Killed shortly before retirement
“They’ll nae mair coom doon tha strait taegether,” Mrs. McArthur is reported to have repeated over and again in an interview with the Toronto Daily Star the day after the Lock 6 gate collapse that killed her husband, eldest son, and – ultimately – eight other men.
According to the newspaper reports, her 61-year-old husband, James McArthur Sr., had been looking forward to being able to draw a pension in four years’ time. But, the father of five appears to have had no intention of retiring to the quiet life. Indeed, he was awaiting promotion to the position of government inspector on the Welland Ship Canal. It would have been a well-earned achievement after a life of industrial labour interspersed with military service.
The Irish-born McArthur began his life in the British Royal Artillery, enlisting at the age of 19 at Newcastle-on-Tyne. He spent about four years in India as a bombardier, but returned to Britain where he served as a gunner until his discharge in 1897.
It was in the town of Greenock, at the mouth of the Clyde on the western coast of Scotland, where he married widow Janet (née Davidson) Campbell and adopted her three-year-old son James. The family soon grew to include one daughter and three more sons.
Like many other able-bodied men of the era, McArthur then found work “on the ships.” The harsh realities of employment in the shipbuilding industry along the Clyde in western Scotland may have motivated him to emigrate to Canada.
Leaving in 1905 aboard the SS Sicilian, McArthur settled first in Collingwood, Ontario, and found work at the shipyards there. Janet and the children arrived a year later. In due course, the younger James would also join his stepfather at the shipyards.
War in Europe drew both Jameses and 16-year-old David McArthur back across the Atlantic. In spite of three attempts to enlist in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, James Sr. wasdeemedunfitforactiveserviceon the continent. Instead, he supported the war effort by working (again) as a riveter at the Clyde shipyards.
“After the war we came here,” remembered the widow, where the family settled on Leeper Street in St. Catharines.
It was the family’s unwavering commitment to Empire during a period of swelling interbellum patriotism that ensured more ink was devoted by the newspapers to discussion of the joint McArthur funerals than to any of the eight other victims.
Speaking to the assembled mourners at Westminster Presbyterian Church in St. Catharines, the Rev A. W. Thomson linked deaths during construction of the Welland Canal to the sacrifice made at war:
These two went forth and did their bit for their country. When they returned they took their part in that great international enterprise. Then suddenly came the great calamity. We are here this afternoon to express our heartfelt sympathy for the relatives who are left. The word I bring to you is ‘courage’.
Piping of the “Highland Lament” and the tolling church bell initiated a procession of the caskets to the cemetery. Various municipal, Legion and Masonic representatives stood at attention as a firing party and the Last Post concluded the service.