waving a large spoon as she moved.
“That’s very nice, Bea,” her mother said. “Now off to school you go.”
“You’ll come and watch me, won’t you, Mum, and Charlotte?” she said, standing with the front door open.
“Of course we’ll come,” her mother said.
Danny was playing with clothespins, picking them out of a cloth bag one at a time and piling them on a slab of wood. His “lobbing truck,” he called it.
“Logging,” his mother absentmindedly said.
“I know that,” Danny said.
“Mother?” Charlotte asked.
“Hmm?” Mabel was sitting on a wooden kitchen chair, one her husband had made ten years before. Her elbows were on the table, and she had her chin in her hands and a cup of half-cold tea in front of her.
Charlotte tried to put just the right degree of excitement into her voice. “Mother, I’ve got a job. I’ll be getting one dollar and twenty-five cents a day. You can stop taking in washing, and we can buy lots of food, and coal. We can buy our own coal, and—”
Mabel McEwan dropped her arms onto the table and stared at her daughter. She looked stern and suspicious. “What kind of job, Charlotte?”
“At CEL.”
“The dynamite plant?”
“Yes. We can put some money by, and you can get a new suit for going to town, and maybe Bea can have piano lessons. You know how she can carry a tune. And—”
There was a dull clatter as Danny’s “truck” collided with the woodbox and tipped over, sending clothespins spinning across the floor.
“Not making dynamite, Lottie? You’re not making dynamite. That’s too dangerous. Not all the money in the world would convince me to let you do that.”
“No, no. Not making it. Just taking orders and sending out bills in the office, Mum. Not making it.” Charlotte almost convinced herself that the lie was true.
“Are you sure? How far away is the office from the plant?”
“Quite a ways. Remember the explosion a couple of years ago? The office didn’t get touched.”
“Seems to me I recall the windows got broken.”
“Yes. Of course the windows got broken a bit, but now they’re all changed to a different kind—sort of like French windows, so they’ll fly open if need be.”
“Pick those up, Daniel. A body could step on one of them and take a nasty fall.” Mabel glanced over her shoulder. “Oh, Lottie, I don’t know. I just don’t know. You’re a good reliable girl. I never could have managed without you. Are you sure it’s perfectly safe? I couldn’t withstand another one of my own being in an explosion.”
“Perfectly safe, Mother. There haven’t been many problems, only two, three, little blowups in ten years.”
“Wait a minute now, Lottie. It seems to me that a few people have been killed in the two or three little blowups you’re talking about.” She was silent and still for several seconds, listening, concentrating, or thinking—whatever it was she did when she was like that. “Still, all in all, I daresay it would be a blessing to have steady money coming in. You’re sure the office isn’t close to any dynamite?”
“I’m sure, Mum.”
“When do you start?”
“Monday.”
“All right then. I’ll go with you on Monday, just to see what it’s all about.”
“No, no. Not Monday. Later. Monday’s the day they teach me how to do all the orders. I’ll be nervous enough, but if you’re there it would be kind of...you know, like I’m just a little kid. Lots of boys way younger than me work in the mines and that’s a hundred times more dangerous than the office at the dynamite plant. Please, Mum, I’ll be ever so careful. I promise,” Charlotte said, lacing her fingers together.
Mabel sighed. “Seems like you’ve got your heart set on it, Lottie.”
“I do, Mother, I do.”
“All right, then. Try it out for a while, and we’ll see. I’ll talk to some of the neighbours, and see what they have to say.”
Charlotte was anxious about what the neighbours might say, but at least she might have a chance to establish her reputation as a working person in the meantime.
“Thank you, Mum. I’ll be fine. You’ll see.”
The village of Extension was looking more and more deserted. The company had built the houses and offered them to experienced miners at a reasonable rent as an inducement for them to leave their jobs and travel to Canada to work. Now the houses stood empty, as the company evicted striking miners from their homes. Families moved in with relatives, or built little shacks. It would be a hard winter. Old Number One was quiet. There was talk of strikebreakers coming, but Nanaimo’s mines were still working. Folks were saying it was just a matter of time.
Big meetings attended by nearly two thousand miners were held in Nanaimo, and those who wanted a union were trying hard to get their colleagues to join them.
Up until this time Chinese men hadn’t been allowed to go down into the mines. They had worked above-ground, picking the rock out from the coal, loading, and hauling, and caring for the mules. Now there was talk that they were being threatened by the company to go back to work, or they would be returned to China. Going back to work made them scabs, and as the strike dragged on many of them were sent down to mine the coal.
Pro-union meetings were held once a week to keep spirits from flagging, and there were weekly dances to raise money for the cause. It was five cents apiece—the musicians played for nothing, the women took sandwiches and cakes, and a good time was had by all.
The Knights of Pythias Hall looked and sounded a lot different for a dance than for The Mikado rehearsals. Paper streamers were hung on the walls; powdered wax was sprinkled on the floor; a pianist, a drummer, and a fiddler tuned up onstage; children chased each other over benches and around little knots of people in conversation; and the smell of perfume, boiling coffee, mothballs, and perspiration mingled with the odour of kerosene given off by the lamps. Young girls slid and swirled their skirts on the dance floor to spread the wax.
The orchestra struck up a waltz. There was a tap on Charlotte’s shoulder, and she turned.
“Come on, Charlotte, teach me to dance.” It was Jock Williamson.
“I will,” Sophia spoke up, turning on her brightest smile, but Jock offered his arm to Charlotte, and she accepted.
They had fun. Jock was definitely in need of dancing lessons. He had two left feet, as Charlotte had often heard her mother say about her father, and they laughed at his mistakes and kept starting over.
Sophia was pouting when Charlotte rejoined her.
“Why didn’t you let me teach him?” she asked angrily. “You know perfectly well I said I was going to set my cap for him. Some friend you are!” She turned away with a flounce.
Although there was only two years’ difference in their ages, Sophia and Charlotte were quite dissimilar in appearance and demeanour. Sophia had olive skin, black curly hair, dark brown eyes, and laughing, dimpled cheeks. She was “pleasingly plump,” with a big bosom and a way of walking that made her hips sway. Although girls of seventeen weren’t considered grown up, she had borrowed one of her mother’s formal gowns with a raised waistline, lots of fringe, a wide cowl around the shoulders, and a large pink tulle rose in front.
Charlotte was skinny by comparison. Her straight light brown hair was plaited in two braids at the back of her head and held together with a blue satin ribbon. Her eyes were hazel and set deeply into the sockets, which gave her a waifish, hungry look. Her face was narrow, and she had her pretty mother’s full-lipped mouth, only on Charlotte it looked more stern and determined. She wore the same dress she had worn to every party for the past year: an ankle-length blue gingham with a ruffle around the neckline and sleeves.
Everybody stopped moving and looked toward the stage as Jock’s voice, amplified by a megaphone, echoed around the room. “Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please? Will all the miners step outside? There’s a spot of trouble at the pithead, and we need to do a little planning.”
“What? Oh, my goodness. I’m glad my father’s not on shift,” Sophia said, looking relieved at the thought. “My father’s just about the only one allowed in the mines now, being a fire boss. But he’s not working tonight.”
The miners moved fast, and within five minutes the hall was empty of all but women, children, and old men.
“Robbie, where are you going?” Charlotte demanded.
“Nowhere. Just outside for a minute.” Robbie was with two other boys of about the same age, and they were heading for the door.
“You better stay out of trouble. That’s none of your business.”