voices of
dissent

From page 24

had only lived there two years
spoke of him. But none of them
knew his whole story.”

The 1912-14 coal miners’ strike
(known as the Big Strike} combin-
ed with Goodwin's death left a
bitter taste ir: the locals’ mouths
and created‘a rift between labor,
management and government.

That antipathy continues to this
day. Mayse has had
Cumberlanders approach her on
the street, point an accusing finger
at a stranger and whisper in her
ear, ‘“his father was a scab.’”’

Ginger is not just a book about
the man Goodwin, but a story of
how history becomes myth. It’s
also about the hiding and seeking
of information.

Mayse laughs about how nra2ive
she was to think she'd find a
mountain of material on Goodwin
in the library. Instead, she spent
the next five years piecing together

. conversations and tunneling her
way through the few records that
remained.

Looking back, the lack of infor-
mation didn’t really suprise her.

: “It's very typical of Canadian
history,” she says. “There’s lots

* -that hasn't been written down
because we tend to glamorize
-other peoples’ history.”
_ . But she also discovered that im-
portant informatien was covered
up by the government and sthers
who had a vested interest in facts
about the shooting becoming
public, that key questions at the
_ inquiry into the shooting were
never asked, and that files on
~ Goodwin and early labor and so-
.cialist topics have since been
removed from the public archives
. in Ottawa.
nt Supgests the police had a
special interest in Goodwin, and
not just because he was a draft
dodger.

Although five years didn’t
unearth all the answers, Mayse
says she feels satisfied that she fi-
nally “got the monkey off my
back” by putting information on
the record that would have

“otherwise slipped away as Good-
“ win's contemporaries died.

REWS photo Terry Soters
AUTHOR SUSAN MBiayse has
Just recsived the Edna Staebler
Award for her book Ginger:
The Life and Deuth of Albert
Geodwin.

And she doesn’t expect anyone
else (apparently two other books
on Goodwin are being written)
will turn up any new information
on his death.

The book also satisfied the peo-
ple of Cumberland, w‘xo insisted
Gocdwin's death should not be
forgotten. Mayse ever: heard from
Goodwin’s niece in England who
called to tell her how pleased she
was that someone «.ad attempted
to clarify her uncle’s death.

Winning the Edna Staebler
Award was important because,
says Mayse, it would have been
easy for the judges to dismiss
Ginger as a piece of regional his-
tory. Instead, they recognized its
broader significance i in Canadian
history.

“1 feel it’s an important seg-
ment of 8.C. history, all the more
because of the apparent swesping
under the carpet. !f you look at
Canadian history, a fot of it is mili-
tary history — there’s not much of
a place for these voices of dissent.

“But unless people know there
has been a tniscarriage of justice,
and that our own government has
done dreadful things to its people,
it can n happen again.”

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Ana

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The Peak of Vancouver

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